NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21440, 14 March 1933, Page 8

NOTES AND COMMENTS

THE TARIFF IN BRITAIN " I would like to remind you how completely every prophecy of the free-trader has been falsified, and how entirely the protective tariff has borne out the arguments and theories of those of us who, like myself, have been tariff reformers all our lives," said Lord Hailsham, Secretary of State for War, in an address at Folkestone. " We have put on a tariff, and the consumer has not paid, and the price has gone down instead of going up. We find that we have checked imports, and especially imports of manufactured goods that we are able to make for ourselves just as well at home; we find that instead of reproducing a corresponding reduction of exports we have improved the visible balance of trade by something like £120,000,000 in the 10 months tariffs have been operative. We find that, while the rest of the world has been progressively getting worse and worse, during the last 12 months England alone of the great manufacturing Powers "has held her position in the export trade; and we are actually able to say that whereas under Socialist free trade England had dropped from the first place to the second, and then to the third place, in 12 months of tariff reform we have restored our position, and to-day England is once more the greatest exporting nation in the world." ANTI-RELIGIOUS FORCES " A wave of materialism is sweeping round the world," says a statement issued in London by the Missionary Council of the Church Assembly. " The drive and pressure of modern industrialism, which are penetrating even the forests of Central Africa and the plains of Central Asia, make men everywhere dependent on, and preoccupied with, material things. At home the Church has talked, perhaps too glibly, in pulpit or on platform, of the menace of secularism; though even in England we can catch more than a glimpse of its meaning. But to the Church overseas these things are grim realities, enemies with which it is at grips . . . The Church has a new danger to face in land after land—determined and hostile attack. From Soviet Russia a definitely antireligious Communism is pushing west into Europe and America, east in Persia, India, China and Japan. It is an economic theory, definitely harnessed to disbelief in God. It is a religious irreligion. Communism of the type the Church faces today in China and Japan has a gospel of its own, powerfully attractive in a suffering, poverty-stricken world. It has a passionate sense of mission and is carrying on its anti-God campaign at the Church's base at home, as well as launching its offensive against its front line in nonChristian lands. Such a conscious, avowed, organised attack against religion in general and Christianity in particular is something new in history."

ENGLAND'S POPULATION

The risk of degeneration in the population of England was mentioned by the Bishop of Birmingham, Dr. Barnes, in an address recently. " I believe that the population of the country i s almost certain steadily to decline," he said. " Were it not that the age of death still continues to rise, the census would show that the population has already decreased. I do not think that any such decrease is a matter for regret, provided we can replenish our people from the better stock and not from those with inherited defects. The humane legislation of the last threequarters of a century has brought it about that certain human stock, especially that in which feeble-mindedness occurs and is inherited, has increased more rapidly than the general population. If we have a decrease of the better stock in the community and at the same time an increase of those of inferior stock, the future is indeed ominous. But I hope it will bo possible, by the co-operation of the medical faculty, religious teachers, and the Government, so to arrange matters that our population in years to come is drawn from those stocks which are sound, both mentally and physically. If so, we shall see England develop on a basis of what we may call a. mechanical civilisation which will have a population well spread throughout the country, a population all of whom, within certain limits, have the amenities of good health and a full life."

MILK MARKETING

Plans for the organisation of the milk industry in Britain were proposed in the report of a commission issuer] early last month. According to the telegraphed summary, the basis of the scheme is the division of England and Wales into 11 areas, in each of which a council will fix the price of milk, pool all payments and distribute the net proceeds among farmers, with differential payments to encourage improvement of quality. Discussing the subject a few days before the report was published, the Minister of Agriculture, Major Walter Elliot, said: "The gap between liquid milk and milk used for manufacture has steadily widened in the last few years, until now it represents a dangerously high divergence. If tho price for milk to manufacture has fallen to half the price of milk to drink it is clear that the whole economic structure of the industry i 3 menaced by sudden flooding from the lower level, which would destroy the higher level altogether. This would be a disaster to the producer, and before long a disaster to the consumer. It is no advantage to anyone to consume a product below replacement value, and milk at 6£d a gallon delivered in London is demonstrably, beyond all question of argument, ridiculously below the value at which that gallon of milk can ultimately be replaced. This is the situation which faces the milk market. This, and the supplies of milk products—cream, butter, cheese and condensed milk—which daily, in tremendous and increasing quantities from every quarter of the world, are hurried to our shores. . . .These problems involve the acceptance of things which none of us would desire simply for their own sakes."-