NOTES OF THE DAY.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1521, 17 August 1912, Page 4

NOTES OF THE DAY.

One of to-day's cable messages gives some details of tho compromise on Panama Canal tolls arranged by the joint session of Congress._ Apparently exemption from tolls is restricted to American vessels engaged in the coastwise trade, but this means exemption for the bulk of the American shipping that will use the Canal. Tho main point, however, is that the

joint session has excised the provi' sion of exemption for American vessels engaged in foreign trade. At the same time, while America is entitled, if it chooses to do so, to safeguard her policy of affording special encouragement and protection to her coastwise shipping, yet the HayPauncefote treaty forbids the smaller as it forbids, andis now apparently admitted as forbidding, the larger exemption. Last month Mr. Knox, in a, statement upon the British* representations to his Government, quoted Sir Edward Grey as contending that, while America was free to subsidise her shipping, the special and partial subsidy proposed (for the exemption amounted to a subsidy) was regarded by Britain as an infringement of the letter as well as of the spirit of the Hay-Pauncefote treaty. Britain may therefore be expected to press her case against the exclusion of railroad-owned vessels from the Canal. As a fact, this provision of the Bill does not appear to violate the treaty, but having violated the treaty in respect of coastwise American shipping, America may be asked' to make amends by opening the Canal to Canadian vessels. A writer- in the Saturday Ilevieiv, by the way, shows what the exemption from tolls will mean as a gift to shipping interests from the American Treasury. There will not be enough vessels, he says, ever to allow of a dividend on the capital cost of £140,000,000.

The sharp Liberal-Labour quarrel in Britain yields, in the press discussions, some facts and opinions of no little interest to New Zealand. The Liberal papers are, of course, alarmed at the breach, but they pitch their remonstrances in different keys. Tho. Westminster Gazette, for example, addresses itself to the admonition of Labour for its folly in believing that by cutting adrift from the Liberals it can strengthen its position. The Nation, more- frank, disapproves the "outbreak" as "a piece of bad management," and deplores the possibility that the Liberals may halt in what we call their transformation into mere Socialistic Radicals. Labour's view is stated in the official organ, the Daili/ Herald: "The Liberals arc our real obstacle; the Tories are too weak to count by themselves.." v We quote these opinions in order to illustrate the profound difference between Britain and New Zealand in tho matter of party relations. In New Zealand; although there-is a sort of. Opposition consisting of all kinds of opinions hanging precariously together, there are actually only two parties, namely, Liberals and Labour Radicals. The Liberals are in power, and their Budget is before the country. A Parliamentary or electoral Lib-eral-Labour alliance would havo to be an alliance between the Liberal Reform party and tho Labour-Radi-cals. At any British by-election there will be three candidates—a Conservative, a Liberal, and a Labour man. There can be no correspondence with that in New Zealand now. \ Consider Mil. Wilford, for example (we name him only; because he was the first loud Opposition voice in the Financial Debate). What will bo call himself at the next election ? He cannot stand as a Liberal unless he supports the Liberal Reform Government; and he will probably not care to stand as a Labour-Socialist. His position will be the position of manymore on the Opposition side of the House.

A notable stir has been' caused-in England by a proposal made by Canon Hensley Henson that there should be some alternative form of burial service for "notorious evillivers." His contention is that Churchmen of scrupulous conscience suffer in spirit when they read over the grave of some notoriously evil man a prayer which describes'him as our "dear brother" and commits his body to the ground "hi sure and certain hope of the Resurreqtion to eternal life." The Westminster Gazette asks Canon Henson "imagine the feelings of mourners at the graveside waiting to see whether tho clergyman used form A or form B, and the struggles which would probably take place between the death and the burial to induce him to adopt the more favourable form of prayer." The Gazette goes on to say that few would object if the alternative prayer proposed by Convocation were to be made the only and the obligatory form. What it does object to is that a clergyman should be armed "with this power of anticipating the Divine judgment and sorting their parishioners, who have passed beyond these voices, into sheep and goats for the edification of the pious survivors." In short, ecclesiastical censure, direct or indirect, should stop at the graveside. Canon Henson also thinks that the burial service at other points asks too much of human nature. When the breadwinner has been suddenly stricken down, or the son of the widow, one cannot expect the friends to stand at tho graveside and reecho the words, "Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God of His great morcy to take unto Himself the soul of our dear brother here departed." Most people, we hope, will feel that Canon Henson is utterly wrong in both cases.