NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20422, 26 November 1929, Page 10

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

CHURCH AND STATE,

| The view that the question of tho disestablishment of tho Church of England had returned to tho arena of practical politics was expessed rocontly by tho Bishop of Durham in an address at Nottingham recently. How, lie asked, could a Christian Church allow its worship and sacramental administration to be voted upon by theosophists. atheists, agnostics and Parsees ? Parliament was first exclusively Anglican, then Protestant, then Christian, and finally unconnected with any form of religion. Tho rejection of tho Rovisod Prayer Book had created a situation which could not bo permanent. It stereotyped indiscipline in the Church, placed tho bishops in the paradoxial position of lawbreakers, and seriously strained tho relations of clergy and laity throughout tho kingdom. Tho only persons who desired its perpetuation were those who had an interest in tho paralysis of law and order, or who would stand to lose by the restoration of law and order. If tho establishment had become paralysed, then it must either be so recast as to function efficiently. or it must end. Was there a middle courso between disestablishment and acquiescence in tho present intolerable situation ? Really, of course, it was not intolerable, as thero wero many ready to acquiesce in it, and not a few who liked it; but tho situation was morally intolerable. Personally ho did not think tho establishment could bo so recast as to bo rightly acceptable to tho Church and worth having by tho State, but he admitted that tho general opinion of churchmen was more favourable and that many mistakenly thought a middle way could ba found. At the moment no political party had included disestablishment in its programme, but ho would not advise any optimist to depend too much on that. All the anarchic forces in the Church had an obvious interest in perpetuating the prosent situation, and mundano influences inclined them to unworthy acquiescence. Tho way of duty and spiritual freedom for tho Church was straight and narrow. He desired to stir their consciences, and if necessary to prepare them for an experience which could not bo long postponed, and which, though stern and unpalatable, might well be ultimately satisfactory and strengthening.

THE CONSERVATIVE VIEW. Declaring that the Conservative Party did not believe that capitalism was. approaching collapse, Lord Eustace Percy, in an address at Oxford last month, said the social policy of the future must concern itself, not merely with the "condition of the people," birt with the spirit of tho people. The distinctive ground of Conservative philosophy was the belief that a healthy society must be composed of individuals who could live their own life because they could support themselves in free association with their fellows; that individual self-reliance and free association presupposed, on the one hand, independence of discretionary assistance from the State and, on the other, freedom for any individual or association to own the means of production, distribution, and exchange; and, finally, that economic freedom of that kind, whil6 it could not be reconciled with State monopolies or State subsidies, could and must be reconciled with the modern tendency of private capital to organise itself in large industrial, commercial and banking undertakings. No policy could be more adventurous at the present day than one directed to promote individual initiative and to restore individual economic freedom. It had long been evident that, in these days of large-seals organisations, private enterprise might become as much the enemy of individual economic freedom as Marxian Socialism. Those tendencies had reversed the position of political parties. It was now the Radical and the Socialist who conservatively accepted what they regarded as inevitable, and were content to drift with the current which seemed to be carrying them through capitalist amalgamations to State socialisation. It was tho Conservative who refused, or should refuse, to acquiesce in those counsels of despair. Against the Socialist nightm.-.re of mass subordination to the good will of Government departments, the Conservative set up an ideal of the emancipation of the individual. The measures of homo and Imperial policy required to realise that ideal might be difficult, but in thinking them out the Conservative Party would be substituting a policy of the heights for the politics of the morass, and would bo taking up a distinctive position far above tho "sulky levels" where its opponents were resentfully struggling or contentedly paddling.

PROFITS AND WAGES. Discussing the practical application of this philosophy, Lord Percy said industrial prosperity must be based on high wages, high salaries, high remuneration for active management, cheap capital and low taxation. The only way to cheapen capital was to increase tho supply of capital in private hands seeking serious investment as distinct from speculative ventures. The State must, like tho investor, take a proportion of the proceeds of industry, but, broadly speaking, the greater that proportion was, tho less chanco there would be of cheapening capital or of raising wages. Taxation should bo imposed, not for tho purpose of redistributing wealth, but to the extent necessary to finance those social services which the individual could not provide for himself, either singly or by voluntary co-operation. Participation in tho prococds of industry, to bo really effective, could not bo based merely on high wages or on the wage bonuses which often passed under tho name of profit-sharing; it must bo based 011 part ownership of tho industry itself. Tho most interesting question of the ! future was the extent to which such ownership could bo acquired by tho workers in industry, in place of the outside investor. Wo knew from the statistics of thrift institutions, and also from the experience of somo industries, liko tho cotton industry, how largo the investment power of the wage-earner and small salary earner had been and still was; we knew from American examplo how that power might be used in industry. It should bo ono of the main aims of rationalisation to increase that power. Rationalisation should be given another implication. The wage-earner required, not only participation in the proceeds of industry, but a career in industry. That meant a now attitude toward education, and particularly toward technical education; it meant that apprenticeship should be mado tho gateway, not to a dead level qualification of minimum skill, but to courses of higher technical and scientific training and varied opportunities for ability to rise above the ruck.