NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVII, Issue 1449, 3 October 1910, Page 4

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

HOME RULE ALL ROUND. Homk Rule all round is very much in the air in the Mother Country at the present time, and is being discussed in all the leading journals. The Westminster Gazette, which is in close touch with the Government, favours the idea. "If Irish, Scottish, and Welsh choose to take a pride in their nationality—i.e., in the history, tradition, and sentiment which they have each in common—why," it asks, "should we grudge it them, or commit the folly of perpetually suggesting that it is incompatible with good citizenship of the United Kingdom or Ihe Empire ? The Englishman's passion for flatironing everything out- to his own pattern is the main source of friction between Cell and Saxon, and is in no respect more irritating than in this unmeaning pretence that the words Welsh, Scotch, and Irish have merely antiquarian significance. No one can travel through Germany at the present time without feeling that one of the main sources of its strength is the variety of types of culture and civilisation. There is no one vast city which sucks the blood out of the country, and imposes its standard of manners and thought upon the whole population. You pass from one capital city to another, each with its own eminent citizens faithful to it, each with a complete society and a culture of its own. No ore wants the Bavarian to call himself a Prussian, or grudges the Hamburger the privilege of calling himself the citizen of a free Republic, if it gives him pleasure, provided also that he. acknowledges his loyalty to the German Empire. Everyone realises that, if German unity could be threatened, it would be by an attempt to ride roughshod over the historical divisions and separate traditions of the German States. And yet, if a Scotsman or an Irishman puts in a plea for his nationality, he is heavily rebuked as the dupe of a phrase or roundly rated for. a rebel and a separatist. We can imagine," concludes the Westminster Gazette, "a dozen schemes of devolution which would be entirely compatible with the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament, and a great aid to the businesslike conduct of affairs growing every year more complicated'. We believe the solution of this problem to be one of the main questions of the future, and a more imminent question than some people realise at this jmoment."

COST OF LIVING IN CANADA. Officials of the Department of Labour have been conducting investigations during the past year into the cost of living in Canada, and the results are contained in an illuminating report. Elaborate statements appear, showing the fluctuations in average wholesale prices of some 230 commodities entering into the cost of living. From 1890 to 1897 prices in Canada followed a downward trend. This was succeeded during the ensuing decade by a more rapid upward movement which culminated in 1907. Prices in the last-men-tioned year were by a considerable margin the highest in the twenty-year period. Prices foil in 1908, but went upward again last year and this year. Between 1897 and 1907 the advance amounted to approximately 37 per cent., and comparing the year 1909 with ■ 1897, the increase is 31£ per cent. It has, of course, to be remembered that an advance in the prices of commodities affects the well-being of the consumer only whero no corresponding change of income has occurred, and unfortunately the report sheds no light on that branch of the subject, but it is well-known that there has been a continuous upward tendency in wages since 1901, this tendency becoming pronounced in 1903 and in 1907.