NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19321, 7 May 1926, Page 10

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

NEWSPAPERS AND TRADE. The suspension of British newspapers, owing to the attempt of the strike organisation to dictate editorial policy, lias not only deprived the British public of tlfeir usual reliable sources of information on foreign as well as domestic affairs; it. has also stopped advertising. The effect of such a situation was discussed recently by Sir Charles Higham, in an address at the Stationers' Hall, London. "If newspapers were to cease to-morrow, goods, and therefore money, would cease to circulate so steadily, lio said. " Shops would begin to empty. Warehouses would become congested. Machinery would become idle, and we should have twice the unemployment in a month wc have to-day. We must take industrial conditions as wo find them, and if advertising ceased —which it would virtually do without tho press—supply would swamp demand, and economic chaos would bo the outcome." PUBLIC SERVICE SALARIES. Criticism by a Labour journal of increases in tho salaries of permanent heads of departments in New Zealand is discussed in the Public Servico Journal. "Tho mail in the street can have little conception of the great power for the good, of the country that lies in the hands of a departmental head," it says, "No groat policy measure can be undertaken without his guidance, and very often without his concurrence. Whatever the nature of the proposal it will ultimately fall to tho lot of one department to administer it. When everything relevant to tho subject is considered, the work of a permanent head calls for tho officer in that position being a man of outstanding ability, and a survey of the men who now occupy the most responsible positions 111 the servico affords a view of a class of officer possessing attributes of mind and character of whom tho country has every reason to feel proud. It is when the salaries paid to these men are looked at, however, that the inadequacy of the practical recognition of the value of their services is seen. The salaries paid to the permanent heads cannot be regarded as iri any way commensurate either with the duties they perform, or with their responsibilities to the country whose interests they watch over. Tho journal adds that there arc a great many positions outside the service, the holders of which have neither the responsibility nor as wide a nature of duty, but who draw much larger salaries, and until some attempt it made to repair this deficiency, there will not be the same incentive for men of outstanding ability and energy to remain in the servico to the benefit of their country. NAVAL DEFENCE POLICY. Addressing a gathering of the R.N.V.11. (Auxiliary Patrol) Club in London, the First Lord of the Admiralty, Mr. W. C. Bridgeman, said it was necessary that all who believed in the navy should exert themselves to appose the idea that both the army and the navy were obsolete; that tho next war was going to be fought in tho air, and that therewas no need for any other defence. He had no doubt whatever of the value of the Air Force, and that its value would increase, but lie hoped tiie country would realise that it would be a very long time before that force would be able to undertake the defence of the country. With the cry of economy there came the great danger that certain people who knew nothing about it—Little Englanders and other disereditors of this country—would do anything they could to persuade the country to save a few millions at th expense of tho Navy. He hoped that bodies such as this club would exert themselves to see that tho sea-sense was kept in a reasonable and sound condition. Sea-sense was commonsense. They had to look at things as they were and not as they might be 50 vears hence. After the war, Great Britain was in danger of being left with ships built during tho war or before the war while other countries had ships built after the war. Ho hoped that this had now been put right. The programme tho Government laid down was the minimum programme for the safety of Britain on the Dnc-power standard. There was always a little danger in talking about the onepower standard. That only existed in regard to battleships and ships of large, size. It would be a very dangerous thing for Britain to allow it to be thought that she could bo satisfied with a one-power standard in cruisers, for example. In cruisers Britain must bo superior to other countries and able to afford protection for her trade.

THE COAL USER'S VIEWPOINT. The report of the British Coal Commission covers the whole ground with a deliberation and clearness that shows no sign of haste, and for years to come itis likely to be valued as a good and impartial analysis of tho subject and, perhaps, the most, useful available collection of authentic data bearing on it, says Engineering. Even if they were adopted by both parties to the inquiry, its recommendations would not be adequate to the emergency. The large majority of them, even if they were all desirable and practicable, which is by no means admitted on all competent hands, could not, come into operation for a long time; and the industry is so placed that much of it must have collapsed long boforo then if measures immediately applicable cannot bo found. Whatever else mav bo done—and much must be dono before the industry will be again on its feet, and its customer industries are satisfied enough as to its stability to resume their normal ordering—tho increase of wages procured because of tho few months' vanished boom, and the reduction of hours by which the miners arc distinguished from all other workers in the country, must be renounced. Tho miners ha\e, in fact, been at issue not with the owners but with the users, and the issue has been shortly, whether the users will pay them as much more money than other unsheltered workmen as they ask for working as much shorter hours. In the most practical way tho users have declined; and it is to tho users that any concession has to bo made. The owners can derive no advantage from it without sharing the advantage automatically with the workers under the existing agreement; and the workers stand in a common need with tho owners of evory advantage that they <«».n derive from what remedial measures can bo promptly taken. Not the least of the advantages they would reap would be the return of the disposition to venture more in the business of the mines, from which tho uncertainty of tho temper of their men seems to be a principal deterrent.