NOTES AND COMMENTS

Feilding Star, Volume XVI, Issue 4148, 19 November 1920, Page 2

NOTES AND COMMENTS

Fall in Freights. Good news for producers is contained in our cabled news to-day. A message from England says that shipping freights have slumped by hall during the past six months—and still slumping. It is about time. Hie Shipping Ring has filled its treasury at the expense of the world s producers during the past ten years. It did not oven require the excuse of the war for making rates rise-—:rise—me. For prices were well _up before milt does not matter what the cause of the downward slump is to-day. he fact that rates are down spells satisfaction for Now Zealand's farming interests. ' Tirio the Two-faced. As we anticipated, ex-King Conaantino, in bis desire to return to place and power in Athens, now avows himself the friend anil supporter of the Entente Powers. Wilhelm Cieaar is now Wilhelm the Exile, and his brother-in-law now sees no reason why ho should not cast off his allegiance with Germany. He is even prepared, as we surmised ho might, to pursue the policy of Venizelos the patriot— who, by the way, with a wise and wide knowledge of Tino and bis ways and his courtiers, got out of Greece whilst the going was good. For, after a 11, so difficult is the position in the East and so important is the Grecian influence over there, that we should not be very much surprised to find the Allies permitting a plebiscite of the' people on the question -whether Constantino should bo recalled to reign over them. Bane and Antidote. There is never a trouble but there is a blessing following upon its heels. Naturally, that arch-intriguer of Egypt and Asia Minor, Mustapha Kemal, who was sent hastily into retreat by the advance of the Greek forces in Anatolia, has come out in the open again as the result of the success of the Reds in the Crimea and of the defeat of Venizelos in Greece t which latter episode stays the progress of the Grecian advance. But against this we have to. record the assurance of Emir Feisul, whom Kemal declared to be his close associate, that he is in no way connected with tho Turkish rebel. It wns naturally anticipated (and Kemal traded on this) that after Britain's treatment of the eldest son of the King of Arabia in refusing to set him upon the throne of Syria, that the Emir would swing right round and do all he could to damage the cause of democracy and self-determination in the East.' But the gallant Arabian's reply to the cunning propaganda, of Mustapha Kemal is that he will continue to bo tho friend of the Allien. That will mean something to ■wards stemming the overflowing tide of Bolshevism ns it flows towards Mesopotamia and Persia.