NOTES OF THE DAY

Dominion, Volume 15, Issue 66, 10 December 1921, Page 6

NOTES OF THE DAY

If it had to be assumed that he epoke with authority on behalf of the Irish people,. Mr. do Valera’s rejection of the peace terms . would open up a desperately serious situation. Obviously.if he weregenerally supported in- this attitude it would have to be concluded that a peaceful settlement with Ireland on- any terms was outside tho range of possibility. Happily, however, there are already substantial- grounds for believing that his decision is simply that of a fanatic who is no longer in a . position to exercise a decisive influence on tho course of events. It cannot be doubted that the true sentiments of the people of Southern Ireland found expression in the joyous acclamations with which the settlement was greeted in Dublin and in the "messages indicating the most supreme satisfaction” which reached the Sinn Fein headquarters "from all corners of Ireland.” In the circumstances. Mr. de Valera merely makes himself ridiculous by asserting that the terms of the agreement "are in violent conflict the wishes of the majority of the Irish, people as expressed freely at successive elections during the last three years.” The absurdity of his attitude is equally apparent, in light of the fact that the agreement was signed on behalf of the Sinn Foin by men some of whom have been classed hitherto with the most extreme element of the party. It is not clear meantime that Mr. de Valera will be able to effect. any serious split in the Sinn Fein ranks, but should his influence extend so far, a full remedy no doubt will be found by submitting the peace terms to a plebiscite of the people of Ireland.

Labour in New .South Wales is travelling fast on a down-hill road. It was not attractively represented on the Sydney City Council, and its day is over there for the time being. In the State Parliament the ■ party’s hold on officl seems almost at an end. The resignation. of the Speaker in the Legislative Assembly has forced a crisis, and from all accounts it seems that some sort of a jolt is needed to bring political New South Wales in touch with reality again. , The Labour policy has been a spending policy, and the greater part of the spending has been done in and around Sydney, so that population has drifted—-or rather rushed—citywards as flies gather round a jampot. Only a few days ago we had the evidence of the State Railways Commissioner that the country is going back and actual production is falling off. In the past Labour in Australia aimed at "the cultivation of an enlightened and selfreliant community." In New South Wales to-day it has fallen so low that it actually proposed to finance a policy measure by a State lottery, it is in more or less open alliance with the gambling interest, and it seems that a corner of Hyde Park, Sydney, has been permanently dedicated to raising funds by various gambling devices for the Australian Labour Parly. Labour in New South Wales has been keeping bad company, lias acquired bad habits, and the sooner it has a little leisure out of office to overhaul itself the better it will be for the State.

In what he had to say in his Message to Congress about America’s trade and financial relationships with the rest of the world President Harding gave first place to the factor of moral obligation. “We cannot," he said, "dwell in industrial and commercial exclusion and at the same time do the just thing iu aiding world reconstruction and readjustment.” Mo added, however, that the United States .could not profit by selfish

aloofness, and the sound truth embodied in this statement perhaps offers tho best reason for believing that America may yet bo induced not only to modify her tariff restrictions on import trade, but to review the position in regard to the loans made to Allied countries during the war period. .The extent to which self-interest, .enters into these questions was frankly emphasised by the Governor of the Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank when be declared recently that America could “'better afford to mark off” the ten billion dollars of debt owed by Europe "than see Europe go t</ bankruptcy or ruin our foreign, market.” Another American authority, Dr. Anderson, of the Chase National Bank, maintained not long ago in addressing the United States Manufacturers’ Export Association, that it would be distinctly bad policy from the standpoint of American manufacturers to try .to shut Europe out of the American homo market by high protective tariffs. The thing which would promise most for revival, he said, "would be a real and. vigorous increase in imports to the United States of European manufactures. It would start, tho circle of trade again; it "would open up the copper mines, and dissolve the glut of rubber, wool, and other raw materials.” If politicians in America once take firm hold, of the idea that she is injuring her own interests as well as those of foreign countries by a commercial policy of exclusion and isolation, the obvious remedy will doubtless 'be applied. i » * * *

Man does not live by bread alone, but unless the economic side of life is in order the. rest is apt to be out of gear, and it is interesting to find, an acute observer declaring .that it is for this reason the Versailles Conference failed. Europe was carved up in the peace settlement on political lines, more or less on the Wilsonian principle of self-deter-mination for separate nationalities. In the "American Review” Mr. Frank H. Simonds, who is recognised as one of the. best informed American writers on international affairs, declares that nationalism as a boundary line in Europe may be moral and righteous, but it is economically abhorrent. Europe has been Balkanised and broken up into little rival' States, each sparring with its neighbours, marking its frontiers with barbed wire, and even lifting rails. The p-eat Danube Valley, which is even more an economic unit than that of the Mississippi, has been broken up into innumerable States, and at each frontier commerce is halted. Some of these States by good fortune, though not by any good management of the re-creators of Europe, are in a position to create new economic systems, others are not, and are doomed. These have not the potential resources to become self-supporting, and without them their continued indth pendcnce does not seem possible. The unfortunate' new countries have suffered greatly themselves, and the suffering has extended far beyond their borders in consequence of the collapse of their external trade. The failure of the diplomats to reconcile national ' aspirations with the more prosaic considerations of' bread and butter is being paid .ter heavily in Europa.