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Otago Daily Times, Issue 17089, 22 August 1917, Page 4

Tub absence of news respecting the industrial trouble in Australia is itself sufficient to account for the circulation of rumours of various kinds as to tho developments of the conflict. The censorship on the transmission of information from Australia is sufficiently rigid to justify the conclusion 'that these rumours are a mere figment of tho imagination and that they may safely be disregarded. The conditions are, of course, highly favourable to the production of sensational stories concerning the situation. The lack of precise information begets conjecture, and as conjecture is passed on from mouth to mouth it gradually acquires a fresh form and is invested with the character of a definite statement. Necessarily, the mere fact that Australia has isolated herself telegraphically from the dominion in tho way she has done is itself strangely suggestive It points unmistakably to the existence of an exceedingly grave situation in the settlement of which the authorities of the State are determined to brook no interference from without. Tho trouble is their own concern, and they are no doubt acting in their own interests, which are the interests of democratic rule, in deciding that they will handle it in their own unfettered way. It is more than a strike with which the responsible representatives of the whole community have been confronted. A strike in strike in its inception —it will doubtless be found, when the details are made available, to have developed into an effort to overthrow the whole social fabric, constituting a challenge to' the community to declare whether it shall or shall not support the authority of the State against forces of disorder and disruption.

The strike, out of -which the subsequent troubles arose, originated in the Government Railway Workshops in Sydney on the 2nd inst., and within the next week the other branches of the railway service, the tramway service, and other transport services were affected. Since then the strike has probably become general throughout New South Wales and widespread throughout Australia. From the Bth inst., however, the application of a strict censorship has prevented the cabled transmission of information about the occurrence of developments, and x the latest despatches by mail were not of more recent date than the 10th inst.—the day which was really to determine whether the strike was to be crushed in its early stages or to go on until it should be broken off through the exhaustion of the weaker side. As, in consequence of the strike, the steamer services between Australia and New Zealand have now been suspended, it seems likely that we shall not hear anything definite until we receive news of the termination of the struggle. That Australia is being more severely tried, industrially and socially, than at any previous period in her history is an assumption that may reasonably be drawn from all the evidence regarding the present upheaval. It may, however, fairly be hoped that she will emerge from it stronger and cleaner than before. This will certainly be the case if the effect of the trial should be to destroy the influence of the revolutionary agitators who have used the unionists as tools to further their anti-social ends.

The success of the domestic war loan of eight millions that was floated last year, with the result that it was over-subscribed to the extent of more than three millions, and the success which, we trust, awaits the loan of twelve millions that is now on offer and the loan that will have to be placed on the local market at a later period of the financial year will necessarily influence, to a greater or less extent, the borrowing policy of future Governments. The conditions have been peculiarly favourable during the progress of the war for the issue of domestic loans, for the high prices that have been obtained for practically all the products of the dominion, coupled with the curtailment of importation which was necessitated for some months after the outbreak of hostilities, and which is again being experienced, produced a great accumulation of funds within the country—at a time, moreover, when the opportunities of investment in industrial enterprise were, through the occurrence of the war, unusually 'restricted. But the ability of the dominion to absorb loans of a magnitude which no Government has previously had to float will certainly have the effect of satisfying Ministers of Finance in the future that they need have no hesitation in applying to the people of the dominion themselves for loans of moderate extent.

To the advantage which is associated with the issue of a local loan, that the interest is paid in the dominion, and that the principal will hereafter have to be repaid in the dominion, and not elsewhere, is added the not inappreciable advantage that the cost of flotation is a mere fraction of the cost of flotation at Home, where commissions, brokerages, and underwriting charges have to be provided for. Sir Joseph Ward remarked briefly in the Budget upon .the low cost of the flotation of the war loan of last year. While, he said, the average cost of raising the last three loans in- London, prior to the war, was 3£ per cent.; the domestic loan last year ,was raised at a net cost of i per cent. Upon an issue of eleven millions this represented a saving to the dominion of £330,000. As a matter of fact, it has cost over 4 per cent, to float some New Zealand loans at Home in comparatively recent yeare, and it is even probable that the cost of the flotation of last year's domestic loan might have been somewhat reduced. The war may, therefore, be said to have brought about the inauguration of a new financial era in the dominion.

It was stated in the House of Commons a few days ago by Mr G. H. Roberts, parliamentary secretary to the Board of Trade, that 3828 passengers and 5920 officers and seamen have lost their lives in British merchant vessels, owing to enemy action, since the beginning of the war. There is a discrepancy between this statement and that more recently made by Sir Albert Stanley, president of the Board of Trade, that 6837 officers and men of merchant vessels, exclusive of those on the Admiralty pay list Lave been killed during the war. No doubt, however, the two statements are not irreconcilable. The figures given in them represent the toll of non-combatant life exacted by Germany through the employment against the British mercantile marine of piratical practices that have involved a gross violation of the rules applicable to international warfare at sea. The vessels that were attacked, on which this loss of life has been incurred, have ranged from the greatest passenger liner to the humblest trawler or fishing smack. Even the emblem of the Red Cross, so far from assuring the protection which any honourable foe would grant, has rather served to single out hospital ships ar safe objects for deliberate German attack.

It is not the fault of Germany that the number of non-combatant lives lost in British ships during the war was not a much higher number than it is. In the most shocking example of the crimes of the German sea pirates,, the sinking of the Lusitania, the death roll was no less than 1134 ont of a total of 1906 souls on board the vessel. H& may well stand appalled who would estimate the full extent to which, since the war began, Germany has imbrued herself in non-com-batant blood on the high sea in attacks upon both allied and neutral shipping, in air raids on undefended towns, and in murderous acts upon the stricken and devastated soil of the unfortunate territories that have been crushed under her invading heel. Yet Germany,' steeped in this foul dishonour, would talk of an honourable peace. The blood of these non-combatants, slain by tho methods of an enemy unmatched in barbarism in the war-records of three centuries, cries aloud for tho iustice which is being demanded by the seamen's organisation in, the Mother Country. It should be impossible that Germany in the peace settlement should' escape the penalty for the infliction of these losses of life.