Rangitikei Advocate. SATURDAY, APRIL 11, 1908. EDITORIAL NOTES.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXIII, Issue 9119, 11 April 1908, Page 4

Rangitikei Advocate. SATURDAY, APRIL 11, 1908. EDITORIAL NOTES.

RECENT cablegrams from London show that the expected wave of depression is making itself felt in Britain. During March imports decreased by five and a half millions and exports by nearly two millions as compared with the previous March. Even more significant evidence is given by the fact that there is a diminution of nearly half a million tons in ships under construction in British yards compared with the same period of last year. According to a recent speech by Mr Lloyd George the depression is not likely to be a lasting one, but there can be no doubt that the wave of prosperity which has existed all over the world has reached its height and that for a time at least a period of diminished profits must be expected. To the British tariff reformers the state of affairs will offer some encouragement as business men will be more inclined to listen to proposals for the exclusion of foreign goods at a time when they are in difficulties than when trade is prosperous and profits large. At the same time wo believe that the contention of free traders that depression of trade has far more serious results in protected than in free trade countries will prove in the present case to be a correct one and we shall study with keen interest the ‘effects of the existing conditions on the imports and exports of Germany and other countries where protective tariffs are in force.

SOME indication of the state of affairs in Germany is afforded by the opinion of the editor of the Frankfurter Zeitung, who recently wrote as followsWe have for some months been unmistakably on the downward track. Yet the present situation does not look as if we had juat'pmerged from a season of great prosperity, but much more as if this wore the closing scene of a European war, or the ruin left by some other great destructive agency. Even in the previous year (11J0G) the working classes of Germany found small comfort in the high level of values, for, owing to the increased price of the necessaries of life, they lost all (and, perhaps, more than all) of the profit they gained from the thriving state ,’of industry. . . Though things up to the present have not culminated in an actual crisis or a general smash, yet there is universal stagnation. There are no transactions on the Bourse, its functions are atrophied in an unparalleled fashion, its foreign business and even its home issues are almost at a standstill, and the possessors of every kind of security are brooding over heavy losses. ”

IT is satisfactory to find that in the opinion of the Inspectors for the Auckland Education Board the certificate of proficieucy°examinatiou through which free secondary education is obtained has had a most vitalising influence upon the work of the older pupils in the primary schools. It has been a direct incentive to many and the impulse thus given has spread far and wide. The report quotes this as against “the depreciation of school examinations that has been so conspicuous a feature in our recent educational policy. ’’ Faddists have had so much to say on the evils of examinations that the public is in danger of not realising how valuable they can be made to both pupils and teachers. It is, therefore, satisfactory to find capable authorities who have a good word to say for what in the past has been regarded as a useful method of testing the efficiency of the teacher and the knowledge and intelligence of the pupil. Children, like many of their elders, do not work for the love of work nor are they generally inspired with a desire to acquire knowledge for its own sake. Therefore examinations, by providing some immediate and attainable object, servo the purpose of'stimulating the young to exorcise their faculties more energetically and give the teacher a standard to which ho must endeavour to raise his pupils.