OUR LONDON LETTER

Waikato Times, Volume 93, Issue 14537, 8 December 1920, Page 6

OUR LONDON LETTER

NEW WORLD IN OLD EUROPE. POLITICAL, INDUSTRIAL. SOCIAL. LONDON, October 7. Before the war, with Mr Asquith a 3 1 Prime Minister and Lord (then S.r Edward) Grey as Foreign Secretary, we saw a Home Rule Bill whittled away in salient features and ultimately, giving'only the appearance of self-govern- | ment to the Irish, made an Act of ParLament, while the Ulster provinces threatened revolt. This Act was to | come into force on a day left to the I King-in-Council to declare; but the war '■ broke out and no proclamation has yet. | gone out to give effect to a piece of I legislation actually on the Statute Book. I New, with an entirely new and mucheiilarged Government of Ireland Bi-.l jj slill in the Parliamentary melting pot, | the two statesmen we have named—- | neither of them now in office —come j forward with proposals for transcendI ing any made in the measure before Parliament. Lord Grey tells an atten--1: live world that he would give Ireland ■ Dominion Home Rule, minus the rigiit

to make her own tariff, to have an independent foreign policy, or to maintain an army and navy. He would Fummon a National Convention to say how this should be done, and if at the end. of two years no agreement was reached he would abandon Ireland altogether. Comment on this astonishing plan was still in its "newest gloss" 'when Mr Asquith suddenly butted in. He goes lengths beyond his old colleague in the character of the Hom j Rule he would give at once, but utterly refused to countenance abandonment at

i>ny point. The ex-Premier would give Ireland now~c"ontrol of her tariff and foreign policy and concede her claim to have an army and a navy if she desired the one or the other or both expensive

adjuncts to Government. In fact he would put Ireland in precisely the position that New Zealand occupies to-day, except that, perhaps, in the right to have a foreign policy of her own or even n quite independent navy, Ireland would have more than New Zealand. Then proximity counts for much. In a way impossible to a far-away Dominion, a hostile Ireland might very easily become a veritable thorn in the side of Great Britain, and even make her ports potential bases of enemy submarine action. Mr Asquith says, "Nor is it readily conceivable that it (the Irish Government) would seek to deny—

; ' what it could never effectively prevent—the free access to Irish ports an 1 " harbours of the vessels of the Imperial Navy." As for Ulster, Mr Asquith's scheme is conditional on our Government "making all necessary allowance | for the provisional abstention, not of ; on artificial but of a genuine, local minority." When we think of what was offered as sufficient for Ireland—wh-it Indeed Irish Nationalists were for tli:> moment prepared to accept—and then look at these schemes, the enormous pdwer which Sinn Fein has been able 5 to bring to bear upon some people of t these islands —reluctant either to free Ireland or to coerce her—may in some ■ part be realised. Wool Trade Slump. New Zealand wool-growers have no doubt, ere this, realised that the boom In their product is over. We have reached the inevitable slump, and the fall in the price of wool is something i like 50 per cent. Some of the Bradford hpuses are in a very bad way and .business, at Bradford during the last few weeks is described by an expert is ' the "most appalling the history \<i the wool trade." Claims for the return of excess profits duty are being i hy many firms, for the 1; w allows \ Buch claims if the losses are heavy ;■",. f-nough to warrant Treasury consideration, that is to say really serious Bct-off to the amount of duty reclaimed About £5,000,000,. it is estimated, is the amount of.excess profit duty paid Nt Bradford, and some people think that ; comparatively little of this will be left in the hands of the Government. One firm is asking for £200,000. If, as is thought likely, the Government surrenders'about £1,000,000, it will practically pay off the trade losses, and |> -that means an acceptance By the tSatc Of the buying prices paid to Australian ' and NevV Zealand growers. So tha I" excess profits tax, much abused at im- | position, has proved the salvation of : these Bradford people." Had the Gov- | eminent not taken care .of their money for them in the fat years they might have put into speculations from whose I bourne—may.we say—no cash ever re- '■ turns. The claim of the Bradford people is legal, and no adverse comment on it is fair so long as in each : case the claim is by a man so harcl- | pressed that he cannot affed to be • generous. On the other side, we may ;,; mention that this week a company man- | ager wrote to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, intimating that his company | will for five years forbear drawing in- ", terest on £IOO,OOO worth of war loan. | Thus it makes the State a present of : cbout £25,000 and says that it "may be I able to continue the offer for a further five years." In addition, it stipulates that the name of the company shall not i tie made public. Mr Chamberlain exU presses the voice of the nation when he p thanks those generous people. Wi i should like.to see a good deal mce 1 such handsome conduct on the part of well-to-do folks here who enjoy their . property only because the war was won by Britain and her Allies and who have escaped the direct levies on capital made in countries where wealth is less | Influential than- it is here in the determination of public policy. Interest-Bearing Banknote.

It should be worth the while of Dominion or municipal authorities in New I Zealand to examine a French innovation ' in the art —for such it has become —of . borrowing money for public purposes. I The chief thing always is to attract in- .< vestors, for the success of any given loan project 'epends on that. The maf Jority of people arc never quite clear about what is called "inscribed stock*' j or "debentures" or other Stock Ex- - changt or Treasury term. Many who have a.little ready cash think that these things are a bit beyond them, and som e ."more approaching the designation "capitalist" have a feeling, when invited to subscribe to a loan project that they arc locking up their money for a very long time, that they may want it some day a' bit earlier and v that people who make nice little incomes by that ' sort of thing will only offer for the slock a good deal less than its face value. M. Francois Marsal, French Minister of Finance, is floating a big loan just now, and the citizen willing to lend the money that his country needs, ;nnd at the same time make a profitable • Investment for himself, gets in return "for his 100 francs what is called a Rente Note, similar in size and quality to a 100-franc note of the Bank of France, but with interest coupons attached on the right of the note. This document is legal tender to any who choose to take it in payment for goods or anything else, and the acceptor fcnows that he gets face value, although not for the moment payable by the Issuer, plus the interest represented by the undetached coupons. So may the Rente Note pass from hand to hand,, practically as a currency note, but one bearing interest until the maturity ot the loan for part of which it is a .voucher. It would be possible to find eoonomic objections-to this method, of

loan-raising, no doubt, but it is wonderful how such economic objections to all sorts of things gave way under the pressure of the war and revealed their hollowness. How important it is for any country to have its indebtedness confined to its own citizens people have lately learned in the hard school of higher-than-war-time prices for all they use. A £5 note, with time-limit interest coupons attached might, we fancy, prove a much more attractive loan document to men with small fixed incomes or who live oh the fluctuating profits of small busintsses than any other kind of loan-paper of which we have heard, and thus consideraoly extend the number of those who haac a personal creditor interest in the Statt of which he forms a part. Irish Elections. He would be a whale for excitement who wanted more' than is nowadays provided at an election in Ireland. Petitions arising out of the Tyrone County elections are being heard this week at Omagh. Sometimes candidates' friends found on the electoral roll the names of persons who were away in "furrin parts." It would be a sin and a shamo to let their votes. ?o unrecorded for so trifling a as that, and k'nd-hearted peoyil ■ were found willing to come along and vote in their place. Whether the vote went the way'of the absent one's views who can tell? This is indeed a world of chance. It is remembered that it was a lady in'a furcoat who voted in the name of another lady who had been 50 years resident in England and who—all unconscious of what the lady in the fur-coat was up to —was in Devon on the day of the election. A voter in France was similarly saved from losing his glorious privilege. Voices from the grave'were j made articulate, if that is a word one I may use in a black-and-white transac- j lion. Amongst them was that of a man ! who died in June of last year. In all, j the Commissioner disallowed on Tues- : day the votes of 15 corpses, so it s ridiculous to say that the world is "in the clutch of the dead hand." Personation was, however, only a minor feature in the proceedings. "Undue i influence" was alleged, as it sometimes j is when an alleged "last" will and j testament is disputed. It took drastic | form in the Tyrone elections. For instance, copies of a "notice" were distributed in the mountainous .districts. The "notice" read thus: "It is understood that you intend voting Unionist io-morrow. Now, in voting Unionist \\<i take it you vote to keep Ireland in bondage. Therefore, if you come tomorrow be prepared to meet your God, for you shall not return. What has been done in the South can be done in . the North. The time for humbug is over." It is understood that some of the citizens concerned did not come to town on the appointed day, they having apparently formed the opinion that the a'mosphere of a polling-booth is, in the , present state of Ireland, decidedly unhealthy. All-round Jealousy. We heard a discussion this week on whether jealousy is a sound symptom of perfect love or irrefragable evidence of mean distrust. "Take the case of Othello,".said one disputant. .Do you mean to say that the noble .Moor was less noble when brought to the point of exclaiming, 0, now for ever,-'' Farewell the tranquil mind! fare-' well content? are we to regard as the mere whine of a poltroon or the true strength o* a man worthy the name his declaration, "I had rather be a toad .and live vpon the vapours of a dungeon than keep a corner in the thing I love for I others' use." "Bad case for your side," j Vas the reply. "Had Othello's love for | Desdemona been of the right quality, he would have been saved from the atrocity of murdering an innocent woman." And so the controversy went on, the bulk of opinion seeming to incline to j the idea that love must necessarily be jealous and that the co-existence of jealousy and trust is an easy possibility in the make-up of the average man. This, however, is only a preliminary >'n theories to mentioning a case in which the emotion in question was seen in actual practice. A man was brought to court here because he had created i £.■< ene outside his house because he was jealous of a lodger. . It appeared that ■ he had formerly been bound over in connection with a like matter. The wise magistrate—plainly a nian who knows the world—advised the wife to "get rid. c.f the lodger." "But that won't cure him, sir," she said; "he is jealous of. }ou, of the vicar and of the court missionary. He says you arc all after me." "Well," exclaimed the astonishedmagistrate, "anyway we are all in it, and there is safety in numbers." His cver-fondness—or whatever else you j choose to call ib—cost the gentleman j in the dock half a sovereign, for that was the amount of the fine,