The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND MONDAY, AUGUST 26, 1929 A LOSS OF £200,000,000 .

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 751, 26 August 1929, Page 8

The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND MONDAY, AUGUST 26, 1929 A LOSS OF £200,000,000 .

THERE need be no surprise at Signor Mussolini’s satirical * criticism of the Rt. Hon. Philip Snowden’s firm policy at The Hague conference on the adjustment of Germany’s payment of reparations. It must be irksome for a great dictator in his own land to encounter a lean-jawed Labour statesman in another country who refuses to he dictated to in terms of rank injustice. Labour may he inconsistent in many of its political ideas and demands, but it is not without national patriotism and a quick sense in observing the difference between what is fair and that which is unfair. Is it not precisely because of this sense of justice that Labour everywhere presses its political demands? The Prime Minister of Italy, who “brooks no brother near his throne” and cannot understand why other men should he his equal in determination, has sneered at Mr. Snowden for having laid aside temporarily the British Labour Party’s allegiance to the principle of international solidarity. “It is remarkable,” declares II Duce, “that one of the great pillars of the British Labour Party should lead the fight for Britain at The Hague on strict Nationalist lines.-” Doubtless it is remarkable, hut the divergence of Great Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer from the academic policy and platform of international Socialism happens on this occasion to he right. Not in heat of temper, but in the coldness of unanswerable logic, Mr. Snowden inflexibly refuses to allow the British Empire to suffer any longer American methods of adjusting German payments of reparation which (to use the Chancellor’s pungent phrase) have “bilked” the Empire of a trifle under £200,000,000. It has been pointed out time and again, and the fact should be emphasised until justice has been done, that already Great Britain has paid to the United States the sum of £233,000,000 in repayment of her stupendous indebtedness to America—most of which was borrowed for Britain’s Allies before the American Army went “over there” to win the war —while the British nation has received from its creditors, now enjoying prosperity, only £37,000,000. And Britain, as has been observed in English journals, is still only at the beginning of its sixty-two years of punishment. It is true that Germany has maintained her payments under much protest, and most of these have been paid out of loans from America. Hence the new scale of reparation payments in the Young Plan which at least helps further to guarantee the repayment of European debt to America. Great Britain has not challenged the principle of the plan, nor has it tried to undermine its American base, but it declines to continue in the plight of the overloaded donkey. One of the ablest critics on the question in England—Mi-. A. G. Gardiner—lias had the courage to say plainly that the Young scheme is an impudent proposal. It scales down the German payment to £105,000.000 a year, but does not scale it down all round. France is to receive lier full quota, although France, in the frank opinion of the “Manchester Guardian,” “is now one of the richest nations in the world.” Her Budget is not much more than half of Great Britain’s and she has no unemployment at all. No one can deny that Europe is in pawn to the United States and will remain in pawn until the child in the cradle today has become a doddering old man. Nor can there be any denial of Germany’s plight under a terrific levy. The German debt at the moment aggregates £1,800,000,000. of which not less than £1,300,000,000 is earmarked for the United States tomeet the total Allied debts to America. And all the debtors are left to wrangle over the distribution of the odd £500,000,000. All that is very perplexing, but it is not a reason for asking Great Britain to suffer most severely in a protracted financial nightmare. In any case, Mr. Philip Snowden is awake and alert. Moreover, he is determined to keep British statesmanship from falling asleep again, thus incurring a worse nightmare than ever before. It is to be hoped that he will remain one of the great pillai-s of the British Labour Government and hold up justice on Nationalist lines, even though international solidarity should be scattered to the winds. Gross injustice is a rotten foundation for friendship. FOOL-PROOF ELECTRICITY IN ratio to the widespread use of electricity, cases of accident with household electrical devices are comparatively rare; but two recent cases emphasise the necessity for care, and also for some definite form of instruction to users of the equipment and to children who may come in contact with it. In one of these cases a young lad was killed at Grey Lynn while using an extension of an ordinary household light, and in the other a four-year-old child was electrocuted at Masterton through a misadventure with the heating element of an electric stove. The coroner in the Masterton case has been led to comment on the fact that people are apparently not given sufficient warning of the potential danger in even the low-powered electrical fitting. Before the tragic affair at Grey Lynn, few people could have been aware that, under certain conditions, a fatal shock may he received from an ordinary household bulb. Electric stoves are generally known to carry more powerful currents, hut even here there seems to be a lack of adequate warnings to consumers. When a stove is installed the vendors usually give fairly precise instructions as to its use, and these general directions are repeated in the pamphlets that are issued to consumers. But usually the pamphlets are soon relegated to obscurity. In many, if not all. cases there is no warning at all that children should not he allowed near the stove, and even the adult users have only a hazy knowledge of the principles they are dealing with. Scores of housewives cheerfully court minor shocks by the way in which they handle electric irons, lights, heaters and other devices. Many people are quite unaware that it is reallv dangerous to transfer a globe from one light-socket to another when tEe current is switched on. Such a practice has in more than one ease caused the globe to hurst, a process which has been known to shower fine glass into the unfortunate victim’s eyes. The fact is that the public, while becoming educated into the value and convenience of electricity as its servant, has not been completely apprised of the possible danger if the most simple little electrical instrument goes wrong. In laying their highpower transmission lines across country, power boards and the Government have taken active steps to warn the public of the danger from the wires, and in many cases have installed automatic cut-out gear in case the wires should come down. But with household equipment corresponding steps have not been taken. First it should he made compulsory by law that in all households where electricitv is used a simple set of warnings printed on an indestructible tablet should he posted for all to reach Next, there should lie some method of warning every generation of school-children against the carelessness that leads to tragedy.