NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20242, 30 April 1929, Page 10

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

A NOTABLE AMERICAN. Ono of the leading figures in the public life of the United States is Senator Borah. "Endless malicious stories are told of his inconsistency, his disloyalties, his vanities, but when word gets about that Borah is going to speak, the Senate —generally the dullest deliberative body in tho worldcomes to life," says a writer in the Round Table. "Borah's popularity as n Senatorial orator is something of a mystery. Ho occasionally rises to heights of old-fashioned eloquence, he is sometimes magnificent in diatribe, withering in scorn, but penerally his speeches are quite dull. Iu debate he always has tho advantage—which somo of his colleagues consider, if not unfair, at least ungentlemanly—of knowing his subject

Borah undoubtedly believes that ha leads public opinion. Others would say that he is remarkably clever in following, in edging his way up to the vanguard. But every student of current American politics admits that, whether it is a case of leading or following. Borah and public opinion aro generally marchins; in the same direction. This is his principal While it would bo absurd to describe Mr. Borah as a perfect mirror of tVe American mind, ho is probably tho best we know; and it is for this reason that what ho has to say about Anglo-American relations is worth consideration.'' EDUCATION IN EGYPT. For tho first time on record an Egyptian Prime Minister delivered an address in English on tho advantages of British education when Mohamed Pasha Mahmud paid an official visit to tho Victoria College, which was founded in 1903 in memory of Queen Victoria, and has sinco played an outstanding part in tho educational organisation of Egypt by giving boys of all communities an education oil British public school lines. Mahmud Pasha, speaking perfect English, said tho successes of the Victorians showed clearly that boys educated at, Victoria College, though starting with the handicap of knowing little, if any, English, eventually held their own in English examinations with English public school boys, and it was specially gratifying to know that an Egyptian Victorian was tho first foreigner to gain the Queen's medal at Birmingham University. Beferring to his happy days at Balliol, he said English education particularly produced the feeling that onco ono had entered a British public school, college, or university ono belonged to a corporation which, no matter how long ono lived or whero ono went, ono never really left. One was, indeed, granted the freedom of ono of those corporations, similar to the freedom of some great city, a freedom implying a willing submission to certain standards of conduct, especially to certain tics of mainly sentimental and very lasting j nature founded on common occupations, common interests, common discipline, and those human youthful sympathies which transcended professional, political and racial differences. He knew enough about Victoria College to be aware that it cherished such a spirit and added that the special advantage of Victoria was that its pupils acquired almost unconsciously an education in the wider humanities, and there was no better placo than Egypt, where three continents met, for applying and testing such ideals. IMPRISONMENT FOR DEBT. Declaring that imprisonment for debt was socially, logically and historically a relic of slavery, Judge Sir Edward Parry, in an address in London recently, said its only justification was that a man who was iu debt and without any property could have his body seized and made a slave. Tho truer conception of justice was that gaols should exist only for the incarceration of criminals, the fraudulent, and cheaters. The facts showed that it was not correct to say, except in perhaps a technical sense, that the Act of 1869 abolished imprisonment for debt. Tho present position was that such imprisonment continued possible in certain cases for poor people only. The rich man who had not paid his debts, however extravagantly contracted, could escape. By the payment of £lO, tho fee for bankruptcy proceedings, he could go to tho Court owing, say, £IO,OOO, and things were very nicely arranged for him, the creditors having to leave him some property on which to live, and, of course, all property belonging to his wife. Such a man was enabled to start again. To-day the judge, instead of administering tho law as he should do and making orders sending poor persons to prison for debt, did otherwise. For over 33 years ho sat on the Bench with no idea of administering that law properly. He believed that if left to a free vote, the House of Commons would abolish tho system. BRITAIN'S NAVAL PROTECTION. The recent proposal by Senator Borah that the rules of law governing belligerents and neutrals in war at sea should bo "on the basis of tho inviolability of private property" is discussed by Mr. John W. Davis, formerly American Ambassador in London, in an article in Foreign Affairs on Anglo-American relations and sea power. He asks whether, if Great Britain should accept that doctrino and reduco her Navy so that she could no longer protect her commerce from tho surface-raider or the submarine, could sho reasonably expect the United States to join in tho protection of that commerce or to abstain from trade with the belligerent 1 "Or would we be likely rather to insist on this trade, and uso our Navy, if need be, to protect it?" ho proceeds. "The real problem arises from Great Britain's exposure to risks which wo do not share. She has developed a technical protection against those risks, a security of her own against all possible threats from an anarchic world. Sho can hardly be blamed for thinking that weapon necessary for her; others cannot be blamed for deeming it intolerable when used to prevent all the world from having relations with her enemies. But if she is to diminish or weaken that protection, is there nothing by way of inducement that we can or should do to lessen her risk ? This implies that the United States should take an active part in concerting measures for tho prevention of war, and in compelling the observance of those rules which aro designed to mitigate its destructiveness; in other words, that it should accept what the Treaty for the Renunciation of War may bo said to implynamely, that all tho nations whoso treaty is broken, or threatened so to be, have a mandate to concert measures to prevent the breach or to repress it."