NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20519, 21 March 1930, Page 12

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

THE PROBLEMS OF PEACE. | " If you succeed in beating your swords into .ploughshares are you quite certain you will be able to find work for your ploughshares? Picture palaces and football matches -are glorious pastimes to kill time, but I do not know that they teach you to spend it," said Mr. Augustine Birrell in a speech delivered on his eightieth birthday.. "We, are often told that we live in an age of class animosity, but is that so? Are there no signs of the consolidation of society ? The rich no longer sit entrenched behind their money bags. In fact, they are now far humbler than those who are called poor. As for the poor, they are beginning to loarn the great economic truth that the solution of poverty is not to be found in plunder.' After all, if you want to plunder you have to be suire there is something to plunder. We have come now, I think, to realise that it is not gold in the bank that-is the solution of poverty, but credit combined With industry. I do not think it, is a silly dream, but a hopeful dream, that the time may come when all ranks of society will join hands and fortunes to keep our old ship afloat."

JURIES AND DEATH SENTENCE. As an indication of public opinion in regard to capital punishment, a survey of the attitude of British juries in murder trials was given by Sir Ernley Blackwell, legal assistant under-secretary of the Homo Office, in his evidence before the Select Committee which is investigating the question. "Whatever may be the view of juries in regard to capital punishment they have in every case the strongest personal inducement to add a recommendation to mercy to their verdict," he said. "They had the prisoner in front of them, they had had probably a powerful appeal made to their sympathies, enlisting every atom of sympathy for the prisoner, and they had the feeling which anyone must have that they would sleep perhaps easier if they had not had to perform one of the most serious duties any subject can be called upon to perform—to announce guilty or not guilty a man charged with murder. That is why I want to emphasise that, notwithstanding all that, in a large percentage of the jury are prepared to come into Court and deliver their verdict of guilty without a recommendation to mercy." The> official said that out of the last 300 capital cases, extending from 1916 to the end of 1929, 76 men and 31 women were recommended to mercy, and 187 men and six women were not recommended. Women were almost always recommended to mercy. Taking the cases .of men only, 71 per cent, were not recommended to mercy. In the whole of the capital cases from 1901 to 1929, in which 738 persons were sentenced, 304 were recommended to mercy, and 434 were not,, or nearly 59 per cent, were not recommended to mercy.

SAFEGUARDING IN BRITAIN.

An emphatic declaration in regard to the extension of safeguarding was made by Mr. Stanley Baldwin, in an address in London last month, in which he outlined the policy that would be pursued by the Conservative Party on its return to power. He protested vigorously against the proposal of a tariff, truce, remarking that for Britain it would be like a country armed with bows and arrows making arrangements with countries armed with modern artillery, that they will not add another bow and arrow, to their armaments for two years. "We have never used modern artillery; it is time we did,' Mr. Baldwin declared. "We have tried out our guns in a limited sphere, target practice, in safeguarding, and we believe it to be a thoroughly efficient modern weapon adapted to the circumstances of the time, where the circumstances o! industry vary so infinitely as they do in this country." Mr. Baldwin quoted illustrations of the benefits of the system and added:—" I must have, if I am to cope with unemployment as it stands to-day, a free hand from the country in safeguarding the manufacturers of this country. We cannot begin to maintain the standards of our own people unless we have this power. The mere knowledge that we possess it will be a great safeguard in itself-r-the power to utilise the principle of safeguarding in making treaties with foreign countries. The Government should be in a position to satisfy itself of the desirability in this case or that by its own investigations. The Government should accept responsibility and the Government should then lay the results of its deliberations before the House of Commons and ask the House of Commons to give the necessary safeguarding that has been approved by the Government."

TAXATION AND INDUSTRY. "The national finance of this country will have to pay its way," said Mr. Philip Snowden, Chancellor of the Exchequer, in addressing the Leeds Chamber of Commerce. "I shall commit no raids. I shall not live out of capital and I shall not take out of capital to meet current and recurrent expenditure and treat it as ordinary revenue. That can be done once or twice, perhaps three or four times, but the day comes when the expenditure must be met. That day has come. In the last four years there have been raids of capital to the extent of £50,000,000 used as revenue to avoid imposing taxation. The statutory sinking fund has not been met to the extent of £30,000,000. Twenty-two and a-half million pounds of Budget surplus i which ought to have gone into debt reduction was put into suspensox-y account to meet the prospective cost of the derating scheme. The cost of the derating scheme has not been provided out of all revenue. Next year I shall be able to meet that cost out. of the suspensory fund, but the following year it will be necessary to find ways and means of raising an additional sum of £15,000,000. I will sanction no expenditure, especially at a time like this, I do not believe to be imperatively necessary. There are many things I should like to do, but we must wait to do many thipgs we should like to do until we are in a position better to afford them. Our main consideration at the moment is that the State should use all the power it ha_g to help the restoration and increase the prosperity industry. Nobody has a greater personal interest in that than the Chancellor of the Exchequer because it is through the prosperity of industry that the national revenue can be secured. And, therefore, the responsibility of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, when he is faced with the imperative need of raising revenue, is to do it in such a way as will rather be a help' and encouragement to industry than an additional burden upop it."