NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20807, 25 February 1931, Page 10

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

PARLIAMENT FOR SCOTLAND

"Scotsmen have an instinct and n training for administration. There is hardly a spot on earth that has not witnessed it," writes Mr. RoKslyn-Mitchell in the Scots Observer. "As a nation it is in all things, except religion, progressive. Tt used to be called 'conservatively Liberal.' It has no die-hard, last-ditch Tories such as are bred in the southern counties of England. Class distinctions have been melted by the glow of Burns and the warmth of the golf course and the curling pond. I believe that if Scotland had a Parliament for purely Scottish affairs it would lead the world. I am not. concerned about Army and Navy, Foreign Office and even Post Office. Let us administer land laws, education, burghal affairs, traffic problems and 'social evils,' and this nation will set the pace for the nations."

THE CHINESE EASTERN RAILWAY.

"Being conceived in iniquity and born in sin, the Chinese Eastern Railway has been breeding trouble ever since its incarnation," says Mr. Ching-Chun Wang, in the World To-day. "It led to the Russo-Japaneso War, ifc continued for thirty-three years to create suspicion among nations, and again last year it was the cause of a conflict that threatened the peace of the Far East. With a length of only 1067 miles, why should this railway be so notorious for stirring up trouble?" The writer says that under the original contract of 1896, which Russia forced Li Hung Chang to conchide, the Chinese Eastern was nominally owned and constructed by a private company; the shares were to be acquired only by Chincso or Russians, and China had the right to redeem the railway after 36 years' operation. "In reality, Russia controlled everything. Russia had the shares of the company printed and, at the same time, the Ministry of Finance bought them as soon as they came off the presses. It was quite a simplo matter for the Tsar's agents to become the sole shareholders and, as such, to exercise full control. The contract stipulated that the undivided surplus should be applied to the redemption of the railway in China's behalf, but it did not say what should be the maximum dividend to be declared. The Tsar's agents were reported to have purposely squandered the railway funds and to have charged so much to the railway's accounts that it became at once unattractive for China to redeem the road. Thus China was left high and dry in a simple and 'legal' manner."

PERSONIFICATION OF NATIONS.

Addressing an audience in Glasgow of students from the leading universities of the world, Professor Gilbert Murray said the older generation, of which lie was a representative, were handing on to the younger generation an interesting and extraordinarily dangerous world. "We have produced throughout the world a uniform society, a society which differs in language and local history, in degree of civilisation, but on the whole is alike in economic and cultural matters, has the same habits of thought, the same sort of clothes, the same sort of food. Instead, however, of having a great peaceful brotherhood we have carefully arranged that' this unified society shall be broken lip into some 60 or so different governments, all independent, each one until quite "recently possessing the right at any moment to make war on any other. We have taught people to personify their own nations, and it is remarkable how many of them have personified their nations as animals. The nations never attributed to themselves the form of any intelligent or useful animal. Ido not know of any nation which has personified itself as a cow, for instance —a most useful animal. None has personified itself as a dog or a monkey, which are very clever animals. It is always some ravening wild beast — a tiger, a lion, a bear, or an eagle, and bocauso tlio eagle did not scream enough with one mouth they gave it two. or three heads. On the basis of that mythology we have erected our scale of duties and heroisms. "•