NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23340, 8 May 1939, Page 10

NOTES AND COMMENTS

MR. .CHAMBERLAIN'S STORY Replying to a motion of confidence at Birmingham, Mr. Neville Chamberlain told the following story, which greatly amused his big audience: "The road of the peace-maker is often a rough one, but there are moments which fully make up for all his troubles. When I was visiting Rome the other day a lady came to me and said. 'I want to give you a photograph which 1 have had specially taken of your great predecessor'—and it appeared that my predecessor was Augustus, the Roman Emperor, of whom there was a bust inscribed with the words: 'The peacemaker of the world.' AVhen I got homo and opened the parcel containing the photograph I was shocked to seo that the bust had been so maltreated that there was nothing left of the noso and hardly any of the features were recognisable. So that photograph now stands iu my room at Downing Street with the inscription: 'This is what happens to peace-makers.' " NO NAZI COLLAPSE YET It is often supposed that in doing all she has done Germany has imposed such a strain on the financial and economic system, and above all on the standard of living of her people, that the system is bound to break down internally. I do not believe it, writes Mr. H. Powys Greenwood in the Spectator. Ever since the Nazis came to power the pundits of orthodoxy have prophesied rapid collapse, but I have seen 110 signs of it. On the contrary, Germany to-day appears 011 the surface by no means unprosperous and certainly busy and active. Real wages per hour of labour may have fallen, for though prices are comparatively stable, tho quality of many goods has deteriorated and there are occasional shortages, but from the point of view of working-class families the increase in employment and hours worked has more than made this up. In tho last analysis the only fundamental sacrifice imposed by Nazi Germany 011 its population is that of freedom—the freedom of the human mind. In the long run that sacrifice will have its inevitable cramping effect. But it will be a very long run.

ECONOMIC SANCTIONS Tho penal tariff duties against Germany, imposed by the United States, which at first were merely described as anti-dumping measures, aro now referred to freely as sanctions, notes the New York correspondent of the London Observer. Thus the Roosevelt Administration again steps out in front in economic coercion of aggressor nations. Against Italy during tho Ethiopian adventure the Administration pioneered with an oil sanction. And tho Secretary of State, Mr. Cornell Hull, lias sponsored a private boycott against Japan on the part of aeroplane manufacturers, which seems to have been kept airtight. The economic coercion of Germany went into effect on April 23. It is the final stroke in a virtual destruction of trade between tho two countries. Two factors have already reduced that trade to a fraction of its old levels. One is the privato boycott provoked by tho antiLiberal and racial excesses of tho Nazi regime. The other is the denial to German goods of tho lower duties negotiated under tho Hull commercial treaties and extended to other nations under the most-favoured-nation clause. On top of these obstacles, dutiable imports, which constitute the bulk of takings from Germany, will now have to bear a 25 per cent increase on invoice value.

CONCEPTION OF THE STATE This is the ordered conception of a State: a society, slowly, as a whole, progressing to better things, in which individuals are free to rise to the measure of their ability, but not so quickly that their minds remain tintempered while their material fortunes improve, writes Miss Dorothy Crisp in her new book, "England— Mightier Yet." Exceptional persons prove their own exceptions to the rule, but generally it is to the good of the individual as well as to the good of the community that a man or successive generations of his family should rise slowly and by his or their own unaided efforts, learning, as well as the intricacies of business, that education is no niero stuffing with facts, and aristocracy something finer than a right to the trappings which surround it. AVe would appeal to the natural and legitimate pride of the English each one. to improve himself and his lot in service as well to his King and country as to himself; to reverenco standards, not to destroy them, remembering that, ho who can conduct himself with respect to others and yet not lose his manhood has passed a test beyond the ken of the equalitarians; and that, in his prido of race and faith with his fathers, the Englishman has but. one motto —''Noblesse oblige.''

EUROPEAN COMMITMENTS Tlio support of tlio countries of Eastern Europe will not be enlisted unless they have precise assurances of support from Great Britain nnd France, says the Economist. If Poland, for example, is to come off her traditional fence, she runs a very severe and immediate risk against which she naturally requires full and formidable guarantees. What, then, should our precise engagements he? We can be quite sure that wo shall not got something for nothing. Every engagement will have to be strictly reciprocal. Recognising the imminent danger of world war, we must scan the list of European countries and determine which we should wish to have as our allies. And to those countries wo must offer support fully as valuable and sacrificial as wo hopo to get from them. No other basis is possible. The East will not fight for the West —the smaller Eastern countries will not even fight for themselves —unless the West will light for the East. This is, admittedly,, a very bitter pill to swallow. It involves undertaking to defend, say, Poland. And that means that if Germany attacks Poland wo must make an attack on Germany. To such a desperate state have world affairs descended. But if wo refuse this risk we are indeed blind, For it is perfectly obvious now that the German programme involves, at some stage, a reckoning with the Western Powers. Do we wish to faco that reckoning with allies who .can force Germany to fight on two fronts or without? There can only be one answer and we must shoulder the very heavy obligations of that answer in order to draw its benefits.