NEWS AND NOTES.

Hokitika Guardian, 29 July 1932, Page 2

NEWS AND NOTES.

JOTTINGS GLEANED FROM .OVERSEAS. OTTAWA AND NATIONALISM “There is some danger that the result of Ottawa may seriously prejudice any subsequent negotiations. ■ Those who realise the difference in the points of view with which we and the Dominions approach the problem of tariff preference will not be suiprised if the result is such as not very greatly to increase the volume of trade within the Empire. This will ba„at least a partial success however, if, but only if, it does not idb us of our bargaining power with other countries. But it would be a great disaster if, for the sake of a relatively small increase in Imperial trade, we lost an unexampled opportunity of bargain?, with . ’ foreign countries. —Sir Arthur Salter. POLITICAL SCANDALMONGERING “After manys years of* experience at first hand with the universal and inexplicable quirk in human nature, by Which honest and truthful men become obscene liars the moment the name of a public man is mentioned; after running down, as a newspaper man, an infinite number of circumstantial slanders told ’on unimpeachable authority,’ and never finding one such story to be true, I have adopted an invariable rule tor myself in all such cases. Whenever 1 hear any scandalous story whatever about a public mon I instantly say, without any inquiry whatever, “That is false,’ anddismiss it from my mind. It may happen, once in a hundred times (though it never has yet), that I am mistaken and the story is true; but the chances are so much against it ns not to be worth taking.”—Mr Charles Willis Thompson in his book, “Presidents 1 Have Known,”

BRITAIN’S LOAN CONVERSION “From a national point of view, * there is everything to be said for the war loans operation, foi' not only would the taxpayer benefit from a successful conversion, but trade and industry would also derive advantage from it. The 5 per cent war loan has long hung like a millstone round the neck of British credit, and once removed a stimulus would be given to all fixed-interest-bearing securities. The taxpayer at present is paying on over. £2,000,000,000 "of redeemable war stock, a war instead of a peace rate of interest. During the cheap money period of the ’nineties the discount rate fell to 0.8 per cent, and the yield on consols is only a little below 4 per cent. The margin is to be-come-.narrower by a fall in the. yield on long-term securities—that is to say, through a rise in their price.”—“The Times” City Correspondent. ** INDIA’S POISON WELLS. “In the dark alleys of Bombay’s bazaars a wretched medicant spreads one foul lie after 'another concerning the worshippers of iSiva or the followers of Islam, Generations of effort alone can redeem the callous ignorance of an Indian city. Centuries will pass before the Hindu foigets his quarrel with Mohammedan, compared with the estrangement of Roman Catholic from Orangeman is as nothing. Whatever reforms we give to India, whatever Constitution we frame, and whatever provisions we make for the proper lepresentation of the religious minorities, the Hindu-Moslem problem will remain.” —“Yorkshire Post.” MOTHER EARTH. “The land will never come back to cultivation, the people will, never be restored, whatever fiscal support may be forthcoming from Government, if the work is left to landowner and tenant. No one Ins attempted to supply the gap loft by, the disappearance of the landlord of the days that preceded death duties and high income tax. It was-, and is, the direct object of such taxation to distribute wealth, to pieven the social and economic autocracy of one man in a rural district. It may be a good object...but no countryman can welcome its fulfilment until „ substitute is found for the feudal landowner, who, at the worst, usually performed the function of a cheap land bank in return for amenities rather than moneys.... Half the country is in desperate need of what u-cd to be called estate management.”—Sir William Beach Thomas, speaking at London.