PUBLIC OPINION

Hokitika Guardian, 7 January 1932, Page 6

PUBLIC OPINION

“POCKET-POLITICS.” . “Do we realise even yet what it means?” asks Mr J. L. Garvin in the “Observer.*’ “A policy making for bankruptcy, class-hate, disintegration, and the fall of our land for ever, has been smashed, pulverised, and annihilated by the vote of a free democracy. ‘Pocket-politics’ as against patriotism have been rejected by millions and millions of working-class .electors, men and women, who were assailed by the most inflammatory and insidious appeals to their personal interests. Many ot the unemployed, many of those on the do.e, many others subject to ‘cuts and inductions, voted for ‘Britain first.' It is the finest thing of its kind in the whole history of democracy, and one of the finest things of any kind in the political history of the world?’

KNOWLEDGE. “Piety is a very fine word,” said Mr Baldwin at a recent school function, i “which, in common parlance, has suffered from degradation. It has come to be confused with being ‘pie,’ whereas it means nothing of the kind. Pieta-s really is that gift of reverence for nil things tliat are good; that gift of performing your duty primarily to those among whom you live and through them to your country and the world, your duty to God and man. True knowledge covers a very wide field. It means knowledge of yourself, which is not common, and implies knowledge of your own ignorance, which is not common, the possession of which would save you from talking the most unutterable rot when ypu grow up.” THE! BANK OF ENGLAND. “If the Bank of England were owned by the Exchequer it would not- change its policy. If the directors were nominated by the Government and the same experts were appointed, it would not change their policy. If, however, when they were nominated by the Government and they were chosen not for their financial skill hut because of their political doctrines, I need hardly *say that the Bank of England would soon he a worthless institution. The value of the Bank of England now is that no one in the world distrusts its integrity. It Has been the clearing bank for other banks. There is not a bank you can name that does noit use tlie Bank of England as its bank. Do you think these banks would feel comfortable' if the directors of the Bank of England were chosen for any reason except the uprightness of their character and their knowledge of British and international finance?—The Rt. Hon. Mr Walter Rundman, President of the Board of Trade

“PLUG IN THE TUB.” “Air Stimson (United States Secretary of State),”'comments the “Financial News” of London, ' “remarked hi Paris that the first thing to do was to see that ‘the plug was in the tub.’ The plug is'not", perhaps, -very firmly- fixed or absolutely watertight, but it is m position. Quietly a-rpd unobtrusively the banking interests are taking steps to hold it there, and to pave the way for a return of capital to Germany. There is am increasing confidence among those most closely in touch with the situation that the wind will be successfully tempered to the shorn lamb. The German crisis is not over, hut it is being taken in hand far more thoroughly than appeal's on the surface.”