NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 18756, 9 July 1924, Page 10

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

a. »g bo in' is ;h aaa ii ip. d y d it, d e Le >- ■f 8 n r A 5 1 I l BUILDING "PROFITEERS." Tn the preliminary draft of the Housing Bill prepared by Mr. Wheatley, and submitted to the Cabinet Committee oh Unemployment, a clause was inserted fothe prevention of profiteering in building materials, says the London Daily Tele- | graph. -The housing proposals of tht | Minister for Health are certain to be the j subject of acute criticism, and Mr. . "Wheatley's plans for punishing persons ■who make profits which, in the opinion of the Labour-Socialist Government, are unreasonable will be one of the controversial features of the coming legislation. Apparently the Cabinet are not easy in their minds regarding the prospects of the bill, for they have decided to lighten it by cutting out the clause in ! question, and Mr. Wheatley is to introduce | duce a separate bill dealing with prices. I The Minister will propose in his Profiteerj ing Bill that persons convicted of making | unreasonable profits may be fined up to £100, or sent to prison for three months. In the worst cases there will be power to inflict both penalties. It will be competent for the Board of Trade, acting on instructions from the Ministry of Health, to undertake an investigation of a most inquisitorial character, and a person who furnishes false information concerning his transactions in housing materials will render himself liable to a fine up to £50.

THE P.R. SYSTEM IN OPERATION. The adoption by the Liberal Party in Britain of proportional representation has provoked much criticism from its supporters. Writing in the Review of Reviews, Mr. Wickham Steed declared :— Apparently " P.R." has become the true test of Liberalism—a proposal about which opinions in all parties are as divided as they ever were on any great issre of Tweedledum and Tweedledee, bnt of which experience has proved in Italy, Poland and elsewhere that, in practice, its effect is to pulverise representation «»tvl to condemn parliamentary institutions to impotence. The business of a representative system is not to reflect, at a given moment, the exact state of the countiy's mind in all its shadings; it is to provide means of governing the country with the broad approval of a majority of the elec torate. The probable sequel to proportional representation would be either Sovietism or Fascism.

EMPIRE OR COMMONWEALTH.

Discussing the conception of the British Commonwealth in the Edinburgh Review, Dr. W. P. M. Kennedy, of Toronto University, pleads for the substitution of the "Commonwealth" idea for that of the "Empire." He writes:—The Imperial Conference of 1921 closed with a significant address pointing out its " unanimous conviction that the most essential of the links that bind our widely spread peoples is the Crown." Arrangements ought to be made through which the monarch might visit regularly, as a normal constitutional duty, the other nations of which he is King. This may appear somewhat of an emotional suggestion; but I know of no sphere in which a more welcome development could take place. The Royal title, too, ought to be made realistic; " King of the British Commonwealth of Nations, their Dependencies, Emperor of India." This is what he is, and Great Britain ought not to receive any special recognition. The, title " British Commonwealth of Nations" figures m a British Treaty, in a British Act, why should it not be used of His Majesty, with the quiet disappearance of the word "Empire?" I know full well that " Empire " is quite a decent word if decently understood—but I want to eliminate sinister associations. The epithet " Imperial" must go as well; and the Imperial Conferences can well be named " Conferences of the Britannic Nations."

STOCKHOLM l TOWN HALL. During the war the Swedes were busy building their magnificent, town hall at Stockholm. . Town hall is hardly the word, says Mr. Hope Bagenal, in the Daily News. The building ia a kind of Doge's Palace of the north—the doge in this case being the council of ah ambitious modern city; dreaming of beauty in common life as the Venetians dreamed of old. Every citizen watched it growing upon the shores of Lake Malaren. Its architect, Ragnar Ostberg, a man of real genius, had the active help of the best artists of Sweden, from Prince Eugene, the King's brother, to the most skilful bricklayer and clockmaker. In Scandinavian buildings the shipbuilding or Viking element is never quite civilised away, but in Ostberg's town hall a hundred turbulent ancestral motives are harmonised by a consummate art and made into a work of ordered architecture. Travellers continually report it as of an unac-. countable joyfulness of aspect. Craftsmen are enchanted by its texture and carving, architects by its proportions. It stands, with a terraced garden between it and the lake, in a wine-dark brick of the large dimensions common in Scandinavia in mediaeval times. The roof is high and curved, and covered with large copper plates like those in illuminated manuscripts; each plate was the gift of a citizen. A great tower like a lighthouse stands at the angle of the site, and seems to dominate earth and water. It is diminished upwards like a Grecian column in order exactly to satisfy the eye. The interior of the building is planned for civic entertainments as well as for municipal offices. The golden banqueting hall is a

mscious rival, in its size and soft radi-

ance, to the great sala of the Doge's palace. The large " people's court " is a close, through the ai cades of which a view of the terrace garden and the lake beyond is to be seen.