NOTES OF THE DAY

Dominion, Volume 14, Issue 272, 11 August 1921, Page 4

NOTES OF THE DAY

All the statements yet made by President Harding' and his Secretary of State (Mr. C. E. Hughes) on the subject of foreign policy are cast in such vaguely general terms that they afford almost cndlesa scope for mere or less conflicting interpretation. borne near-at-hand observers of American affairs assert, however, that in essentials the foreign policy of the Administration is already very clearly determined. The Washington correspondent of tho London "Times,” for instance, declared recently that: "Outside the region, of conjecture . • • and standing solid whatever else may happen, is a. plan for agreement, . or understanding or arrangement —call it what you will so long as you do not call it a formal alliance-between the English-speaking peoples. I assert with the fullest confidence that this is the very backbone of the Administrotlon’s policy.” The American idea, according to the correspondent, is to promote an agreement under which Amari* can naval strength would be concentrated in the Pacific, "leaving tho Atlantic as the British zone cf naval influence.” This, he adds, would naturally involve the renunciation of the AngloJapanese Alliance. If the correspondent is as well informed as he professes to be in regard to the aims and ideas of the American Government, the effective realisation of its plan may be simplified to an appreciable extent by Japan’s apparent inclination to demand that Britain and America should lead the way in limiting naval armaments.

Coal is plentiful in New Zealand this winter, and the Miners’. Federation officials and their Labour extremist friends seem to be very much annoyed about it. Their policy has been to obtain a position of supremacy by doling out only hand-to-mouth supplies and .preventing the accumulation of reserve stocks by either the Railway Department, dealers, or private users. To this end the "go-slow" policy was introduced and supplemented by perpetual stoppages at different mines on the most trivial pretexts. For a time It worked, and the railways, the municipal tramways and lighting systems, gasworks, manufacturers, and householders struggled along precariously at the mercy of the miners. The move was presumably part and parcel of the direct-action policy to usher m the new era by which the union, executives were to become the masters of the country. Coal, being tho life-blood of industry, was the first object of attack. However. the Government set to work to obtain abroad what coal It could to keep the country going. It had to make big contracts, to get anything, and it seems that many of these contracts of late months have unexpectedly been completed in full. It is not cheap coal that we are getting, but it is at least coal, and plenty of it- It was scarcely to bo expected that tho Miners’’ Federation would express contrition for the heavy expenditure abroad which its own anti-social policy made necessary, but it only makes itself look supremely silly by representing the coal importations as a darkly sinister move to smash Labour. They have been simply a costly but necessary precaution to prevent our local Bolshevists from turning New- Zealand into Little Russia.

Money-making has become an obsession with the New Zealand Rugby Union. In Wellington we have the local union complaining of the excessive charge fixed for admission to the match against New South Wales. In Auckland public and Press are loud in censure of tho endeavour to wring the last shilling outof football patrons in connection with the South African tour. Complaint is made of the choice of Eden Park for tho match instead of the Domain, where 40,000 people could witness tho game in comfort. It is admitted that with uncontrolled charges a better financial return can be expected from Eden Park, if no considerations of public convenience, the traditions of the game, or its future aro allowed to weigh. Still, more petty is the decision not to publish tho names of the competing teams in order to promote the sale of programmes. Finally, the taking of photographs is prohibited. In Wellington the grievance is against the proposed charge of 2s. for admission to the New South, Wales match, with an extra 3s. for the stand. To continue its present policy of wringing money out of the publio means getting a fine sporting game a very had name.

A roads policy that will give universal satisfaction is not lig'htly to be devised by a merely human Minister of Public Works. The difficulties and objections that crop up are exemplified by the discussion at this week’s meeting of the Egmont County Council. This county, on the western slopes of Mount Egmont, will benefit not at all by the proposed Government expenditure on the arterial road from Wellington to Auckland on the other side of the mountain. Indirectly, of course, it will benefit, but there will be no relief of the rates by Government expenditure as in the case of the counties through which the arterial road runs. Egmont county has no toll-gates at present, but all the neighbouring counties have, and its residents have thus to contribute to the revenues of the adjoining bodies whenever they go abroad to New Plymouth or Hawera. As onq councillor remarked, they had been "robbed and bled by others for years." Egmont county traffic travels for twenty miles over Taranaki county roads to reach New Plymouth, and for this privilege pays £l7OO a year in tolls at tho Puniho gate. Councillors apparently complain mildly of this, but they are extremely sore over the collection of ,62000 a year in tolls by Hawera county for the use of six and a-half miles of its main road. This latter sum, be it noted, is less than two-thirds of what it costs to maintain the six miles of the Hutt Road in its present state of disrepair. The trouble with tollgates seems to bo that they are a nuisance to travellers, and that it is beyond the wit of man to place them so that tho levy is reasonably fair on all road users. A book has been written by Mr. Hector C. llywater to show what might happen if war occurred between America and Japan. He assumes that the Japanese objective would be the obvious and, to his mind, perfectly feasible one, of wresting the Philippines from the United States. Although American naval strength is.now concentrated in th* Paci-

fic, America is at a disadvantage through the absence of naval bases. Tho Philippines, being without a naval base and repairing docks, could not bo defended. American vessels operating in those waters would bo at enormous distances from their bases--Hawaii, in fact, is the onlv base of consequence in the Pacific, and even it is still far short of first-class standard. Without a base at hand the American fleet would have to be followed about by swarms of mercantile vessels with fuel and stores. These* attendant vessels would need other vessels to supply their needs, and tho war fleet itself, in addition io fending the foe off <ho Philippines, would have to protect this endless procession of supply ship* across the ocean. In these circumstances America has fixed upon the island of Guam, 1500 miles from tho Philippines, for a base. Tho base, however, remains to be created, and to-day it still lacks forts, magazines, amt docks. Mr. Bywater believes that if it were complete tho United States could recapture the Philippines in event of a Japanese seizure. Some critics in Britain, in discussing his hypothesis, are not quite so certain. Everybody hopes, however, that the war he writes about is.one that will never come off.

A clerk who robs a bank in order to acquire funds to permit him to become a virtuoso of the violin is an unusual type of thief. Such a one appeared recently in New York. Ho was a double failure. His theft was discovered, and his triumph with the violin did not come off. His idea evidently was that there are short cute to fame. Having stolen some war bonds from the bank where he was employed, he purchased two expensive violins, and took a few lessons. Then he hired the Aeolian. Hall, and made his debut before an audience composed largely of tho detective who was watching him. It is a naive but pitiful story. It may sometimes be possible to rob a bank successfully, but fraudulent by-paths to fame as an artist have yet to be discovered—unless it be, as the conservatives tell us,' that the Cubists have found them in painting.