PROLIX POLITICAL SPEECHES

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23384, 28 June 1939, Page 12

PROLIX POLITICAL SPEECHES

Contemporary criticism of the usefulness of free speech in the modern world gives a more than parochial interest to the discussion raised by Captain Victor A. Cazalet in the House of Commons on the means of increasing the number of speakers in important debates, says the Times. As the Speaker pointed out —in a speech which all members, and candidates, too, would be well advised to ponder—the House has no convenient procedure for curtailing a tedious or prolix speaker and must therefore rely on the modesty and good sense of the individual. The difficulty is certainly more acute today than in the past, partly because Parliament has become a shade too gentlemanly. This is made clear by turning back to the Hansards of that ruder age of the nineteenth century, when members made it very obvious that they were bored, and even noblemen were known to cough down a longwinded Royal duke. To a certain extent the Speaker can exercise an official sanction by not calling on those who, having previously asked for ten minutes, take thirty. But the remedy for what, as Captain Cazalet said, is "really a denial of free speech and a negation of Parliamentary government," lies with the member himself. The power of self-expression in a few words is in private life the most infallible hall-mark of intelligence: it is no different in public life.

PROBLEM OF DANZIG Of all the difficult problems confronting us that of Poland is nt the moment the most immediate and the most intractable, says Sir John Mairiott, the historian, in a letter to the Times. Intractable, indeed; and emphatically not soluble by war. No war can alter the basic facts of geography. But, unfortunately, on the possibilities of a solution geography speaks with uncertain, nay, contradictory, voice; nor docs history help much toward a solution. On the one hand, no one who looks nt the map or recalls the past history of the Duchies of East and West Prussia can deny that to a patriotic Prussian the existence of the Polish Corridor must seem intolerable, Danzig, as Colonel Beck, in his truly admirable speech, frankly admitted, is today "predominantly Gerilian in population." On the other hand, how can Poland be made to "live again" (to use M. Clcmenceau's phrase) without access to the sea? How can that access bo secured without something in the nature of a "corridor"? Danzig, the "Corridor," Gdynia—is there not here a possible basis for accommodation ? Hcrr Hitler frequently appeals to President Wilson's "Fourteen Points." Does he remember that the thirteenth ran: —"An independent Polish State should be erected which should include the territories inhabited by indisputably Polish populations, which should he assured a free and secure access to the sea, and whose political and economic independence and territorial integrity should be guaranteed by international covenant?" "Indisputably Polish populations" (like most of Mr. Wilsons's formulae) raises, 1 admit, almost insoluble difficulties, but how does Horr Hitler propose to satisfy the condition of "freo and secure access to the sea"? Does it command his assent? If so there is evidently room for that further effort to sccuro a peaceful solution of an admittedly difficult problem*