NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 18887, 9 December 1924, Page 8

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

THE MASTER MICROPHONE.

Mr. J. 0. W. Reith, managing-director of the British Broadcasting Company, prophesies in the Nation that the next general election in Britain may be won at the master-microphone. The personality of the leader mu.?t be such as will convince the home, and his be the party whose policy will withstand the unbiased criticism of the fireside.

"In the recent general election," lie says, " Mr. Asquith, Mr. Baldwin, and Mr. Mac Donald have each been given the opportunity of ' talking to the country,' in a way which was never possible before. No lightning tour,nnto t schedule of public meetings with elaborations of loud speakers in overflow halls, not even, I believe, any number of printed manifestoes, can accomplish as much for any. leader or any political party as when, for instance, in a quiet room in London, prefaced by the simple remark, ■' London calling the British Isles,' the statesman advances to the little machine and, in his ordinary 'across the table' tones, proceeds to address his fellow countrymen or countrywomen 'to the unpredecedent.ed . and . .almost inconceivable extent which broadcasting makes possible." Mr. Keith adds that in ordinary circumstances microphones arc in independent operation in 20 of the largest cities of tin 1 ' British Isles, but for any special occasion,' as well as regularly for the communication of news from London, these centres of broadcasting may be linked together, and any one becomc the source and centre of*interest. The local microphone becomes the master-micro-phone.

LIBERAL PARTY'S FUTURE. Liberals have no chance on earth of ever again polling a majority of the country or of forming an independent Government of their, .own, says the London Observer. . They cannbt bo neutral withou': impotence. Unless they make up their minds about their future in the new epoch of politics, they will continue to shed their members at both ends, and they will dwindle to insignificance. Survival and revival depend upon a definite choice between two courses. It is no use to say that they alone are the proper people, and that wisdom shall' die with them. No one believes it. Never again will anyone believe it. Distinctive Liberal triumphs like .those of 1868, 1880, and 1906 belong to 'an extinct age of public history, and will never be seen again. Every instructed follower of Mr. Asquith and Mr. Lloyd George knows that this analysis is true. If tho most helpless kind of disruption and disaster is to be averted, they must use their power while they have it to make terms with either Unionism or Socialism, Socialism is out to kill Liberalism, not bv animus but by necessity. For it must kill Liberalism or die itself. Mr. Asquith and Mr. Lloyd George know this at last. Those of their followers who still refuse to perceive a truth that is as obvious and immovable as a mountain are past praying for. The only chance for Liberalism is to make terms with Unionism in the national and Imperial interests, which are far above and beyond the separate interests of either of tho older parties. It is the eleventh hour with Liberalism and its leaders.

THE FALLACY OF SOCIALISM. "The mad and muddy economic philosophy borrowed from Kail Marx," was tho description given lr>- Lord Birkenhead in an address before the Imperial Commercial Association, to the Labour Party's programme. Ho said the country had never been told how the means of production, distribution and exchange were to be socialised, but there was a means of forming a judgment of what was intended in the expressed intentions of the Socialist Party as to the nationalisation of the coalmines and the railways. The men who had spent their lives, and whose fathers had spent their lives, in acquiring a special proficiency in management were to hand those , industries over to a committee of manual labourers, assisted by a number of carefully-selected Socialist agitators, in order to add to the productivity of the nation and ameliorate the state of unemployment. It was not inconceivable that tho management of the wages would bo left to a committee of tho men who, worked .tho industry. Every man who had read the history of British trade knew perfectly well the broad, permanent principles upon which it depended. It depended in the first place upon the maintenance unaffected of the mainspring of human initiative played upon by tho prospects of individual advantage, and it depended upon the knowledge in tho breast of every man, from tho highest to the lowest in any particular industry, that exceptional ability and exceptional industry would meet with exceptional reward. What was the madness to be substituted at tho bidding of men, the majority of whom had never earned an income in any business except that of preaching sedition '! They were not only to destroy tho existing economic system, which would not he difficult, but they were to engage in a campaign against human nature itself. Under any system of taking over capitalism by the State presumably there would be no compensation, for, if so, they merely changed the managers while preserving all those who were managers as capitalists; and the further, inference was that all received an equal wage. But as some men were more frugal in mind that others, they would at once become small capitalists, so that not only must the capital of the country be confiscated, but there would have to be a monthly clearing-house for every man who had saved something in the interval.