NEWS AND NOTES.

Hokitika Guardian, 30 April 1931, Page 2

NEWS AND NOTES.

KU K LUX KLAN. After a period of suspended animation tlie Ku Klux Rian lias, it ig imported, again given signs of renewed activity. Two Labour agitators in Kansas City tell a story that they were captured and beaten into insensibility with knotted ropes. The two men had been arrested for inciting to disorder, and they alleged that when they were released the Ku Klux Klan posse kidnapped them and left them half dead by the roadside as a protest against their extremist propaganda and the denunciation of the oppression of the blacks bv the whites. That they had been seriously assaulted was evident from the condition they were in when found by a negro labourer, who hid them and looked after them for-several day. The men accuse the police of being in league with the Klan and of making no attempt to discover the perpetrators of the outrage.

AERODROMES for BRITAIN. The Aerodromes Committee of tho Royal Institute of BrHsih Architects, in its first report, suggests that the mjnitnum of landing fields In Britain serve the purposes of the pest ten year should be one of every twenty miles, Along rouoh.used air routes they should be at much smaller intervals, and if American opinion of one every ten mile 6 were made tho basis, three hundred new landing grounds and permanent equipment would be needed in Great Britan. The report shows that the committee is opposed to these stations being established by private enterprise, for it contains the opinion that the vast mass °f future aerodromes should he provided and owned by the community through its local government organisations. The idea is gaining ground in the Old Country that the day is very near when it will he recognised that a municipal aerodrome is, something that every town must pro= vide. BUDGET SECRECY. There must have been an intense eagerness in the Mother Country to learn the details of the proposals that the Chancellor of the Exchequer is making in his Budget; but such secrets are always well kept. There is an impression that the Chancellor takes no one into his confidence, hut actually a good many people must know his scheme of finance before it is announced, Gladstone used to consult authorities and experts on particular points, and new principles must always be approved by Cabinet, Then the Treasury officers and the printers necessarily know the details. It is, or used to he, customary, also, for the Chancellor to explain his proposals to the Sovereign. It is thus impossible to confine the knowledge to one or two individuals only. Yet it is only on the rarest occasions that even a hint of the proposals leaks out, and the hare suspicion that, confidence haci been broken would be enough to cause a scandal.