A BACKGROUND TO THE NEWS

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 147, 18 March 1937, Page 9

A BACKGROUND TO THE NEWS

Great Britain’s Trade

Reports from London refer to the notable advance in Britain’s trade. The “Bankers’ Magazine” record of 365 representative securities showed a rise in value by December 16, 1936, of £370,664,000 to £7,394.653.000 compared with a year previously. “It is estimated,” said the City Editor of the "Observer,” "that at least half of the national income, or about £2,500.000.000

a year, is spent over shop counters, and the Board of Trade index of retail trade rose in 1936 by over 6 per cent. Weekly wages increased by over £400,000 a week, or a total of £21,000,000 in the year, nearly 4 000,000 people receiving increases. Insured persons in employment rose to 11,120.000, or 503,000 more than in 1935. The number of unemployed had increased from 1,918,562 to 1,628,719. Railway traffic receipts increased by £5,056,000. Electricity generated reached over 2,000,000,000 k.w.h., the monthly average index number being 234.2 compared with 100 in 1929. Houses built in 1936 totalled 339,536, or 10,000 more than in 1935.” “The remarkable thing,” said the "Morning Post,” “about all this expansion is that it is due almost exclusively to the buoyancy of the domestic market, for exports have risen during the first 11 months of 1936 by the insignificant sum of £13,700,000, or only about 3 per cent This stagnation of our exports, if it persists, must remain a serious drag on our powers of recovery.” Platinum. Queen Mary’s coronation crown is mounted throughout in platinum. Platina del Pinto, or "little silver,” was first discovered in the washings of the River Pinto in Colombia, South America, about 1735. Although the metal hag a very high melting point, the Spaniards learned the art of fusing it, and worked it into various ornaments. such as buckles, snuff boxes, and sword hilts. Spaniards once even used the metal as a counterfeit for gold, doubloons containing platinum with a thin layer of gold being successfully passed for gold coins. Similar counterfeits have been known of the 10 and 20-dollar gold pieces in the United States. Russia employed platinum for coinage from 1828 to 1845. but the difficulties in minting the hard metal with a high fusion point militated against this use. While to the eye platinum has the appearance of silver, it is much heavier, and, what is now more important, it is much scarcer. Platinum has a number of industrial and scientific uses, but because of the limited supply the amounts consumed in these ways are necessarily limited. Due to its resistance to the action of most chemicals, and to its high temperature of fusion, it is often used in laboratories in the form of foil, crucibles and wire. Retorts of platinum are used in the concentrating and distilling of sulphuric acid. During the last 30 years the annual production of the world has rarely exceeded 300,000 ounces. Colombia, in South America, and the Ural Mountains of Russia, are the largest producers. The price of platinum to-day is about £7 an ounce. During the Great War, and shortly afterward, it was valued at about £4O an ounce. A platinum vessel weighing 322 ounces troy, manufactured in 1809, cost £2BO. Its cost to-day would be £2300, and during the Great War it would have been £13,000. The Koh-i-Noor Diamond. Included in Queen Elizabeth’s coronation crown is the famous Koh-i-noor diamond. While in the East this diamond had an astonishing history. It is said that for thousands of years every prince and chieftain in India and the surrounding countries had been

ready to do anything in order to obtain possession of it, and during that time they fought, cheated and murdered each other for it. It was not only its brilliance and monetary value that attracted them, for Indian legend associated good fortune with its possession. Runjit Singh, who became ruler of the Punjab, is said to have asked the wife of the chieftain from whom he had stolen the diamond, what its value was. She replied: “If a strong man were to throw four stones one north, one south, one east and one west, and a fifth stone up into the air, and if the space between were to be filled with gold, all would not equal the Koh-i-noor, the “Mound of Light.” Why the Koh-i-noor should adorn

the Queen-consort’s and not the Kingregent’s crown makes an interesting piece of jewel history. When it was given to Queen Victoria by the British East India Company on the annexation of the Punjab in 1850, a hint was dropped that India as a whole would be best pleased if her Britannic Majesty wore the jewel purely as a personal ornament and did not make it part of the British Crown regalit. So gradually there grew up the belief that should the Koh-i-noor ever be worn by a man-ruler of Great Britain, India would be lost to the British Empire. And that is why Queen Victoria specifically bequeathed this jewel not to her successor on the Throne, King Edward VII, but to his wife. In doing so she made the Koh-i-noor a Royal heirloom to descend to female entail from one reigning monarch’s consort to the next. Hence its appearance in Queen Alexandra’s coronation crown, Queen Mary’s and now Queen Elizabeth’s. Canada and War. A university students’ peace delegation in Canada has contended that Canada is not at war when Britain is. A Royal Commission in Victoria in 1870 suggested the neutralisation of the colonies when Britain was at war but the idea had no success. In 1899 the possibility of the neutrality of the Cape of Good Hope in the war with the Boer Republics was canvassed by the Cape Ministry, but was dismissed as a chimera. In 1911 the same idea was disowned by General Botha, and the Union of South Africa Government threw itself wholeheartedly into the. Great War, declining any suggestion of remaining neutral toward German South-West Africa.

General Hertzog, however, has consistently asserted that the status of the Union involves the right to remain neutral. Commitments that the Union has undertaken, however, would render neutrality a breach of faith to Great Britain. By the 1921 treaty the Irish Free State is under obligation to afford Great Britain certain facilities in the event of war that would render neutrality impossible. No other Dominions. and this includes Canada, claims the right of neutrality, nor does any other Dominion apparently adopt the view that the British Commonwealth of Nations consists of distinct international units. Evidence from foreign governments is unfavourable to the view that the Dominions are distinct international units. They accept the principle that when Great Britain is at war the whole British Empire is automatically at war also.