"SPECTATOR" SUMMARY

Timaru Herald, Volume XCIV, Issue 14400, 23 March 1911, Page 6

"SPECTATOR" SUMMARY

N . 1 LONDON, Jan. 23. RECIPROCITY AGREEMENT. Tho terms of the very important Jieciurocitv Agreement. between Canada fcud tiio United States were pubiisiied. en Thursday. The Agreement, is not, joi course, a Treaty, out> only a series I ai recommendations by Commissioners .which have yet to be submitted to ilie .liegsiatures -of both, countries. There may be opposition in the United States, but. there is 110 doubt that the principle of bos beeu carried many jstages iurther than before by the very of the Agreement and by President Taft's strong Message ia its favour. .The Agreement provides tor the free exchange of natural,, and €epeciaily __ of food products, and ;or the reduction of duties on the manufactures of those products. Thus wheat, barley, oats, rough lumber, daily produce, vegetables, and fruit become free, while the duties on flour and coal are reduced. The American State Department estimates that the "United States Trill remit nearly £1,000,000 of duties and Canada £400,000; that the United States will'put on the free list dutiable articles to the value of nearly £8,000,000 and Canada to the value of £4,200,000; and that the present American duties will remain in force upon only 9 per cent, of the .total imports from Canada. "Wliat -vrill be the effect of these remarkable innovations on the doctrine ofImperial Preference? It ia obvious that the United States will give to Canada advantages which she does not propose to give to Great Britain. This will be- a curious situation, and the prospects of Imperial Preference will be profoundly affected. In 1892. it may be remembered, Canada refused to enter into any preferential arrangement with the "United States from which Great Britain was excluded. It may be that the -results in the case of manufactures will be doctrinal rather tlian practical, as the articles named in the new Agreement tliere is little competition • between Great Britain and the United States. Still, the new 'reciprocity 5n one way and another must unquestionably postpone the hopes of those who advocate. Imperial Preference. PANAMA CANAL. President- Taft has publicly defined the "United States policy in regard to the Panama Canal with unprecedented frankness and precision, in a. sneech delivered :n New York last Saturday. The right to foriify, he contended, was incontestable. It was dictated not only by national expediency, but by the obligations contracted towards Great Bri-

tain in the second Hay-Pauccefo e < Treaty. That Treaty grew out of the need of substituting fur the ClaytouBuhver Treaty, \vluelr demanded neutralisation, some arrangement allowing the United States both to profit from certain experiences of the Spanish ; War and to own, manage, and fortify the Canal themselves. President Taft dismisses the suggestion that the Canal could best be protected by the Navy as impracticable. The Canal nuist defond itself, and leave the Navy free to defend by offence. The fortifications, he continued, were necessary in order , to ensure the use of the Canal to belligereuts in a.controversy to wltich the United States were not a party. lie ridiculed the analogy of the Suez Canal, which wns net owned no- '-optrolled by any single nntVn. —''• the Panama Canal was as much an item of nut:ou:n ujicu.w a.. 1 - . cations-of New York. "\Ve learn ironi the "Times" correspondent at Wash, iugtoh that the President's insistence on the need of keeping the Navy free for offence is emphatically confirmed by Rear-Admiral Mahan. EUROPEAN RELATIONS. Last Saturday Rifaat Pasha, Minister for Foreign Affairs, made a statement in the Turkish Chamber. According to a Reuter telegram, he said that the Potsdam interview, ns he understood it. "exclusively concerned the recogni tion of Russia's special interest in Northern Persia by Germany, while sjtfeguarding the open door and the junction of the Khanikin-Baghdad •line with the prospective railway in Northern Persia and the maintenaus© of the status quo. M. Suzonoff had -made'a similar declaration to tlie Ott-onian. Ambassador in St.- Petersburg. Subsequently, however, the publication of the alleged Russo. German Agreement had aroused doubts, but the assurances of Baron von Marschall, who had promised to supplement- them in a couplo of days, had calmed fears. Rifaat Pasha, added that the integrity of Persia . was a matter of capital importance to Turkey." As for the relations of Turkey and Great Britain, they were most cordial, and any differences between them in the Persian Gulf, where Turkey's sovereign rights were "unquestionable," would be settled by mutual confidence and not by newspaper articles. Since this statement was made the "Cologne Gazette." in an inspired article, has announced that in the matter of the Baghdad Railwnv Germany would recognise that the railway was <s nn internal Turkish concern." Certainly Great Britain cou T d Imv* l "nothing to do with the Baghdad Railway on any other presumption. JAPAN'S FOREIGN POLICY. On Tuesday Count Komura made a statement on foreign policy in the Japanese House of Representatives. He spoke of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance as t ' constantly gaining strength and solidity.' 1 The Japanese Agreement with Pvtissia. had excited suspicion in some quarters, but there was no justification for this. 1 ' I have no hesitation" he said, "in positively declaring that it has for its sole object tlie maintenance of the status quo in Manchuria, and of enduring peace in the Far East by confirming the principles and supplementing the provisions laid down in the former Convention." Count Ivomura next announced that the Government is negotiating new Treaties "to re-establish a complete tariff autonomy for Japan, and to eliminate all unequal engagements found in the Treaties actually in force." Some Powers have already counter-project*?, while others are still examining the Japanese drafts. The negotiations with Great Britain are "proceeding favourably," - and the early conclusion of a new Treaty is expected. KING MANOEL. Reuter telegrams from Lisbon dated Friday, the 21st inst., contained si statement 'made by the Minister for Foreign Affairs at a meeting of foreign Press representatives on the subject of the payments to the Pvoyal Family. Ho declared, in evidence of tho "toleration and generosity" of tho Government, that they were making monthly payments of £444 Ss lOd to Queen Maria Pi a and £666 13s 3d to King Mauoel. A different construction is placed on the matter by a second statement issued in Tuesday's papers by Renter's Agency. According'to "the highest Portuguese authority." Queen Maria Pia's dowry was settled in an Act approved by the Portuguese and Italian Chambers prior to her marriage, and is " an international agreement binding on whatever Government may he in power in Lisbon." It is further stated ihat ' King Manocl has so far received y.o 1 sums save those derived from the estates ; of the house of Braganza. his personal property, and that therefore there can ' be no question of any disolay of "toleration or generositv." POPULARISING CONSOLS. Sir Felix Schuster, at the half-yearly meeting of the Union of London and Smiths Banks on Wednesday, mado an interesting speech on tho various ways «>r "popularising Consols." He strongly approved of tho granting of greater facilities for transferring stock, and held that the experiment of issuing bearer bonds of smaller denominations than £IOO was worth trying. He was inclined, however, to attach most importance to the scheme of reconverting Consols into a stock bearing a higher rate of interest, say 3 per cent., on the basis that the operation must be

optional, that the s'oolc shall not ho r<-deein;«Me i'or slniy years, and that the r.»v: stock must bo free <>i* Income-tax. Sir Felix Schuster was careiul to add that it was not in siu-h measures alone that a remedy was to bo sought; "a check must also sooner or later be placed on the great national and municipal expenditure, excessive in his opinion, in times of pence, if wo wished to retain for times of trouble and difficulty those reserves of finaucial strength and security which it was essential for auy great nation to maintain." THE DARTMOOR SHEPHERD.

The Homo Secretary has issued a. characteristic Memorandum defending liis action in the case of the old shepherd cf Dartmoor. - Mr. Cliurehiii states that the cay© attracted his attention early last year when, lie was " looking into the working of the tew Prevention of Crime Act in order to find out whether or not it was increasing the severity and disparity of sentences." He was struck by "the grotesque contrast between 13 years of prison on the one hand, and a theft of 2s on th*> other," and found the old shepherd's record of previous convictions certainly not less terrible for its punishments than for its crimes. His crimes had not been, accompanied by cruelty or violence, and he had throughout his life been a nuisance, not a dungor to society. On the other hand, "he had been treated both in his previous sentences and in his present- sentence with a severity which, if not unparalleled, is certainly exceptional and excessive." Having thus to liis own obvious satisfaction vindicated his action in releasing the old shepherd, Mr. Churchill maintains, in conclusion, that the system of preventive detention, is intended for dangerous and brutal criminals, but "among such characters there are no grounds., nor have there ever been any, for including the pilfering shepherd of Dartmoor." Apart from its florid rhetoric. Mr. Churchill's Memorandum is significant, coming after his recent reprimand of trate-. for its attack on the harshness of Jndcres. - PROPORTION A L REPRESENTATION. Sir Alfred Hopkinson, Vice-Chancellor of the iUancliester University, made a brilliant and witty speech on proportional representation at a meeting in Manchester on Tuesday. He said that if a democratic Government was not to .become a tyrannous" Government, if the rights cf minorities were to be respected, some such reform was vitally necessary, What in Mill's days was an interesting -political speculation had now become a question of immediate practical urgency. The divine right of .kings was perhaps a bad thing, in its way, but it it cumo to the worst we -could always cut off the King"s head. As for .the divine right of the aristocracy, we could deport an aristocracy if necessary. But when we came to tho divine right of the odd man to govern, wrong, ..we could never find the odd mail. He was enshrined behind a cloud vo could not penetrate. "If I had a • vote in the community which once •grazed quietly in the Gadarene hills." said Sir Alfred Hopkinson, "I should I .not necessarily have voted for the pig i which got first to the water, though no ! doubt it would have been called the most advanced politician of its time. I would Tather give my vote sometimes for these who are called weak-kne ?d people, but who have-the strength to resist changes recommended to a party hy it* caucus." In conclusion, Sir Alfred Hopkinson quoted Mill's remark that no real democracy was possible in which minorities were not adequately represented, and declared that proportional representation was the only chance for freedom. ; SCANDAL AND TITTLE TATTLE. The "Tim us" of Iqst Saturday brought to hgtit- an infamous traiiic m soaiuial and titties-tattle winch. it> <Jiould bo the object oi' every decent person to try to kiii at the source by rerusing to countenance newspapers wiiich publish such stuff. It appears that a woman who passes under the name of Harriet Churchill tempts the servants in the housts of well-known people with offers of considerable sums of money to sell &ny "spicy" information they may overhear as to family quarrels, divorce suits, actions for slander, and so forth. A specimen letter from "Harriet Churchill" to a butler was shown by the butler, who is to bo complimented on his independence and public spirit, to his-employer, and the employer sent it to the "Times." "Harriet Churchill " says that she writes for . American papers, but we wish we could think that she. or her congeners, have no market for their noisome wares in England.