PUBLIC OPINION

Hokitika Guardian, 20 September 1930, Page 2

PUBLIC OPINION

“DUMMY DIRECTORS. “A business conducted by two or three men who have grown up with it, and probably own it. is doing well. It is decided to turn it into a public company. More capital is obtained from investors; and to get it an ornamental hoard is formed. Frequently such a hoard is constituted from what looks like a panel of professional directors—politicians, lawyers, retired army and navy qfficiers, a Lord or two, and sonic stray knights. The original proprietors sell out and get out. The board meets once a month, instead of being daily on the job as the old private proprietors were,” writes .Mr L.\Y. Matters, M.P., in “Lang’s Monthly.” “At this stage there is plenty of capital, hut there is no drive an initiative. Nothing can he done without the sanction oi tiie board. Impressed by its own pomposity and importance and blissfully blind to its own ignorance, it lays a cold clammy hand upon those in the enterprise who could do tilings. Every detail, even to considering an order for a new model of an article for which the trade is clamouring, must be referred to it—once a month.” THE GREAT ROLL. “There was 11 (feeling abroad that we were now living in an age in which every indecency was permitted, He prpfundly believed that was not so,” said Mr Hugh "Walpole, the novelist, at an Edinburgh function, reports the

‘‘Scotsman.” “He believed every literature represented the age in which it appeared, lie believed it must be directly connected wjth tiie feelings and thoughts of the age. He believed our present age had thrown over, and wisely, very much of the hyproci.sy of the past, and he believed we were concerned now with a frankness and directness of speech, not on the whole with an obsession with things that were not worth oui while and not worth stating. There

was to-day, and his audience would agree with him, a succession of splendid tilings which it was worth their while to print, assuring them that the great roll of English letters was continuing and continuing splendid, and would never cease.”

BRIAN I)’S “UNITED STATES OF EUROPE.”

“Public opinion in .Britain.” says the ‘'Yorkshire Post,” “will, we think, be disposed to adopt an attitude of some reserve toward the proposal now outlined by M. Briand. It would certainly lie a. mistake to dismiss it as some visionary scheme of an international! idealist. M. Briand is not that. It would be equally unjust, doubtless, to refuse all consideration of it on the supposition that its intention is mainly to perpetuate a French hegemony in Europe. But it will not be possible nor wou/d it be right .'for Britain to consider the role of such a federation and her own relationship to it without remembering that she is first and foremost the centre of the British commonwealth of nations and only in the second place European.” “P.R.” I XBRITAIN. “But there are some things the Pr imo Minister cannot do. He cannot give to the smallest party Proportional Representation. It is (useless tin ask for it. The Labour Party will not have it. The Unionists are as hostile to it. Three-fourths of the present House of Commons would vote against it, An equal bulk of the country does not want it. Nothing on earth can enable Liberalism to force It, The Alternative Vote or the Second Ballot they might secure in ibio Parliament. They w'oitld be wise to accept ■either while the chance offers. As .Ssuieho Pan/,a, says, ‘When you can’t get what you like you liuvd like what you can get.’ ” —Mr Calvin, in the “Observer.”