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Press, Volume LIV, Issue 16257, 6 July 1918, Page 8

The Acting-Prime Minister has announced that the Efficiency Board's estimate of the amount that would have to be paid if the liquor trade were ended on a compensation basis, is 4} millions sterling. We are supplied with no details as to the basis of the Board's calculations, but it must have differed materially from the basis upon which the British Parliamentary Committees framed their report upon the cost of State purchase of the liquor trade. The committees—there were three of them, for England, Scotland, and Ireland— which were appointed in June, 1917, sent in reports from which It appears that the gross total cost of State purchase would be between 400 and 500 millions sterling. The committees expressed no opinion on questions of policy, but they did not report any point of financial deadlock or impracticability in a scheme of State purchase. The differing conditions in the three pr-rts of the country led to differences of method in the schemes of purchase. In Scotland, for example, where there are rights of local option, the State is recommended not to acquire any property interest in public-houses, but only the trading goodwill. The relatively greater importance of the spirit trade in Scotland and Ireland as compared with England has resulted in English distillers and rectifiers being excluded from the general purchase scheme. The comparative absence of tied houses in Scotland and Ireland has led to the goodwill there being rated at a greater number of years' purchase than in England.

So far as England and Wales are concerned, the State, if tlio report of the Committea were adopted, would acquire four main interests: (1) Breweries, with the freehold <,f their licensed premises, and other trade, properties ; (2) free houses ; (3) the interests of holders of on-licenses; and (4) the interests of holders of retail off-licenses, but not the premises. The basis of purchase is, for breweries, the true commercial profit capitalised at 15 years' purchase, payment to be made in Government stock. The holders of on-licenses would receive: (a) Thb value of their stock-in-trade and chattels, plus (b) not more than two years' purchase of profits in the case of an annual tenancy, and whatever larger number may be fair in the rare case of a lease with more than two years unexpired, plus (c), if the State does not offer a paid post, a pension on a scale to be scheduled to the statute. The pre-war value of the four main interests in .England is set down at £350,000,000, and the Scottish Committee reported that the Scottish purchase scheme would involve £<31,000,000. When, or if, the British Parliament comes to consider the matter of buying out the liquor trade, it will at least .have something to go upon.

On July 4th, in our remarks upon America's place in the war, w e mentioned that Amoricanism was a real thing, and that the great Republic had absorbed ie.ll the foreign strains of its complex people. Many Germans were American and pro-Ally all along, and many others were sympathetic towards Germany until America, their own country, went to war. The irreconcilable pro-Germans are now a very tiny minority Several of the German papers in America are ardently and honestly behind the President in his policy of "thorough," and the majority of the German societies have voluntarily disbanded, and are unlikely ever to arise again. A curious and interesting list of names was printed the other day by the New York "Post": "Baruch, Rosenwald, Stettinius, Goethals, Warburg, Frankfurter, Deeds, Schwab." "No, dear reader," the "Post" hastened to add, "this is not a roll-call of the Kaiser's Privy Council. It is merely a list of some of the men with Gerinan blood in their veins who have been entrusted with great powers under the American Government in this crisis in the nation's history." Mr Schwab is in charge of the nation's shipping. Messrs Rosenwald and Stettinius are doing most of the purchasing for the Government. Colonel Goethals is in charge of the Quartermaster Corps, and Mr Frankfurter has just been entrusted with the work of controlling and regulating the labour in Government factories, yards, and plants. It is possible that circumstances may arise which will lead to a demand for the removal of these officials, but in the meantime wo hatfe not found that anybody has yet thought of thinking them anything but loyal and very valuable Americans.

| In the "Westminster Gazette" Mr William Archer writes in reproof of those who, calling themselves fatalists, go to some trouble to get hurt. There are enough of these, at home and in the trenches, he thinks, to make it worth while giving them some hints. Fatalism is quite harmless, he says, if it is simply "a sort of sedative, tending to beget a mood of resolute serenity"; but the fatalistic idea, as commonly understood, is that "there is no use in taking reasonable precautions against danger, and that to exposy yourself , wantonly and purposelessly is to obey the precepts of a sublime philosophy " He fears that a good m»ny valuable Jives have been sacrificed to this foolish conception. It is a sort of negation of Fatalism to let Fatalism influence our actions. In a fague, illogical way, we imply that it lies within our choice whether to be fatalists or not; forgetting that the very Fatalism which impels us to do this rr that is as much a part of the ■web of our fate as any other iactor. He sums up the true position in some

verses written by a friend, of which tho last is an epigram better than most that one. meets u ith nowadays:— What in the Doomsday Book of Fato is writ 'Tis true we neither can pursue nor flco: But those lire long, my friend, who have the wit To think they're fated to act sensibly.