NOTES OF THE DAY

Dominion, Volume 14, Issue 131, 26 February 1921, Page 6

NOTES OF THE DAY

.Although it is many months since the local Harbour Board set: up a committee to consider the question of establishing a scheme of perninnent employment on llm waterfront, nothing of a practical character has been accomplished in this direction —tho committee has yet to report. Those were the only material facts brought out in the course of an extended discussion at the board meeting on Wednesday night. It is surely high lime that this drifting incons? (uence should ee.nse. If the board is in a position, by enlarging its permanent staff, to assist in the establishment of ’better and more settled conditions on the waterfront, it ought to act in the matter without delay. If development on these linos is impracticable, the fact ought tub'? stated if only in order that some alternative scheme of organisation may be considered.

I The campaign to secure the election of two women city councillors for Wellington at tiie coming municipal elections may perhaps receive a stimulus from information. to hand by this week’s American mail. The international Women Suffrage Alliance writes informing us that in this the first year of universal women suffrage in the United States thirty women have been elected to State Parliaments. M’onien have also been elected State superintendents of instruction in Idaho, Kansas, Montana, North Dakota, and Texas. A woman was elected ns Common Pleas Judge in Cleveland, polling 10,000 votes above her nearest mule opponent. But the great U.S., and indeed the whole world, has been eclipsed by Canada in recognising the claims of women to a place in . public affairs. Canada has a Minister of Education, Mis. Ralph Smith, who is said to be the first woman Cabinet Minister in the uoikl. New Zealand, we are told, was the first country in the world to adopt universal woman suffrage; but having gone so far we seem to prefer to see our women-folk in tho home rather than cn the hustings.

It has long been known that Lenin, non- dictator of Russia, was passed into that country by the Germans for their own purposes before they succeeded in breaking the Eastern front. A specific statement on the subject, was made recently by- General Hoffmann, who will bo remembered os the German military delegate whose sabre-rattling tactics silenced such objections as the Bolshevists made to the shameful peace terms imposed upon them at Brest Litovsk. The London “Morning Post” supplies tho following extract from an interview v itli Hoffmannwhich appeared in a Russian paper published in Berlin: —

As Chief of Staff on the Eastern front, I controlled our sect.’on for propaganda in the ranks of the Russian Army. During the war the General Staff, of course, used every possible means to break the Russian front. One of these means was poison gas. another was Lenin. The German Government sent Lenin through in his sealed :sleep-ing-ear with a definite purnose in view. Lenin and his friends broke up the Russan Aiinv with our consent. Herr von Kuhlmann. Count Czernin and I concluded the Brest-Litovsk Treaty with the Bolsheviks mainly in order to bo able to Grow our army into tho M’est front. As. an alternative to poison gas, Lpniu served his purpose, and that of his Gelman sponsors, only too well. Hoffmann, by his own account, believed that the Bolshevists could not remain in power for more than two or throe weeks, and professes to be horrified at ilieir extended reign and at the consequences to nian\ind. * * * * A plain .indication of the extent to which the financial resources of tho United Kingdom are at present earmarked for internal requirements is given in tho particulars of capital applications for 1920. The following figures, supplied by the “Economist, show the amount and destination of new borrowings last year and in 1913— 1913. 1920. £ di United Kingdom ... 35,951,200 328,021,100 British Possessions 76,137,200 31,639,500 Foreign countries 8-1,418,600 7,888,-100 Totals 196,537,000 367,549,600 In 1913 loss than one-fifth of the total borrowing was for domestic employment in Uie United Kingdom. Last year nearly nine-tenths of the whole amount available was absorbed in this way, industrial issues claiming the great bulk of the money raised. The aggregate amount raised by colonial Governments on the London, money market last year was only .£11,9’0.000. This total included a New South M’ales loan of £4.000,000, repayable in 1930-40, and raised at GJ per cent.