COMMENTS ON THE CABLES

Evening Star, Issue 13091, 26 October 1908, Page 5

COMMENTS ON THE CABLES

•£a* Austrian Press are angry with Great Britain, and charge her with B«wnfr«« m* duplicity. We learn from Balkans. this authentic source that she is seeking to bribe the Young Turkey party by means of '.cans, in order to compel Turkey to side with her in the stand she has taken in regard to the annexation of Bosnin-Herzegovina. We have no hesitation in relegating cock-and-bull stories of this kind to the rubbish heap. The alleged conspiracy is too subtle, too complicated, and too roundabout for British methods. England has proposed a Conference whereat the recent policy and acts of Austria, so far as they constitute a breach of the terms of the Berlin Treaty, shall'.be reviewed by the signatory Powers. But that to accomplish this end Sir Edward Grey and the Imperial Government are secretly egging on the Young Turkey party by dishonorable means to resist Austria and run the risk of setting the Balkans in flames is too preposterous for sober Englishmen to accept. It is happily contradicted by a.l we know of the policy of Great Britain and by messages from other sources. The immediate tear of war does not come from anything England may do, nor from Bulgaria nor Turkey. Wo cannot even think. Slut the Austrian Government desire war, m that they 'rill avoid an amicable arrangement. The danger spots at this honr must be looked for in either Servia or -Monte negro, where the material for an explosion is all ready to hand. The supreme question at this moment is: Can the Great Powers keep these dangerous elements under complete control!

Mu Will Thorne, the Labor member for West Ham. would have no Inalttag to great difficulty in finding RUt. eminent authorities in support of his dictum that it was not a crime for a starving man to help himself to bread. Only, those authorities whose names we recall (including that of a famous English cardinal) did not offer their opinion to a number of men—-of whom they knew nothing—who had gathered together in a public square and been worked up to a possibly dangerous pitch of excitement by an impassioned and practised speaker. It is that way madness lies. Had Mr Thorne thrown his memory hack some twenty odd years ho would have found an excellent precedent to guide him. On February 8, 1886. Mr John Burns, Mr Hvndman, and Mr Champion addressed a meeting of unemployed in Trafalgar square, and their advice on that occasion was, like that of Mr Thome’s on the same spot, couched in violent language. The results were disastrous. The better element among the crowd quietly dispersed ; but the baser, of which there is always a serious sprinkling in these Old World demonstrations, turned and majehed through the main streets of the West End, smashing windows, stopping carriage®, wrecking shops, and doing damage to the extent of £50,000. It is hardly necessary to say that the cause of tho genuine unemployed was not advanced one step by such wanton mischief. The three incendiaries were,held up to universal execration, and Colonel Sir E. Y. Henderson, then Chief Commissioner of Police, was compelled to resign. There has been a vast change in public opinion since that day. Social nueations (including that of the unemployed) are now the main concern of all political parties. Labor itself has upwards of fifty direct representatives in the House of Commons, and, most remarkable of all, the John Burns who gained notoriety in 1886 is now the honored and trusted official head of a great Department of State which is responsible to Parliament and tho nation for the management of the unemployed problem. The intervening years have brought wisdom and experience to him; and no one knows better than the President of the Local Government Board that to tell a mob to rob the bakers’ shops is not the real way to help the unemployed.

Or politicial corruption in the United States too much has been “Graft” la heard of late. The tale is Canada. such an old one that we have ceased to be moved by its recital; we are chiefly interested in the form it takes. But of political corruption across the border-line we have not heard a great deal. There may possibly be those who, in their zeal for the fair fame of the Empire, would deny its existence. We are afraid, however, that the charge must stand, even after making all reasonable allowance for the fact that Canada is now in the throes of a General Election. The Canadian Prime Minister, says the Montreal correspondent of one of the London dailies, “ preserves a scornful silence ” in the face of the charges of “graft” against his Government Sir Wilfrid is an able and an experienced politician, and if he has decided to risk the issue on the preservation of a policy of “ scornful silence ” it may be safely assumed that he has fully counted the cost. The existence of political corruption in the Dominion has been more than suspected for a good many years. Some of the charges, and much evidence supporting them, are on record, and men who succeeded in attaining Cabinet rank have had to make a virtue of necessity and drop out of the public gaze: while those who still occupy the Treasury benches are now acting on the defensive, instead of being the attackers, as they were wont to be. Prior to 1896 it was the Liberals who charged the Conservatives with being at the call and bidding of the Canadian Pacific Railway. To-day it is the Liberals who, among other things, are accused of feathering their nests from the exchequer of the new transcontinental railroad.

Speaking at the Frcetrade Congress held in London in August last, Some of the Mr Joseph Martin, K.C., Chirgw. ex-M,P. for Vancouver, in the course of an address on political ‘Morality and Tariffs,’ said, inter alia, that “never in all the history of Canada bad there been so much corruption hi public life as during the last twelve years." This serious indictment was supported by an appeal to the official records. Corruption, he went on to say, permeated every department of the Government, and it was safe to assert that much the greater part, of the time of Parliament was taken up with investigating charges of “graft” and corruption against departmental officers and Ministers of the Crown. So deeprooted was the corruption of Canadian public life that the Government strove bv every means to suppress and nullify the investigations of committees. The production of original documents, when asked for, was refused, and witnesses who declited to answer questions wore not committed for contempt. This sorry story was capped by the further assertion that members of the Ministry had become enormously rich while in office, and when charged in Parliament the only answer vouchsafed was a challenge to prove the “ infamous insinuations." Whether a policy of “ scornful silence ” will be acceptable to the great mass of the Canadian electors, or whether the latter will insist on a return to political purity, will he determined at the ballot-box during the next few weeks.