PUBLIC OPINION

Hokitika Guardian, 9 November 1928, Page 5

PUBLIC OPINION

A SWEATED INDUSTRY. “A question which deserves serious consideration is why Lord Birkenhead should !>e deserting politics for tlie city.’ is a point raised hy the “New Statesman.” which goes on to say: “We do not recompense our statesmen very well, as every Ijotl.v knows; hut, when they are driven into the city, or into the writing of pot-boiling hooks does it not become plain that there is something very wrong with this part of the appartus of our political life?”

A HUAI AN FACT

“.M. Briand spies a danger to France” states the London “Star,” “in the fact that Germany still has its population and its factories, ‘which could easily he put to the work of supplying material for war.’ Is it conceivable that he imagines that either German power or German manufacturing ability can he restricted in the interest of French security? Every nation has its men, and in greater or less degree its industrial organisation, and in every case men and material, organised for peace, can, as they were in the Great War, be switched over at short notice to military uses. If that is an argument for suppressing men and manufactures there is an end not onlv of war but of civilisation. ’

THE PEACE PACT

“ This Peace Pact, is a long business requiring great patience and careful study in detail of all the problems which may threaten the future peace. . . . What we are aiming at in the long run is a state of law between nations which will be analogous to the state ol law between individuals, which requires that there shall be a lorce in reserve to restrain those who take the law into their own hands. In any state of the world that we can foresee, a sufficient force for this purpose will remain a necessity. .Disarmament in the meantime must be a collective process. and the cause of peace would not be further if all the young men in the peaceable states declined militaii service and all the young men in the warlike states continued to flock to the standards.”—Mr. J. A. Stender. in the “ London Daily News.”