NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19731, 2 September 1927, Page 10

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

BOLSHEVIK I'ROPAG AN DA. "Our trade union movement is suffering to-day because while we say to Russia and to our own Government, 'You have no light to interfere with other people,' those people whose cause we are championing not only do not hesitate to interfere, but they subsidise and finance people to interfere with us," said Mr. J. H. Thomas, M.P., at the conference of the National Union of Railwaymen. "We have to meet the slander and libel showered on our leaders by people in our own ranks who aro subsidised from other quarters. It is no secret that there is Russian money to subsidise their particular form of propaganda, but the mistake the Russians are making is that they are subsidising the wrong people. They are subsidising people without influence of any sort, and I say quite frankly they are wasting their money, because no greater mistake could be made than to assume that the same circumstances which brought about the Russian revolution could ever operate in Britain. I hope Russia will immediately abandon this absurd idea that she can engineer a revolution in Britain, or dictate to a movement like ours as to how we are going to conduct our own business.'" THE NATURE OF BOLSHEVISM. " Russia is not suffering under Communism, or any form of it. An industrial system is arising which is the apotheosis of all the tyrannies attacked by revolutionaries and reformers before the revolution," says the Times in reviewing an English translation of a study of Bolshevism by Reno Fulop-Miller. It quotes the author's conclusions as follows: " Man, if he is to be happy in the Bolshevik sense, must obey not the inner truth, of conscience, but the commands of a number of authorities who claim to be able, as being cleverer, to weigh soberly what is best and most useful for tho community. In this substitution of the results of coolly calculated deliberations on the part of the authorities for the individual conscience, the inmost meaning of Bolshevik rationalism is unmasked, and found to be nothing but the debasing of infinite .truth to a flat system of the most commonplace authoritarian utilitarianism. The spirit disguised in the o'epersonalisation of man, in the mechanisation of all forms of existence, in the eradication of the soul, in the fight against idealism, all the thousand masks of a new culture, a new style, a new art, and music, is openly displayed in Bolshevik morality, naked and unashamed, arrogant and contemptuous, as a brutal despotism. 'Freedom is a bourgeois prejudice ' shout the Bolsheviks in the full triumphant consciousness of their victory, to the groaning oppressed nation; ' human happiness can only be attained by lack of freedom, by slavish obedience.' " * THE PRIVY COUNCIL. "The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council is a real link between the Dominions and Colonies and the Mother Country," says Viscount Haldane in the Empire Review. "If it is little known to the man in the street of the various cities which rule themselves under the aegis of the Sovereign, it has a long arm and is a very real influence in smoothing the paths of Governments-as well as of governed. But few people, even of those who dwell in London, turn into Downing Street to see it sitting. And yet it is one of the King's Courts and is open to every citizen of the Empire and to anyone else who chooses to walk in. There the visitor may see advocates of every shade of complexion, confronting five elderly gentlemen, without wigs or robes, but seated round the horse-shoe oaken table of the Judge and with the marks of years of immegsion in legal contemplation written on their brows. . . It is often complained that a tribunal with Imperial functions of an order so important as those of the Judi cial Committee should be housed in so mean a building as its present lodging No doubt this would have been otherwise had the public taken much interest in the existence of the Court. And the public knows nothing of it, and the press pays to it but scant attention. It is only when our fellow-subjects come over to us from across the seas that the old oak panelled room in Downing Street is thronged. We who sit as Judges in the Court have little cause to complain. Our work is of a delicate kind and we are left in peace to do our best to discharge tasks which are often difficult as Avell as delicate." DISTRIBUTION OF OWNERSHIP. " Four things seem to me to stand forth pre-eminently in the America of today; four developments full of hopefulness and eminently worthy of imitation," says Mr. Ramsay Muir. " The first is the systematic endeavour to bring about a wider and more healthy distribution of ownership. The second is the general disposition to the scientific methods, to spend freely upon research, and to regard management as a highly exacting and responsible profession, for which scientific training is needed. <Rie third is the widespread readiness to try experiments in new forms of industrial organisation. The fourth is the development of a now attitude and policy in some of the moro progressive trade unions. Immeasurably the most important of the four is the attempt to bring about a wider distribution of ownership; because this movement, hoWever imperfect its methods and however mixed its motives, docs at least ! aim at tho heart of the supremo social problem of our time. Socialism—the substitution of public ownership for private ownership—is an illusory remedy. For if the private owners are got rid of by confiscation, saving will cease, no new capital will bo available, and industry will slow down until it stops. And if the private owners aro bought out with Government stock, and new capital is raised in the same way, the only change will be that tho owners will draw a fixed instead of a variablo rate of interest, and will cease to be exposed to risks. Instead of diminishing tho contrast between tho owning > class and the working class, this chango would in the long run intensify it. The only remedy is to bo found in a wide distribution of ownership, until it. becomes normal for every worker to be also an owner, and to derive part of his income from this source as well as from the wages of his labour. Unless wo can by some means open the way to this consummation, we shall not attain to social health; nay, social unrest will increase in proportion as industrial progress advances. .. . America has set before herself the aim of banishing from her society the ' propertvless proletariat,' and creating a society whose members shall all be owners and workers."