NOTES OF THE DAY.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1481, 2 July 1912, Page 4

NOTES OF THE DAY.

In another column we give at length the main portion of Jlr. Balfouk's recent article on Anglo-Ger-man relations in the German monthly Nord unci Sud, and it sums up .tho.common view of those Englishmen who do not think that Britain should disarm and treat Germany as the dearest of friends. Mr. Balfour is far more likely to secure the applause of Englishmen and the people of the oversea Dominions than Loud Haldane, who is dominated by his affection for German iiteratun; and philosophy. Lord Haldane's tribute to tho Emperor, which was contained in one of yesterday's cable messages, is delivered from a point of view with which Englishmen cannot sympathise and with which facts do not square. He was a contributor to the Nord und Sud symposium, and ho actually urged England's intellectual debt to Goethe as a reason why the two nations should cease from mutual suspicion ! Mb. Balfour looks at the tacts. He assures Germany that Britain could not provoke a war, because "we arc a political nation, and an unprovoked war would shatter in a day the most powrijhil Government and the most united party/ 1 If Germany could control the sea she could either conquer or starve Britain, but if Britain were ten times master she could neither conquer nor starve Germany. If Germany were only building for defence nobody in Britain would have cause for disquiet or ill-will; but Germany, tlic greatest military Power in the world and the seconcj greatest naval Power, is greatly increasing her army and navy, and increasing her strategic railways, some of which, carried to small frontier States, cannot have a merely defensive purpose. The danger, in Mi;. Balfouh's view, lies in the continuance in Germany of the doctrine that "German development means German territorial expansion"—a vital difference from British policy. Nowadays the controversies in Britain — even the controversies on foreign policy—are talked about in the Dominions, and sometimes split colonial opinion quite sharply. It is desirable, therefore, that on the largest question of British foreign politics tho overseas peoples should liavc the material for sound views. This is why wo print Mr. Bawour's masterly summing-up of the Anglo-Ger-man situation.

The overwhelming rejection, in theHouse of Commons, of a motion condemnatory of the forcible feeding of those Suffragist prisoners who ret use to cat in prison is evidence of an intense hardening of opinion against the Suffragists' violent defiance of law and order. It is really very surprising that the militant Suffragists have not recognised the unwisdom of their tactics by returning to peaceful methods. Most people expected that that would be .what would happen. That they continue their career of damaging and destroying property and committing assaults on politicians—and now, as it would appear, of attempting arson —is a queer fact not easy to explain. In an article in one of the London weeklies at the time of the last big Suffragist revel in Parliament Square, Mk. Filson Youno sketched the- progress of tho movement, from the small beginnings of pathetic little addresses at street corners, through the stages of big processions, sclfchainings to railings, and stonethrowing.

Tho stone-throwing (ho said), the felino attack.-! on tho persons of public men, mid now tin's outrageous destruction of public property—is it possible that anyone can be blind to the direction in which tills perfectly logical chain of events is lending? It tends not to the giving of votes to women, but to violence and assassination and anarchy. 11 is ns certain a fact us fho prilit on this page that if Iho women themselves do not- abandon their present altitude they, will proceed very soon to assassination.

Pip wont on to anticipate the objection that such a climax was inconceivable. The- women who began the campaign five, .years ago would then have, recoiled in anger and horror from tho suggestion that they would over stone elderly- gentlemen or smash ini-lca of shop windows. "And iu (he. same way there are soma to-day who would no doubt recoil from the suggestion of assassination, whose, hands will yd. be slained with blood." Tho Suffragists have_ lately been pointing to the syndicalist) methods as their justification, and it is. really possible that their madness will lead some, of thein to embrace thud idea of assassination that Mi!. Bkn , Tih.ett only Hid ollii'i - day threw us a challenge (in (iocii-l-v.

Oxh uf tills must iiitercsling of the. minor political questions in .Uritain got some aUrMil-ioii on May L'O last, when the nationalisation of the railways was urged ou Mk. Asquitu

by a deputation from the Trade Union Congress Parliamentary Committee. Tho deputation could not deny that the companies only made about -\h per cent, but it urged—and Mr. Asquith showed himself sceptical—that wages could be raised and fares decreased through nationalisation. Mit. AsQUiTH was not sympathetic; the case for nationalisation, he said, had not been established; the only sympathetic thing he. could say was that it might have been ;i good thing if railways had been made a State enterprise at the very beginning. Commenting upon this interesting conversation the Westminster Gazette, a sound ltadic.nlLiheral .journal, did its best for the nationalisation idea, leaving itself, at the same time, plenty of loopholes. Yet it could not refrain from noticing the fact that "the State wage-earner" could "exercise an undue influence upon electioneering." There are in Britain "dockyard constituencies," which can, if tho political weather is of the right sort tor them, undesirably influence the Government of tho day; and the Gazelle noted that there might be "railway constituencies" too, under nationalisation. Commenting on the Gazelle in its turn, the Saturday Review had some observations which can be better appreciated in New Zealand, so long soaked in "spoils' , politics, than almost anywhere else:

What makes us shudder (it said) is not tho thought of tlio demands which tho railway vote would inako upon the Homo of Commons man, but tho thought of tho bribe? which the Houso of Commons man would offer to (ho railway vote. Think of a Radical Ministry in danger of defeat at tho polls. What easier way of escape to produce some, bribe to the railvraymen. ... It is expecting too much of human nature to assume that the parly head of a public Department controlling a vole which may well decide an election will not turn his position to party advantage.

New Zealand may be a now qountry, now in many ways, very different in appearance from Britain, but it is precisely like Britain, and like every other democracj'j in this respect: that Stato activity of any kind creates perils to be guarded against. Thus the evils attendant on Stats enterprise in New Zealand, which the llel'orm movement lias forced even the expiring Mackenzie Ministry to recognise, are being forescon in Britain, as things attendant on certain policies, by people who may know nothing of our country save its name.