NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 18170, 16 August 1922, Page 8

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

IMPERIAL PATRIOTISM.

Remarking in an address to members of the Victoria League on the inevitable tendency in the widely-separated Dominions to the concentration of attention upon local problems, the Earl of Balfour aaid: —" This preoccupation may well absorb all the attention of those fellow-citizens of ours, and yet, if cither they or we allow ourselves to forget, under pressure of our local conditions and problems, oar common origin, allow ourselves to be cold, or even luke-warm in our Imperial patriotirm, then this great experiment of the British Empire, new as it is in the whole history of the world, is doomed either to failure or to the most qualified of successes. It can only be what Providence intended it to be, what statesmen of this country and the heads of the governing Dominions desired it should be. It can only fulfill the ideal at which it aims if, in addition to all these local patriotisms, however warm they be, we always add, as the background of our political aaid national thought, the notion that we are common - members of a common Empire. Do not suppose that the problem is easy of solution. It is notieosy; but it can be solved, and I boldly maintain that the kind of work which tnis league has done, and is doing, is the kind of work which is eminently calculated to further the great object which I have endeavoured to describe." WAR MORTALITY. Statistics of mortality in the Australian Imperial Force have been prepared by the Commonwealth Statistician. It has been ascertained that the rate of mortality while the soldiers were absent from Australia was approximately 7J per cent, per annum. Under normal Australian conditions the rate of mortality of a body of men of similar ago would be approximately {, per cent. per annum. These statistics indicate that, in respect of the war, the appropriate extra lite assurance premium to cover Australian troops for risk of death while abroad would have been approximately £7 5s per annum for each £100 assured. This, however,- would not have covered risk of deterioration through war service. In the calculations on which these results have been based, all deaths abroad are taken into consideration. Deaths arising after discharge from the forces, however, are not included, nor any deaths in Australia. The total number of deaths abroad was 58,850, and the number of years of exposure to risk of death abroad has been computed as 761,000, giving a rate of mortality of 7.73 per cent, per annum. In the South African campaign of 18991902 the rate of mortality for all British troops was 3.87 per cent, per annum In the Crimean war of 1854-55 th« rate of mortality among the British forces is stated to have been 12£ per cent, per annum, and amonyl the French forces 15£ per cent, per annum. In the American Civil War of 1861-65 the rate of mortality among the Northern troops for the first year of the war was approximately 62 per cent., while the rate mortality among the German forces in the Franco-jSerman. war of 1870-71 was about 4£ per cent. In many cases reliable data for the computation of such rates are not available, but as far as can be ascertained the average war rate of mortality for the principal campaigns in the nineteenth century was in the neighbourhood of 5 per cent, per annum.

IMPERIAL PREFERENCE. Addressing the annual meeting of the British Empire Producers' Organisation, the chairman, Mr. Ben. H. Morgan, said tho composite nature of the party in power in tho Imperial Parliament makes any development of a preferential policy the subject of compromise. It is nevertheless a matter for congratulation that the principle, though its present application is not wide, is generally accepted even among the holders of views on fiscal policy, formerly considered inconsistent with it- Canada imports nearly a thousand million dollars worth of goods from foreign countries annually, and other Dominions and colonies also make immense purchases of the products of foreign factories, while the united Kingdom continues to purchase gigantic quantities of foodstuffs afnd raw materials from the United States, the Argentine, and Northern European countries, practically all of which compete with the products' of our overseas Empire. This anomalous position is making thinking men of all shades of political opinion ask what is wrong with British economic policy. Tho Dominions are being driven to find markets for their produce in foreign countries, and to-day the producers of tlie Crown colonies are appealing to the Imperial Government for fair treatment in respect of their development and assistance to maintain an economic existence against the menace of foreign trusts and combines with which they are threatened. Concurrently we are spending aboutHventy millions a year in Turkey, Palestine, and Mesopotamia. What for 7 The whole 45 Crown •colonies do not ask for such a sum even as a total loan for the development of their vital industries. "I believe the time is rapidly approaching when a policy of Empire first must become the foremost plank in British statesmanship," said Mr. Morgan. "There seems to bo no alternative. between this and a crumbling away of the !"whole structure of Empire.'