Papurau Newydd Cymru

Chwiliwch 15 miliwn o erthyglau papurau newydd Cymru

Cuddio Rhestr Erthyglau

17 erthygl ar y dudalen hon

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From the Poultry Yard.

Taf Fechan Reservoir. I

[No title]

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War and Politics. I

Newyddion
Dyfynnu
Rhannu

War and Politics. I Two subjects were specially prominent last week —the discontent of the attested married men, or I rather the effort to make use of that disctontent in order to shake the stability of the Government, and the trade policy which this country should adopt after the war. The by-election at Market Harborough was supposed to be fought on the case of the married men. But the attitude of the Coalition candidate, Mr Percy Harris, towards the case bore considerable resemblance to that of his opponent, Mr Gibson Bowles. Mr Bowles's real platform appeared to be an appeal to any and every one who had any criticism to make against the Government. Mr Bowles is a born frondeur— every Government has always seemed to him to be in the WTOQg, and that not on one, but on almost every point. Such a temper is particularly dan- gerous in a great national crisis, when even an abnormally sagacious Government, weakly sup- ported, cannot be so useful as a very moderately sagacious Government loyally supported. Mr Runciman, who, as Mr Lloyd George announced in the House of Commons on Tuesday, will be the principal representative of the British Govern- ment at the Allies' Conference on economic sub- jects, has dealt, in an interview, with the Europ- ean problem of meeting the German design to es- tablish a German trade supremacy. Mr Hughes, the Australian Premier, in his speech at the City Carlton Club, dealt with the British Imperial problem of uniting the British Empire against German trade attacks. Mr Long on Tuesday, in the debate on the Army Vote for four million men, made a spirited reply to the charge against the Government of having deceived and betrayed the married men. The Government, he declared, never undertook that no married men would be called to the col- ours until every single man had been taken, and the married men's grievance would only be a real one if it could be shown that the Government were not doing their best to get the single men into the Army. Not only has the Government decided to cut down very largely the list of reserv- ed occupations, but it has also decided that in the case of a whole variety of occupations, men below a certain age are no longer to be exempt. Again, men who joined .these occupations after August 14th, 1915, are not to have the same position in regard to exemption as men in the works before that date. The task of going through the var- ious industries of the country—factories, mines, and munition- works—and ascertaining what men there might be available for military service is, Mr Long said, "being done with a small-tooth Comb." It has been resolved, too, that in the case of agriculture a still larger demand for mili- tary service can with justice be made on those engaged in that industry. Here is ample proof that the Government "are 'doing their best to get the single men into the Army." There is something singularly discreditable in the incitement addressed by a certain section to married men who have attested to revolt against the claim upon their services. The men who have been stirring up this trouble profess to have been the consistent advocates of vigorous prosecu- tion of the war, and they have, for the most part, beea violent conscriptionists. But they have set themselves, merely for the sake of embarrassing the Government, to aggravate some grievances and manufacture others, with the result, if not the deliberate intention, that the national task of pro- viding a steady stream of reinforcements without interfering with the production of munitions is in danger of being seriously hampered, and when these self-advertised "patriots" assure the mar- ried men that under universal conscription there would be no grievances about exemption, they are Tiaking a statement which they must know to be falss. Those bitter and reckless critics of the Govern- ment who have fastened on the grievances of the married men take the same kind of line on the great trade problem as they do on the recruiting problem. Let us have conscription, they ex- claim, make every ma-n a soldier, and let trade go hang—till after the war. When the war is over, let us have Protection, and we shall get back more than all our trade. These people, who be- lieve that the country oughtto be run by a series of passions and panics in the sensational Press, absolutely refuse to recognise any connection or interdependence between the different problems of government. They seem to believe that a nation can live on an exclusive diet of catch-words and war-cries. One day it is "an absolute blockade," and that aJone is to be sufficient to end the war I Another day it is conscription—which would be a ridiculous superfluity if they were right about the blockade. And now .they profess to believe that tariffs, which—according to one prominent Pro- tectionist organ, at any rate—would be directed against both our Allies and our Colonies, would unite both the Empire and all the European States of the Entente in a commercial league of defence.' Because the Government sees the necessity of the most careful consideration for reconciling the in- 1 "eats of the Entente, of our own natiQnal life, of the Dominions, it is denounced by the Protectionist Press for blindness to the existence of any problem at all. The Government is fully awake to the need of preparation against any at- tempt of Germany to renew the war, after mili- tary defeat, in a commercial guise. It is fully alive to the necessity of giving ample weight to the ideas and interests of our Dominions in any plan that may be concerted with our Allies. The real charge against the Government, in those quar- ters where it is attacked upon this head is simply that it will not say "tariffs" when "tariffs" may mean a hundred-and-one different things, and might mean something which would commend it- self neither to our Allies, our Dominions, or the grea.t body of people at home. In a paper on War Finance, read before the Royal Statistical Society, Sir George Paish de- clared that the financial strength of Great Brit- ain in 'war had proved to 'be much greater even than it was believed to be. If allowance is made for the increase in the country's stock of gold since war began, it is evident that the nation has suc- ceeded in meeting nearly the whole of its war ex- penditure out of its income without having needed to draw upon its accumulated capital to any ap- preciable extent. In Germany, where Dr. Hel- fferich, the Finance Minister, no longer talks of being able to run the war without new taxes or of recouping war expenses by indemnities from the conquered, a desperate appeal is being made for support to the Fourth War Loan. "This, the fourth war loan, may" be the last! That is the comfort and hope held out to the poorest, who are told that they can and must contribute. "Every- body can, and all should and must pay." Ger- many is realising every day more acutely that Great Britain's silver bullets are more effective weapons than her own poison gas and piratical submarines I

IBuilth Wesleyan S. School.

PEE¡f$ INTO THE PAST.'I

! Crippled by Leg Ulcers.

Nonconformist Unity.

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IS IT DEGRADING? I

I Duck Shooting in India.

I National Children's Home…

--I War and Bread. I -I

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