NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20594, 19 June 1930, Page 10

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

THE AUSTRALIAN OUTLOOK

" The gravity of the situation is plain when it is realised that oversea creditors are demanding reduction of overdrafts, that no further oversea money is available for new loan expenditure, that loans of £24,000,000 (even when requirements have been reduced) are to be raised in Australia, and that some £18,000,000 of maturing debt must be converted here at the end of 1930," says the Sydney Morning Herald, in reviewing the public financial position. "In the next financial year the Commonwealth faces a likely deficiency (unless taxation is increased or expenditure reduced) of £8,000,000. New South Wales will have to bridge a gap of £3,800,000. Direct taxation can be increased only to the gravest peril of existing industry. Taxation is at its peak. In New South Wales the decline in taxable resources for 1930-31 is calculated at 22 per cent. Tfc would be reasonable to estimate at least an equal decline all over the Commonwealth. Moreover, it is clear that industrial profits arid capital reserves are to be drawn upon heavily to financo lccal loans. Any additional strain there must be most delicately imposed if the capacity of Australian industry to carry on is not to be disastrously broken. The necessity that budgets must be balanced will compel all Governments to meet their budget deficiencies mainly by reduction in expenditure. There is no other way."

CRICKET IN ENGLAND. " Having been enthusiastically devoted to cricket ever since I saw tho whole of tho first test match played in England, and having watched more than a thousand first-class matches, I hope my experience justifies my temerity in giving it as my considered opinion that the standard of tho game to-day is again as high as it was in pre-war years, apart from a surfeit of superfluously slow batting," says Sir Homo Gordon in the Fortnightly Review. "It may also be original to put forward that if the giants of the eighties had been compelled' to play first-class cricket, day in and day out, for over four months, as their overworked successors now must, they might not have maintained their form with the consistency shown by many of tho present players. A remarkable feature about cricket to-day is not tho occasional stalcness, but tho absence of a prevalence of staleness owing to tho plethora of matches at home and of overseas lours. Tho endurance of tho modern prominent cricketer is as notable as his proivess. In tho early eighties ono or two made a thousand runs or took a hundred wickets. Nowadays a dozen exceed two thousand, and four score run into four figures: nearly thirty tako over a hundred wickets, and tho best known go on tour or coaching overseas through our closo season. A first-class player's existence is certainly not an idle ono. Ho valiantly assists in prpving that tho game of the Empire is crickot."

LABOUR AND THE LAND. Tlio attitude of the British Labour Party toward tho land was discussed recently by Mr. Stephen Ervine, in a letter to tho Times. " Tho Labour Party is almost exclusively tho party of the urban worker, and is either indifferent to, or ignorant of, tho vicissitudes of farmers and their labourers, except in so far as they provide opportunities for the picturcsquo exaggeration which is called propaganda," ho writes. "In any conflict between the needs of agriculturists and industrialists, the Labour mcmbors, evon more than the Conservatives and tho Liberals, will take the part of the industrialists. That is human, no doubt, since they draw their support from tho cities, but it scarcely entitles them to make tho claim they so persistently make to be moro noblo and less personally preoccupied than their political opponents. I doubt if there are six members of tho Labour Party who have a closer acquaintance with agricultural problems than is to bo derived from a hasty perusal of a partisan pamphlet, The result of this dangerous ignorance of what is still our staple industry is that many Labour members sincerely believe that a landed estate is a pleasure ground maintained by a single selfish person for his private gratification, and that tho whole agricultural problem is to be solved by breaking up big estates and distributing them among tho land-hungry. The common bolipf that farmers aro delighted with tho opportunity of acquiring their farms for their own is a delusion, und J doubt if thera aro as many pleasod peasant-proprietors in Ireland as the citybred politicians imagine."