NOTES OF THE DAY

Dominion, Volume 26, Issue 16, 13 October 1932, Page 8

NOTES OF THE DAY

Opposition arguments to the Religious Exercises in Schools Bill in the Legislative Council yesterday followed the usual well-beaten tracks. The Hon. J. A. Hanan declared that the Bill was a blow at the present secular system. Why must it be secular ? Mr. Hanan must be curiously out of touch with the sentiment of the times, and the growing appreciation among the people of the need for a greater regard for the spiritual values in life. To those who with him are apparently unconscious of this increasing revulsion from a national education system which completely ignores the religious factor in human development, it may be useful to quote Mr. H. G. Wells, himself a revolutionary thinker of broad views: “We would lay stress here on the suggestion, ’ he says in his Outline of History, “that this divorce of religious teaching from organised education is necessarily a temporary one, a transitory dislocation, and that presently education must become again in intention and spirit religious. Education is the preparation of the individual for the community, and his religious training is the core of that preparation.”

Another State department is finding out that cheaper services may prove a better proposition than dearer. For a long time the Government and the departments thought the way to net more revenue was to impose higher charges. Finance Ministers must in recent years have discovered cause to doubt the beautiful simplicity of this method. People have shown an unexpected disposition to go without in certain directions. Nevertheless it was left to the Railways Board, a businesslike body, to decide it might pay better to lower charges and thus attract more business. The experiment succeeded. Now we have the Postmaster-General announcing that the reversion to penny postage “had resulted in an appreciable increase in business and was considered to have fully justified itself, leaving no regrets. Certainly it may not be easy to make up all at once what the department has lost but business is trending the right way. What the country needs, and what would assist it tremendously, is a more general application of the principle of lower charges (and taxes) and larger returns.

Producers will doubtless view with approval the decision of their own export boards to work in co-operation with the Government in a definite effort to open up markets in the Far East. Of course there are difficulties. The first to be overcome is the provision of adequate, direct shipping services. But these will naturally develop if freights are offering. Another objection is that unsettled conditions in the East will prejudice development at the present time. All the same Mr. Stanley Baldwin was able to note the other day the substantial increase this year in Britain’s cotton exports to China and India. The longer credit required by Eastern traders is another factor. While these obstacles need not be minimised, the fact remains that Australia does a large and valuable trade with the Far East in commodities New Zealand could supply at least as well. If the boards make up their minds to enter these markets and are prepared for a difficult pioneering period, the producers before long should begin to reap the reward for New Zealand need yield to no other country on the score of quality.

To judge by the rush of applications for the new 2 per cent. British Treasury bonds, London is quite convinced that an era of cheaper money has opened. The loan, both as to its form and its currency, is fairly comparable to the 5 per cent, bearer bonds issued in London by the New Zealand Government on June Bof last year. The cost to the State of that loan was £6/1/3 per cent, whereas the British Treasury—l 6 months later —is getting its money at something over £2 per cent. • The difference in the price of these two issues of shortdated bonds does not represent the difference between the credit of the two Governments, nor does it mean that New Zealand had to pay an outrageous price in June, 1931. In all the circumstances, the chief being that the greatest financial crisis in all history was brewing, New Zealand was . lucky to get a loan at any price. What the comparison does show is the amazing difference in the London market for public securities in so short a time, a difference chiefly attributable to the same financial policy of living within income instituted by the National Government when it succeeded the profligate Labour-Socialist Administration. New Zealand appears to have good prospects of benefiting, subject to the success of Mr. Downie Stewart’s negotiations for the conversion of her short-dated bonds.