Wairarapa Times-Age SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 1940. A PROPOSAL BADLY TIMED.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 24 February 1940, Page 4

Wairarapa Times-Age SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 1940. A PROPOSAL BADLY TIMED.

and others who are keenly desirous of seeing up-to-date public baths provided in Masterton would be wise to do everything in their power to induce the Borough Council to reverse a decision at which it arrived at its meeting last Tuesday evening. The. decision was to apply to the Local Government Loans Board for authority to raise a loan to meet the cost of either tepid or open-air cold water swimming baths —the respective estimates of cost being £18,700 and £13,400. In the circumstances that have now arisen the course thus decided upon is something worse than a futile waste ol time. No intelligible reason appears to have been given by any member of the council for submitting to the Loans Board proposals which it may be expected as a matter of course to reject. If any question of good, faith with the Masterton Swimming Club or with others who have pressed for the construction of baths is involved, the obligation would have been honoured better by inviting the club to reconsider the position, as one or two councillors suggested, in light of the new conditions that, have developed. It is reasonably certain that the only effect of submitting the baths proposals to the Loans Board ■will be to kill the proposals for the time being. It would be better to do nothing at all. Even in these days of war, the improvement of the town water supply may be worth prosecuting as a necessary if not overdue improvement. With hosing restrictions in force, and in spite of a fairly considerable amount of rain, the water pressure has been extremely poor in many parts of the town during the present summer. Taking into account with others the question of protection against fire, the proposal that a sum of £lO,OOO should be expended in main-clearing improvements —works which it, is stated, will fit- into a more extended improvement, of the water supply to be undertaken later —can hardly be called extravagant, or premature. The Borough Council has already placed before the Local Government Loans Board a proposal to raise a loan to meet the cost of its limited water-supply improvement scheme. This may be approved, but the baths proposal is in a different category and the board no doubt will refuse to regard it as urgent. No good purpose, therefore, is to be served by submitting it. Those who most earnestly desire the construction of modern, public baths when the project becomes feasible would be wise to concentrate on the only step in that direction that, is likely to prove practicable for the time being—an improvement in the water supply. It would be useless in any ease to provide baths until the water supply has been improved very considerably and this evidently is not the time at which the whole of the outlay called for can be provided for and met. The sensible thing to do is to proceed with the improvement of the water supply if possible and to let the baths proposal stand over until more favourable circumstances arise. A reasonable lead by the Borough Council on these lines no doubt would be accepted and approved.

WORKERS AND THE WAR. DECLARATION by the conference which has just taken place between a British Labour delegation and the French Socialist, leaders —a declaration emphatically denouncing Nazi and Soviet aggression and staking the hopes of the workers on an Allied victory—is the more to be welcomed because some difficulties no doubt stood in the way of its being made. Until the present war broke out, Labour and Socialist bodies everywhere drew a clear and wide distinction between Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. That distinction appears to have been in a considerable measure warranted. It is not in doubt that under the Nazis the German workers have been and are being exploited ruthlessly as enslaved servitors cf the war machine. On the other hand, those who are by no means prepared to approve the policy and methods pursued in Russia have been constrained to admit that in. that, country a great deal has been done to improve the lot of the workers. Where the evidence bearing on this question is concerned, it is difficult at times to differentiate between dependable information and propaganda which may paint an unduly bright picture of what, has been and is being accomplished. It is not, in doubt, however, that there is a great and marked contrast, in social standards and ideals in Germany and in Russia. These circumstances naturally influenced very considerably the outlook of Labour Barty members and Socialists. The whole position as it, stands, however, is dominated by the fact that the Soviet dictatorship has entered into a partnership in crime with the Nazis and has not, only combined with the latter in cutting up the spoils of Poland, but is proceeding on its own account to crush by brute force the liberties of the gallant Finnish people. Against, this unmistakable demonstration of evil intention any favourable and hopeful view that might have been taken of the policy of the present Sovietdictatorship has fallen to the ground. No element of good intention can be attributed to a. dictatorship that is prepared to enter into partnership, as has the Soviet, with the entirely unscrupulous and reactionary Nazi regime. The fullest justification thus appears for the declaration of the Allied Labour and Socialist conference that if Hitler and Stalin won the war it would mean “the annihilation or enslavement of peoples, the ruin of culture and destruction of the workers’ hopes,” and that on the contrary an Allied victory would mean peace founded on justice, equality and free collaboration.

THE ALLIES AND THE NORTH. AJO dear explanation has yet been given of the reasons which led to the supersession of Mr Leslie TTore-Belisha as British Secretary of State for War, but an interesting, if imaginative, suggestion on the subject was made a month or so ago by a staff correspondent of the “Christian Science Monitor,” Mr 11. B. Elliston, who was then visiting Sweden. Cabling from Stockholm on January 2G last, Mr Elliston said that “the whole question as to whether the great neutral belt stretching from Lapland, in Northern Finland, to the Belgian frontier is to be transformed from a chessboard into a battlefield is believed to be in the balance, and the ITore-Belisha incident is believed to be one of the signs pointing to the turn events will take.” Whether or not opinion here (Stockholm) rests on adequate foundations (Mr Elliston observed), the fact remains that the neutrals feel the Allies are thinking of snatching the initiative themselves. These regard Scandinavia as placed so that it could turn the heavily entrenched West Front, and therefore they are alive to the possibility of directing the campaign to that quarter. They think that Mr Hore-Belisha’s resignation removes a key man who was opposed to adventures in Scandinavia. This theory is developed ingeniously by the American correspondent, but events and developments since he penned his dispatch obviously do not suggest that his anticipations arc likely to be realised. On the contrary, they go far to show that these anticipations were unfounded. The fact that no big-scale move on behalf of Finland lias yet been made is in itself almost conclusive. Heroic as it has been and is, the stand of the Finns against Russia, taking account, of the scale on which they have thus far been assisted and are likely to be, cannot well be continued indefinitely. That apart, any suggestion that the Allies would violate Scandinavian neutrality in order to assist, the Finns may be dismissed confidently. The rest; of the story is that; Norway and Sweden seem less than ever inclined to depart from their neutrality in order to make common cause with Finland. King Gustav’s speech of a few days ago, in which he declared sorrowfully lint resolutely that Sweden would not give military aid to Finland, and the attitude Norway has taken up over the Altmare.k incident, appear to be reasonably conclusive on that point. It therefore seems likely that the real reason for Mr llore-Belisha’s resignation has yet to be disclosed.