FROM THE WATCH TOWER

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 7, 30 March 1927, Page 8

FROM THE WATCH TOWER

By the LOOK-OUT MAN A tale of pretty diplomacy was told by the Rev. W. G. Monckton at the luncheon of the Rotary Club. It concerned the building of submarines by the — ] French GovernPRETTY | ment, a move DIPLOMACY ; which caused England some uneasiness. Lord Balfour tried a simple plan on M. Briand. He said to him: “You are reported to be the greatest orator in Europe; let us hear something of what your country suffered in the war.” M. Briand began his speech and by judicious applause was led on to a condemnation of submarine warfare on merchantmen. Then Balfour prepared a memoranda which stipulated that the powers were not to use submarines against merchantmen, and suggested to the Frenchman that he should have the honour of signing it first. M. Briand fell. His act cost him his official head and gave Balfour the Knighthood of the Garter. In no city. West or East, writes Mr. Aldous Huxley in an American journal, have I ever had such an impression of dense, rank, richlyclotted life, as in • Shanghai. Old | LIFE IN | Shanghai is BergI SHANGHAI I son’s elan vital ‘ in the raw, so to speak, and with the lid off. Nothing more intensely living can be imagined. There are as many people—there are very .likely more —in an equal area of London or Lahore, or Glasgow or Bombay; but there is not so much life. n,ach individual Chinaman has more vitality, you feel, than each individual Indian or European, and the social organism composed of these .ndividnals is therefore more intensely alive than the social organism in India or the West. Or perhaps it is the vitality of the social organism—a vitality accumulated and economised through centuries by ancient habit and tradition—perhaps it is the intense aliveness and strength of the Chinese civilisation which gives to individual Chinamen their air of possessing a superabundance of life beyond the vital wealth of every other race. So much life, so carefully canalised, so rapidly and strongly flowing—the spectacle of it inspires something like terror. Unemployment insurance is now accepted as a permanent feature of Great Britain’s code of social legislation which, by the way, promises to run far ahead of ( ] New Zealand’s j THE EVIL OF j traditional reUN EM PLOY- | cord. That must j MENT ! be the outstand- ' ‘ tng impression of anyone who has read the comprehensive report of the Blanesburgh Committee on the subject. This committee was appointed by the British Ministry of Labour “to consider, in the light of experience gained in the working of the Unemployment Insurance scheme, what changes in the scheme, if any, ought to be made.” The conclusion of the committee in favour of the continuation of a compulsory contributory scheme of unemployment insurance was unanimous. The only difficulty is that of devising and maintaining ade-

quate safeguards against the abuse of the scheme in practice. On this point the committee took refuge in a pious recommendation that the claims of persons who have drawn 13 weeks of benefit in a period of 26 w'eeks should be specially examined. Then, in addition, the committee urges that, first and foremost, all steps should be taken to reduce the evil of unemployment. The core of the revised scheme of unemployment insurance is, of course, compulsory contribution. In promoting that vital principle, the committee j— 1 certainly did not j OUT OF j seek to impose WORK | any undue hardI PAYMENTS | ship on workers. 1 1 The scale of proposed contributions is moderate and, in relation to prospective benefits, really generous. Here is the schedule of contributions and benefits:—Men, 5d a week (unemployment benefit, 17s); v omen, 3Jd (15s); young men of 18 to 21 years, 4d (10s); young women of the same ages, 3d (8s); boys from 16 to 18 years of age, 2Jd (6s): and girls, 2d (ss). Special conditions are recommended aimed at the prevention of improvidence and voluntary idleness in order to secure easy benefits. It is proposed that employers, workers and the State should contribute to the unemployment fund in equal proportion. Domestic servants and agricultural workers are still excluded, apparently on the principle that there is never any dearth of employment in their spheres of service. The only flaw in the committee's proposals is that they cannot come into operation until the existing scheme is paying its way. its present overdraft is £21,000,000.