NOTES OF THE DAY

Dominion, Volume 15, Issue 3, 28 September 1921, Page 4

NOTES OF THE DAY

Because of her Pacific possessions, Portugal apparently is to have direct representation at the Washington Conference, while the British Dominions will not. All that Portugal owns on this side of the world are the small island of Macao, at the mouth of the Canton River in China, and Portuguese Timor. Macao has a population of 74,003, of whom 200(1 odd are Portuguese, while Portuguese Timor has a population of 377,000, all Asiatic* except for a handful of Portuguese officials and traders. These interests are considered to deserve recognition at the conference table, while those of tho five millions of white people of Australia and tho one and. a quarter million of New Zealand do not. Our status as semi-sovereign States was, of course, acquired by our recognition as signatories of the Treaty of Versailles and our'membership of the League of Nations. As the United States will have nothing to do with the Treaty, and as its State Department announced recently that it has "no official cognisance” of the League of Nations, President Harding would doubtless, feel that to recognise tho British Dominions internationally would bo to compromise hip whole position oh 'the Peace Treaty. If Mr. Lloyd George and Lord Curzon were representing Britain, our case would be in the hands of men made familiar at first hand at the Imperial Conference .with the Dominions’ point of view. It seems that neither is likely to (be present, in which case it will probably be expedient for tho Government to dispatch to Washington for consultation with the British delegates either our High Commissioner from London or a Minister from Wellington. ,

America is to-day facing an economic depression more severe than any known to the present, generation. After tho armistice her export trade expanded to an enormous extent, and if buyers abroad could not pay cash .they were given liberal credit. Then first, in India, a little later in Japan, camo the weakening in the markets that spread with rapidity throughout tho world. Taking the 1913 level of prices as 100, America was up to 272 in May. 1920, to 189 at the end of the year, and to 154 in April last—a sheer fall in less than a ySar of over 43 per cent. The sudden break in prices and backing up of goods brought a deluge of liquidation. It had not proceeded long when tho banks and financiers became alarmed that further forced liquidation might produce a condition of universal bankruptcy, and an almost universal policy of nursing debtors began, aqd even making further advances where there was a prospect of thus securing ultimate solvency. In other cases the banks quietly took over the debtors’ businesses and ran them themselves. Tho unemployment which has accompanied this depression is now 'the subject of a conference called by President Harding at Washington.

It is not'altogether easy to understand the grounds on which President Harding, in opening the American Conference on Unemployment, "attacked those who charge tho business slump as being due to America’s failure to ratify the Versailles Treaty and enter the League of Nations.” To attribute trade and industrial depression in the United States solely to tho lino its Government has taken in foreign policy would, of course, be ridiculous, but there is no doubt that these evils in their world-wide scops have been heavily intensified by America's failure to reach a basis of co-opera-tion with other nations in re-establish-ing peace and settled order in Europe and elsewhere. If, America had ratified tho Treaty of Versailles and thereby entered the League of Nations, the detail problems of tho peace settlement wcukl hove ’been simplified, war-impov-crished nations would have been helped materially along the path of economic -recovery, and America herself would have been saved some of the troubles under which shd is now labouring. These facts aro*in a measure recognised in the present policy of the American Government, and had American political and business leaders realised as clearly in 1919 as many of them, do to-day the extent to which American prosperity hinges on that of other nations, it is likely that the advocates of Treaty ratification would have, carried the day. The enlightening experience under this head that has been gained since the Republican Senators opened their campaign against tho then President’s peace policy puts tho prospects of tho impending Armaments Conference in a rather more hopeful light than they would otherwise wear, and makes it likely that America, as a necessary contribution to her own economic recovery and that of the world, will at least approach in some directions the measure of co-operation with other nations which was contemplated by President Wilson. ■ * ■■■■ * *

Out of 9000 soldier settlers, Mr. Guthrie tells us, there have been only 260 forfeitures and 19 foreclosures, with a total loss of £lO,OOO- This is encouraging news, and shows that the Government is doing its part in seeing the returned men through. Mr. Guthrie’s figures themselves disclose how considerable that part is. While the repayments by tho soldier settlers amount to £1,156,433, tho arrears total .£358,270 and postponements £109,549, less a sum of .£14,855 postponements repaid. Arrears and postponements together amount to over £150,000, or obout 40 per cent, of the amount repaid. In view of the general situation it Was -nly to be expected that many of the settlers would bo behind-hand in their payments. I especially in view of the inexperience of many of them. Mr. Guthrie, in stating that the State’s loss to date is only £lO.OOO, presumably views all the arrears and postponements as Rood money and recoverable. This is a sanguine view, but the soldier settlers have been, and are being, treated on a generous scale. We hope that they will keep their shoulders to tho wheel through

these dull days, and as times improve demonstrate to the country that the State’s forbearance in pressing for repayments in the slump days was well justified. » » * *

Flight having been achieved with engine power to keep the plane moving at a high rate of speed, efforts are now being made to discover what can be done without an engine. This was the original line of experiment, in which the brothers Orville and Wilbur Wright, of tho United States, particularly distinguished themselves. Orville Wright, in 1913, gliding from sandhills with a machine which was an improvement of the early gliders, manoeuvred himself into a rising air current, and succeeded in hovering over ths heads of his friends for more than ten minutes. When he glided down he said lie felt there was nothing to have prevented, him from remaining aloft all the afternoon had he been sp disposed. In Germany since the war distances of more than a mile have been covered in light, motorlees monoplanes, and in August a German society was to carry out. a series of contests in this sport, which ths Germans believe is capable of great extension, and to which they are paying particular attention in view of the Peace Treaty ’ restrictions on aircraft in Germany. In Franco and Switzerland some attention is being given to the construction of man-propelled aeroplanes. M Gabriel Poulain, as tho cable told us, recently covered 10 metres (nearly 11 yards) on his flying foot-bicycle, and hopes presently to fly over 200 metres. In Geneva. M. Bozon has an ingenious machine weighing only 26 pounds, of which great things are hoped. It is passible that those gliding and pedal-flying machines may be pioneering on a path that will presently load, to flying for the million, just as the eccentrics on their velocipedes paved the way to the push-bicycle of today.