NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 21068, 30 December 1931, Page 8

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

PA R L.l A M ENT SOVEREIGN. "This is quite in the historic tradition of tho country." said Mr. Gardiner. "We may gibe at Parliament and chafe under its activities, but deep in (he heart of tho English people is a. passion for constitutionalism and representative government. \Ye are a democratic nation, to whom fascism on (lie ono side, and Soviet ism on t lie other—both of them tyrannies—are equally alien. From whatever quarter the challenge to the supremacy of Parliament has come in the past, whether from kings or barons, tho military power, or the landed aristocracy, it has always failed. It has failed now that the challenge has come, twice in five years, from tho trado unions. In each case the nation has shown that the sovereignty of Parliament is the Ark of its Covenant, and that when the issuo is raised, whether by direct action or by political action, it is more powerful than any force that can be mobilised against it." UPHOLDING THE CONSTITUTION. Discussing the reasons for the defeat of the, Labour Party in the British general election, * Mr. A. G. Gardiner writes in the London Star;—" After inquiries from candidates in many widely different areas, I am satisfied that the most deepseated and general factor was anger at the fact that the Labour Government threw over the scheme for balancing the Budget at the. dictation of the Trade Union Congress. At the back of all the controversy there was a feeling thai the issuo was whether the last word in the government of this country should rest with Parliament or with the trade unions. And the. ingrained constitutionalism of tho English people returned the same answer to the challenge that was made when a similar issue was raised in the general strike of 1926. Then the attempt to bring the, Government to its knees was made by direct action outside; on this occasion it took the form of an instruction from the trades union executive to the Cabinet to reverse its policy. In both cases public opinion showed with terrific emphasis that, it would not tolerate interference with the free functioning of the Parliamentary institution." LEADERS AND FOLLOWERS. "In educational matters, England and America are slowly approaching a common point, by tho simple process of moving in opposite directions. That common point is the point at which both nations shall train for leadership the best minds, carefully selected for capacity, and shall train also the less gifted minds for the 110 less important tasks of efficient, contented and self-resr,e< ;ing subordination," says Dr. IT. M. MiElrov, in Current History. lie was formerly professor of history at Princeton University and is now professor of American Lnstoiy at Oxford University. "Any sound system of education, in whatever nation, must provide both for (he training of leaders and for the. training of those only fitted to be followers, but until reccrit tendencies began to emerge, England concentrated upon the first to the neglect of the second, while America neglected the first and fixed almost her whole attention upon the second. The, central fact of recent English and American educational history is the fact that each nation has discovered its error and is seeking to correct it. England is now rapidly moving toward effective universal school training, not alone, in primary, but in secondary grades as well. And the universities are, rapidly opening their doors to tho product of the ever-increasing secondary schools. In America, on the other hand, the most marked tendency is to devise methods for selecting, at each stage of education, the minds best fitted to benefit by further study." UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE. The fundamental difficulty of administering an unemployment insurance scheme was emphasised by Lady Passfield in evidence before the Royal Commission on Unemployment Insurance, which resumed its inquiry last month. She said no method of provision for (he unemployed was so cheap per head as the distribution of weekly sums of money. It might, seem, therefore, that, an insuiance scheme, sufficiently extended, afforded the best method of providing for the unemployed, but the. fundamental drawback to all unemployment insurance was that the weekly " out of work pay " could not—at least in the present organisation of society—safely bo made large enough to maintain either the unemployed men or their families in health. All experience showed that it was fatal to offer as out-of-work pay anything like the same sum as the workman would earn if he were employed. It was doubtless true that the, great majority of workmen, for the greater part, of the time, much preferred to lie at work than to be unoccupied and idle. But most men in their weaker moments—and probably all men at some time—succumbed to the temptation, to be indolent. Thero would certainly be not only, a ruinous increase in " voluntary unemployment." but also such a progressive deterioration of character as would be fatal In the community. The social advantages of unemployment insurance warranted a short spell of "out-of-work pay" without. enforced occupation, or restriction of personal freedom, or inquisitorial inquiry into means, but they did not, justify Its indefinite continuance.