TOPICS OF THE TIMES

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXIX, Issue 4694, 16 May 1935, Page 4

TOPICS OF THE TIMES

State Transport Services. “State shipping has been tried by the United States, by France, by Canada and by Australia,” said Lord Templemore in the- House of Lords. “The United States started State shipping in 1916, and from 1916 to 1930 the taxpayer of the United States is reckoned to have lost no less than £670,000,000 in Statecontrolled shipping. France in 1919 formed a merchant fleet called the French State Merchant Fleet. From 1919 to 1924, when this unfortunate fleet was given up, the French taxpayer lost no less than £43,000,000 in capital losses over and above annual losses on the fleet. Australia affords a very striking example as regards national shipping. From 1916 to 1928, when the vessels were sold, the losses to the Australian taxpayers amounted to £14,500,000. The total loss from 1915 to 1932 on the Australian State railways is reckoned to have been £81,00,000. The loss on the French State railways, which have now been under Government control for 21 years, amounted up to two years ago, which is the latest date at which figures are available, to £32,000,000, and the loss was supposed to be increasing by £BO,OOO per day.”

The Best Hope. “If Germany can be persuaded to enter into the League of Nations,then there will be a position created which will make it more hopeful to resume conferences on disarmament than has hitherto existed for many years past. It is not because I wish the question of disarmament to be in any way postponed or belittled, but, on the contrary, because I believe it to be vital that I am anxious in these ways to bring about a state of things in which the Disarmament Conference can be resumed with greater helpfulness than before. It is only through some general disarmament conference which is surrounded by an atmosphere of security, which does not at present exist, that Europe generally and the world can proceed to deal, and deal adequately, I hope, with that horrible portent of the continuance and development of war in the air. I do not abate for one moment my conviction that armaments are no security, that in the long run, if a nation thinks that by increasing its own armament it is increasing its security, it will find it is labouring under a delusion, because it is only thereby increasing the sense of insecurity in other nations.”—The Archbishop of Canterbury.