TOPICS OF THE DAY,

Waikato Times, Volume 114, Issue 19053, 18 September 1933, Page 6

TOPICS OF THE DAY,

Britain and the Duties. What is the reason for the weakness which is being shown in dealing with the latest developments of Irish Free State policy? asks the Daily Mail. Mr do Valera lias granted a bounty v of from 60s to 80s a hundredweight on Free State butter. By so\doing he has helped ' to swamp the British market and to send prices down to a figure ruinous to our farmers. This move ought to have been met by at once adding the amount of the bounty to the duty levied on Free State butter by our Customs. Instead of taking such action, however, wo are trying to get New Zealand and Australia to reduce their butter exports to this country and accept a lower.quota. Tills is to penalise loyal and friendly Dominions and is grossly unjust. Diehard Traditions. “All custom, tradition and romance, almost all the uneonsoiou.s influences of education, have been for hundreds of years directed toward the glorification of the nations as the supreme object of loyalty, and the thwarting, and, if possible, killing of foreign enemies as tbo most obvious end noble way of showing that loyally,” writes Professor Gilbert Murray, the famous British historian. “Such habits of thought were, no doubt, at one time beneficial to societies, and at some later times not particularly disastrous, though foolish; as things arc now, their continued dominance means ruin. “Yet they will be very hard to change. In all countries —in dictatorships and monarchies as well as in democracies —statesmen depend for I heir power and office not on the goodwill of the world but on I lie favour of their own countrymen. Wherever the interests or ambitions of some particular country ran contrary to (ho welfare of (he world in general, the statesman who represents that country will have a choice.”