A BACKGROUND TO THE NEWS

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 87, 7 January 1935, Page 5

A BACKGROUND TO THE NEWS

Abyssinia and Italy Abyssinia has requested the League of Nations to apply Article Eleven of the Covenant permitting action directed at safeguarding peace. This article reads: “Any threat of war, whether immediately affecting any Members of the League or not, is hereby declared a matter of concern to the whole League, and the League shall take any action that may be deemed wise and effectual to safeguard the peace of Nations. In case any such emergency should arise the Secretary-General shall, on the request of any Member of the League; forthwith summon a meeting of the Council. It is also declared to be the friendly right of each Member of the League to bring to the attention of the Assembly or of the Council any circumstances whatever affecting international relations which threaten to disturb international peace or the good understanding between nations upon which peace depends.” Herring Fisheries.

One with a knowledge of the herring fisheries in England has stated that numbers of Scottish fishwives flock annually to Lowestoft for the packing of the catch, which is cured as salt or pickled fish for export, and kippers, bloaters or red herrings for home consumption. While the fishermen are moving round from port to port, following the appearance of the spawning herring in each locality from north to south in turn, the fishwives are. following the fleet on land. There are four methods by which fish may be preserved: by freezing, drying, salting, and smoking. Freezing is only used to preserve the fish for short periods until they can be put on the market in a fresh condition. Drying is not practised much in northern climates, but is a very common method in warm and tropical countries where the sun’s heat is sufficiently strong. The fish are generally cleaned and cut open, and laid in the sun until they are hard and dry, sometimes after a previous application of salt. In the case of salting the cleaned fish are packed in barrels in salt; after they have settled the resulting liquor is run off- and a few more layers of fish and salt are placed on top. Smoking is a combination of salting and drying, and ‘upon the degree of either process the flavour of the cured fish depends. When being smoked the fish are hung up in special smoking houses. The smoke is produced by burning sawdust which only smoulders and gives off dense volumes of smoke. Red herrings, bloaters and kippers are all smoked herring, the only difference being that the degree of _ salting or smoking varies for each kind. Of the three the red herring is the most strongly salted. They are thoroughly buried in salt for at least five days in large tanks and are then hung up in the smoke houses where they remain about ten days. The bloater is only immersed in brine for a couple of hours and then smoked for a night. A kippered herring is split down the back and then immersed from half an hour to an hour, according to size, in strong brine and then smoked for a night. Quotas on Meat.

The Australian Government is reported to have warned the British Government that, should the latter take steps permanently to restrict Australian meat exports, there would undoubtedly be a reaction against a further development of the Australian market for British goods. The terms of the Ottawa Agreements, which are now supposed to regulate the trade relationships between the Dominions and Great Britain, brought about the resignation of Lord Snowden towards the end of 1932. “The British’Delegation,” he said in his letter of resignation to Mr. Ramsay MacDonald, “went to Ottawa with the declared intention of increasing inter-imperial trade and securing a general lowering of world tafiffs. . . . They have come back, after weeks of acrimonious disputes and sordid struggles with vested interests, with agreements wrenched from them to avert a collapse of the Conference and an exposure to the world of the hollowness of the talk of Imperial sentiment in economic affairs. • . . The British delegates have come back, with agreements to maintain existing tariffs; to increase duties on food imports; to impose a duty on wheat; and to raise the price of meat and bacon by some incomprehensible plan for restricting foreign imports.. «. The Dominions are to have a free market here, while retaining their protective, and often prohibitive, duties against British trade. We have undertaken to denounce some of our trade agreements with foreign countries. The Dominions are to dictate to us where we shall buy and where we shall not buy. The agreements have surrendered our fiscal autonomy, and handed over to the Dominions the control of British trade policy, reducing this country below the status of a Dominion.” Later he said: “The principal Australian delegate publicly stated that unless Great Britain was willing to concede their demands ‘we should have to go outside to foreign countries and we should take away the preferences from you.’ ”