NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 19976, 19 June 1928, Page 8

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

AUSTRALIAN CONDITIONS. "Australia is a fine country, with a great future," said Sir John Grice in his address to the annual meeting of tlie National Bank of Australasia, but there were unsound and uneconomic factors in the situation that should be generally recognised. "A great deal of the appearance of prosperity is the result of the free spending of borrowed money, borrowing and spending which is still excessive, though it lias of late been somewhat curtailed," he said. "There are in the situation factors often brought under the notice of the public, the bearing of which upon our financial soundness is not as fully recognised and impressed on our minds as it should be, and therefore no apology is necessary for reiteration. The borrowing of Commonwealth and State Governments continues to increase, and the interest bills to mount, without requisite correspondinjg increase in the productive power of the assets. As an illustration, the amount of the public debt of the Commonwealth and the States at the end of the war was £690,000,000. It is now more than £1,040.000,000. Then there are a number of States that are showing revenue deficits, and the absence of profits on the operations of State railways, despite a partial monopoly and the fact that the greater part of the existing lines was constructed very cheaply as compared with present costs; lack of industrial peace; Government child endowment and proposals for unemployment insurance, doubtless involving enormous expense." Sir John Grice also mentioned that while there was general approval of tariff protection of local industries, there had been developments that had caused the Tariff Board to issue very serious warnings. Finally, there was serious unemployment, causing business depression and economic disturbance. THE BRITISH EMPIRE. "When the ordinary Britisher begins to reflect on the history of the development of the British Empire he finds himself in the presence of a fact as stupendous and as permanent a mystery as any event in the history of human institutions," said Sir John Simon, at the banquet of the Association of British Chambers of Commerce. "There must be many who, like myself, reflecting with pride on all that this means to us, may have asked, 'What happy chance is it that has made us partners in this splendid enterprise ?' Let us for one moment consider what are at this time of day the fundamental considerations upon which it is based and is developing. First, I would put the principle which the practical men of our own race have been the first thoroughly to establish in the world, tho principle that unity in loyalty may be best secured by diversity in local government, that the greatest measure of local freedom is upon the -whole the best way to securo co-opera-tion between every part. Secondly, I would put this doctrine, which has long been immanent in our Empire, but which was expressed in formal terms at the Imperial Conference only last year—the doctrine of the equal status of British citizenship in every Dominion, so that between all selfgoverning partners of the Empire there is an absolute equality of liberty. Thirdly, I put that silken bond which unites the whole. I would add this: The British Empire is not a federation; each part of it is not subject to some higher or broader legislative body. It is not a federation but a commonwealth, in which co-operation under a common Crown typifies our resolve to work with and to help one another whatever the future may have in store. . . When we ask ourselves what use the component parts of this commonwealth mean to make of their freedom, I will make bold to answer that they mean, come what will, to live united under the British Crown."-