OVERSEAS OPINIONS

Dominion, Volume 25, Issue 172, 16 April 1932, Page 18

OVERSEAS OPINIONS

Criminal Not Good Business. “The habitual and persistent criminal is not. good business. He is, I think we are agreed, anti-social and uneconomic. He himself adds nothing to tlie life of the State, but causes his neighbours anxiety and loss of property and life; and, finally, he imposes on the State a painful burden —the supervision of control, which is uneconomic in its character. But the habitual criminal is often not born but marie. His persistence in crime is far less flue to inherent vices than to the circumstances of his life, and it may ,well be that a mistake in early treatment rather than inherent vice has turned him to a life of crime. In such a case the argument as between humanity in penal treatment or severity in penal treatment becomes superfluous, because you may reach a condition where neither humanity can reform nor repression can deter.” —Mr. Oliver Stanley, M.P., Under-Secretary of State in the House of Commons.

Tariff and tlie Cost of Living. Our proposals have been very carefully chosen in such a way that we think we are safe in saying that they will not raise the cost of living more than a few points iu the index number. But I wish to warn the House that the present cost of living is artificially low, that many articles are to-day being sold at prices which are well below the cost of production, and that inevitably, and very likely before very long, the/cost of living must rise as the cost of primary commodities rises. What our proposals will do will be to arm the people of this country with a higher income so that they can meet that increased cost of living when it comes. That will be the result of our proposals.”—Mr. Chamberlain. Buying and Selling.

“We must not look upon the whole of our inter-Imperlal trade from_ a purely selfish point of view. Nothing can be more foolish or more narrowminded than for people to Imagine they can always go on selling and should never buy; always go on exporting and need never import.” Rt. Hon. Walter Kunciman, M.P. Bate Complex.

“It seems to be a universal fact, that minorities, especially when their individuals are recognisable because of. physical differences, are treated by the majorities among whom they live as inferiors. The tragic part of such a fate, however, lies not only in the automatically realised disadvantages suffered by these minorities in economic and social relations, but also in the fact that those who meet such treatment themselves for the most part acquiesce in this prejudiced estimate because of the suggestive influence of the majority, and come to regard people like themselves as inferior. This second and more important aspect of the evil can be met through closer union and conscious educational enlightenment among the minority, and so an emancipation of the soul of the minority may be attained.” —Albert Einstein in a message to American Negroes in the February “Crisis,” organ of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People.

Economic Sanctions. “Economic sanctions are coming to mean something refreshingly new. Japan, the champion of dishonest force, is perceptibly suffering from the economic sanctions which tlie members of the League Council were too cowardly to use, but which are being used all the same by consumers in China, the United States, and elsewhere, by London and New York bankers who have refused war credits, and by the unforeseen cost of tackling the spirited Chinese defence of Shanghai. The French nationalist Government has to find 4000 million francs to balance its Budget, which confronts it with the alternative of eventual inflation or of an economy campaign quite as drastic as our own. The United States Government. is faced with a deficit equal to almost one-third of the total British Budget, and more than twice the May Committee’s figure, which helped to put the pound off gold. In such a crisis all luxuries must be heavily cut down, and the luxury of armaments cannot escape attention.”—The “Week-End lie view." Behind De Valera.

“There are men behind Mr. De Valera.” says a writer in “Truth,” “who will not wait. Young Ireland is there, and young Ireland sees much to be done. Britain is no longer the only enemy. There is growing irritation over the power of the heirarchy, and in the ranks of the De Valera party, just as in the intellectual circles of the capital, there is the nucleus of an anti-Clerical movement. Many priests, painfully well versed in contemporary Spanish history, found their enthusiasm for Irish Nationalism cooling as the election wore on. Of course. Lite leaders will discountenance these tendencies in Fianua Fail, but they cannot ignore them for ever.” The Tariff in Principle.

"The National Government under Mr. Ramsay MacDonald is not devising a tariff policy after the manner of other tariff policies. It refuses to bonus inefficiency or allow the consumer to be exploited. Organisation must go hand in hand with protection. The new British policy is protectionist, hut protection in a creative sense. The new pojicy is fashioned to be an effective instrument not of passive and sterile tariffs, not, supplying a scries of counters tor ’lobbying’ lights by vested interests, but a constructive and progressive agency, readjusting itself from time to time under the guidance of an independent advisory body and developing, in accordance with the needs of national and Imperial policy. It is a great ideal and the British nation emphatically supports it.”— “Canadian Gazette.” * An On-the-Spot Settlement.

“This gigantic and complicated affair in extreme Asia.” writes .Ur. J. L. Garvin in Ihe “Observer,” “ten thousand miles away, cannot be successfully dealt with through a town in .Switzerland by an inadequately international bureaucracy wherein neither America nor Russia is represented. Whoever likes it or not. direct negotiation between Nanking and 'Tokyo will have to be the main means of settlement. No third party should stand in the way of that course nor encourage China to refuse it. Persistence in that pedantic sort of philanthropic obstruction means catastrophe and nothing else. Direct negotiatons between r.lje two belligerents ought not to be hindered,”

The League to Japan. “No invasion of territorial integrity and no change in (he political independence of any member of the League brought about in disregard of Article 10 of the Covenant, ought to be recognised as valid and effectual by members of the League of Nations. Japan has an incalculable responsibility before the public opinion of the world to be just and restrained in her relations with China. She has already acknowledged this responsibility in most solemn terms by becoming one of the signatories to the Nine-Power 1 Treaty of 1922, whereby the contracting Powers expressly agreed to respect the sovereignty, the independence, and the territorial and administrative integrity of China. The twelve members of the Council appeal to Japan’s high sense of honour to recognise the obligations of her special position and of the confidence which the nations have placed In her as a partner in the organisation and maintenance of peace.”—The League of Nations in a message to Japan.

A Novelist on Teachers. “For a long time now, in fact ever since I left school, I have come to the conclusion that the schoolmasters and school-mistresses of these British islands are the most important people in them, although I did not think so at school. It is perfectly clear that if education is to be worth anything at all it is worth having the best people as our educators, and it is worth while paying them at a very much higher rate than they are paid at present-. It should be realised that education is one of the greatest services any man or woman can render to the State. The Press has a responsibility which it shares with you. You and the Press can make of a country what you want to make'of it, and, with that responsibility always before you, I cannot help feeling that some of the boring side, some of the tiresome side, of education may vanish.” —Dr. Compton Mackenzie, the well-known novelist, who is also Lord Rector of Glasgow University, speaking at the congress of the Educational Institute of Scotland. Britain Will Pay.

“It seems clear that, failing a restoration of world prices to the preslump level, Germany’s total liabilities will necessarily be reduced, and not merely postponed. But it is by no means clear that any reduction can be looked for in Britain’s outgoings, though we have the right of short postponement of any instalment of principal, as distinct from, interest, on our debt to the United States. Postponement, however, merely defers an unpleasant reality, and, though it may be necessary to overcome a relatively short-lived trouble, it cannot contribute much in the long run to recovery, more particularly as payments on account of principal constitute for some time to come only a small part of the total annuity. We have, therefore, to face the possibility, indeed the probability, of a deficit on our budget of war debt receipts and payments, to be filled out of our own taxable resources, and a deficiency on our balance of international payments on this account, which similarly must be covered by other receipts.”—“Midland Bank Review.” The Set of the Mind.

“What the mind reverts to when it swings clear of distractions gives the index of its true quality and direction. Where the ruling love goes, there goes the dominant thought, and where the dominant thought dwells, there goes the life,” writes Dr. Henry Howard, of Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, New York, in his new book, “The Defeat of Fear.” “There are changes of moral weather, just as there are of physical. Lifting the idea over. from the physical to the mental and moral region, our trend of thought and feeling is to be judged, not from its occasional bursts of sunshine or of shower, but from that which is constant as contrasted with what is variable, or to change the figure we shall be judged on the main sweep of life as distinguished from the cross-currents which may temporarily divert its course or set up whirlpools on its surface. It is the general set and tendency of our minds, our prevailing mental habitudes that will give the key to our character and the forecast of our destiny. Every human mind may be regarded as an island greater or less, and surrounded by an infinite ocean of thought." Wanted—An Unforgettable lesson, “The all-important thing that should go into the record of history concerning these debts is that Europe was unable to pay them. That fact will not go into the record if the United States, upon her own initiative, cancels them. Except in the case of Great Britain, the debts have, already been from onehalf to three-fourths cancelled. Not only Europe, but the United States, has forgotten that fact. And if they are altogether cancelled, without prior default or repudiation, both Europe and the United States will soon forget that there ever existed any debts at all. Let them, on the other hand, be repudiated, and both Europe and America will never forget that among the dark consequences of the Great War was the tremendous entail of unpayable and unpaid debt. Sentimentalism should not be allowed to obscure this incredible fact. History will not believe it to be a fact if it is treated will) euphemistic juggling of the realities. The best way to register it as a fact which history cauhot overlook is to Jet Europe prove its incapacity to pay by cither defaulting in the payment or by repudiating the obligation.” —“The Christian Century.” '

Self-expression. “Everywhere we find the individual trying to ape another rather than to express himself. It is true of a golf swing, a hair wave, a dinner-table, and a church-aisle manner. There is a maudlin community of conventions—black ties, white ties, red cocktails, red lipstick—almost a snivelling loyalty to la vogue. ’’Politically the same thing is to be seem. We arc suffering from the jau ml ice of jealousy. Tbe Knave looks will) yellow eyes at the Ace. Economically. initiative is out of favour, ami you must ’ea’ canny’ so as not to drive up the average. What a. second renaissance the gospel of individuality for service might, effect. In the home, the school, the workshop, the public service, and in the State. Self-expression does not find anything like a free field, once the serious business of schooling is begun. until adolescence is reached. Only then, and perhaps later, can we hope to find the real Hower of self-expression tieginning to blossom.” —Sir John Adamson, late Director of Education for the Transvaal,