NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 14927, 27 February 1912, Page 6

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

TWO VIEWS OF SIR E. GREY. Hebe arc two conflicting opinions about the Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey :—Tho Spectator says : —" It is at any rate satisfactory to know that w© lave at the Foreign Office a statesman who will not make things worse through panic or through violent action or by yielding to the temptation to make some sensational stroke of high policy. Sir Edward Grey is certain to be reasonable and moderate, and not. to exasperate the situation by ill-judged or aggressive action. Whatever may be the criticisms mode upon him at home by certain Radical politicians, ho has undoubtedly not only gained the confidence of his colleagues, but also that of foreign statesmen. They know that his word is to be depended upon, that ho is not a mischiefmaker, and that he has the interests of peace steadily and sincerely at heart, though he does not indulge in the conventional rhetoric of the professional pacificist." The Nation says:— morals, of the jungle and the rattle into barbarism are the direct consequences of the policy of preoccupied animus which Sir Edward Grey has steadily followed against Germany. Ho has sacrificed everything but prejudice, tolerated everything save a pacific approach, paid the debts of every European appetite and shrunk from no bargain except the indispensable adjustment of accounts with Germany. Wo have no Senate Committee to unravel recent history. There is growing, none the less, a public opinion that demands a new Foreign Secretary, and feels, as the risk increases, that the peace of the Europe of tho future and every reform at home depend upon the change." MINISTER AND BUSINESS MAN. " Ministers are beginning to get very tired of the patronage of business men," says Dr. James H. Ecob in tho Homiletic Review. "We are supposed to know ■ nothing of life, to have had experiences next to nothing in quantity and quit© * nothing in quality. We are supposed to be about as detached from practical affairs as if we lived on the moon and slid down on a silvery beam to earth every seventh day to glimmer in a dim religious building for an hour or two, then ascend to our dead world again. Such high airs among business men are hardly becoming. Tho percentage of failures among them is 95, while among us it will hardly reach 25. The fianancial affairs of the Church are managed by the most competent business men in the congregation, yet a very largo percentage of the chinches of tho country come to the end of every year with that 'eternal deficit.' The public would be startled, and, it is to hoped, humiliated, to learn how many pastors give off a substantial part of the last quarter's salary year after year. This is the time when tho astute business man, finding that he had failed in what ho was elected to do, makes tho profound remark : ' We are evidently living beyond our income; is not our pulpit costing us too much?' "-

, ESPIONAGE IN GERMANY.

According to telegrams from "Kiel (writes the Berlin correspondent of th* London Times), the admiral in command of the German High Sea Fleet has issued an instruction strictly forbidding traders and business people of all sorts who have been accustomed to visit the fleet to obtain orders to be allowed on board the ships of the High Sea Fleet. Whether or not this decision is, as is stated, the result of recent "espionage" cases, there appears to be a general movement among the German authorities for increasing the precautions against espionage. The newspapers • produce almost every " day some story of lost documents or the like—the latest report is of a theft on board the cruiser Stettin—and even a sober journal like tho Frankfurter Zeitung publishes an article in favour of stricter supervision of everything and everybody. As regards the newspapers, many of their publications are evidently intended partly to keep public opinion on the alert about national danger and national defence and partly to justify the peculiar Geheinmistuerei of German officialdom, which loves to make mysteries of things which everybody knows. Even in the most exalted quarters it is maintained that Germany is peculiarly afflicted with "espionage,'" and there is little sympathy with the practice of foreign countries which are often content to control the movements of German agents without arresting them and causing the press to stir up ill-feeling against Germany.