1939-11-15 — Page 14

Wednesday,

HONGKONG TELEGRAPH

November 15, 1939.

1940

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The

Hongkong Telegraph.

Wyndham St., Hongkong 'Phone 26615 November 15, 1939

Twilight of Ideologies

A conspicuous and significant featuro of the present war has heen the sudden and spectacular erumbling of ideological anta- Igoniam which were regarded ny fundamental. Tho most striking

S. MOUTRIE & CO., LTD. illustration of this tendency was

YORK BUILDING

COMMENCING

AT

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TO-MORROW

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THE

DRAMA SCREAMING KILLER'S FROM TORTURED BRAIN !

CHESTER

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A during doctor plerces the dark re- cesses of a crimi nal's mind...to start stark terror creep. ing through a house of lip toning doom!

ANN "E

MORRIS BELLAMY DVORAK

Blind Alley

JOAN PERRY MELVILLE COOPER ROSE STAADNER

Screen play hy..

Philip MacDonald, Michuet Blankfort, Albert Dolfy Directed by CHARLES VIDOR

A COLUMBIA, PICTURE

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sociation with the Grand Hotel dos Wagons Lits, Poking

the Soviet-German non-aggression pact, which proved in practice to be a mutual aggression pet. directed against, unfortunate Po- land.

For years anti-bolshevism had been a cardinal tenunt of the Nazi faith and anti-fascism had been

Com- the leading article in the munist credo. Yet, as thoughtful observera with first-hand know- ledge of the two regimes recogniz- ed, there had been a steady increase in points of similarity between Germany's "brown. bolshie- vism" and Russia's "red fascism." The temptation to despoil a weaker neighbour proved the final factor in bringing about a rapproche- ment, if not an actual alliance. between the two countries.

Equally striking was the abrupt turn for the better in the relations between the Soviet Union and Japan. There was a long tradi- tion of bitter hostility between these two countries, and there had been periodic outbursts of border] fighting which sometimes brought into action tanka and airplanes as well as less formidable weapons. But it is perhaps as easy for the Soviet Union and Japan to come to an understanding at the expense of China as it was for the Soviet Union and Germany to strike a for the spoilation of

WHO'S A FUNK?

GENTLEMEN

GENTLEMEN

ADOLF THE IMPRESARIO: "Not a very promising audience, Rib., old boy."

Something to

be proud of

N

ment.

OT the least striking result of the last few weeks has been the renovation of Parlia-

It has become, in a pivotal way, the focus of national attention and interest in a fashion that has hardly been the case since 1031.

It is not merely that the vital ministerial pronouncements are

made there. It is not merely. elther, that the debates have reached an extraordinarily high level.

It is above all, because Parliament has found itself again. Ita criticisma of núministration have been acute and direct. Its ability to formuinto griev- ance has been prompt and incisive.

To what is this renovation dua? Above all, I think, to two things.

First, it is the response to a wide- spread public demand that the war should intensify and not diminish the strength of democratic in- stitutions.

The electorate is not willing to wage & war for freedom and to lose that right of freo discussion which is of freedom's essence.

It is duo, secondly, to the fact that the Labour Party is a real Opposition, free to criidelse and attack.

At no point in our history has the value, as a political instrument, of His Majesty's Opposition been more clear. It has been able to reflect popular doubts. It has been ablo-Mr. Grean- wood's famous challenge of September 2 is the supremo instanco-to voice irresistibly popular demand.

Morn: it is clear that a Government eo circumstanced must show excep. tional energy and exceptional ability if it in to survive. Ministerial reputations, closely examined in debate, will not survive the discovery of incapacity.

There are many examples of this. The success of Evacuation was due to Opposition pressure. Bo, too, was the important decision that youths under are not to be sent to

Franc.

So, also, was the agree ment

reorganise Dr. Burgin's narrow and bureaucratic decision about the Ministry of Supply.

bargain Palund.

The sacrifice of ideological con siderations for the sake of selfish national interests in no new thing. During the Thirty Years War Cardinal Richelleu leagued himself with Protestant states in order to

The country is in no mood for the. push the French frontier enatward complacent confidence of the pre-war to the disadvantage of a Roman days. The House has become aware Catholic Emperor. King Francis 1 of this. It realises that the Govern

of France mado an alliance with the Mohammedan Turks against his immediato enemy, the Emperor

Charles V.

The rapid reorganisation of the Min istry of Information has been the out- come of the fact that it ineptitude could not face the barrage of Parlia

mentary criticism.

ment is on trial, and knows that its own future depends upon ita ability to return a verdict in accordance with the view of public opinion.

It is impossible not to contrast this situation with that in Germany.

No steps Hitler may take, measure upon which he may deelde, has to run the gamut of criticism.

no

There is no instrument in Germany to-day through which opinion may make itself falt or through which inter-grievanco may seek its appropriate

remedy. The whole population re mains the inert recipient at orders which it must obey without scruting and without explanation

The recent spectacular shifts in international relations must have brought bitter but perhaps ultimate- ly salutary reflections to certain passionate partisans in national affairs who have persisted until very recently in regarding the Soviet Union as the shining

Above all, it linotable that in Ger- knight in red armour who would many change in the Government would be equivalent to a revolution; put the decadent democracies to

the whole fabric of the State roste shame and save weakor peoples upon the power of the Nazis to main- apparatus of from the onslaught of Naz! Gertain their ghastly

coercion. many.

For the open opponent there lá the Similar confusion must have been scaffold; for the critle there is tho brought into the ranks of equally

passionate partisans in Far Eastern champion of China against Japanese affairs who have persistently, ad- aggression Chiang Kai-shek, when vocated the conception of the he is able to do so, will probably Soviet Union as the chivalrous tell a very different story.

By HAROLD

LASKI

concentration camp. To say of Goebbels or of Goering what Mr. Greenwood has sald of Dr. Burgin would, in Germany, have been equivalent to a prison sentence.

With

this is not the ourselves, th

A caso and cannot be the case. major failure on the part of the Government will lead to its recon- stitution as easily and as painlessly as Mr. Asquith gave way to Mr. Lloyd George in 1916.

One has only to read the questions in the House of Commons, or the com- ments in the pablin Presa, to see that the nation retains its self-respect by seeing that the process of govern- ment is submitted to examination.

The Government's ilfo depends upon its_response to criticism and warning. It has not the power, It dare not take the power, to black-out public opinion.

It governs a body of free citizens, more aware than in any previous time that the maintenance of their freedom is the fundamental condition of their victory.

Parliament is an old institu tion, with nearly seven hundred years of accumulated tradition as What it has re- its foundation. vealed in these five weeks of crisis and of war is its capacity for self- regeneration.

Its exercise of its function re- markably illustrates the difference between democracy and dictator- ship. In the one, citizenship is a positive function; in the other it has ceased to be a function at all.. In the one, the administration must make its way by eliciting consent; in the other, it must make ita way by im. posing coercion. In the one, what touches all must be decided by all; in the other, the basis of the regime is a denial that the people have a fight to decide.

Democracy demands, in its Parlia

mentary form, the co-operation of, its cluzens as the basis of its effec-" Liveness, Dictatorship is driven to refuse that co-operation-sinco its own inherent logic is incom- patible with its exercise.

The life of a Parliamentary democracy is, therefore, the life of reasoned discussion. But the life of a dictatorship is, in its public napect, one in which reasoned dis- cussion is necessarily fath to the end a dictatorship has in view. Valike democracy, it cannot afford the luxury of citizens who find their self-respect in freedom.

The British people has only begun to tread a long road, the end of which is not yet in sight. There are going to bo triala and AIM- culties. The one thing to which it must cling fast is the realisation that in a free Parliament, func- tioning in a free democracy it has forged the basic instrument of victory.

It must not allow itself to be diverted from that understanding. The higher the stature of Parila- ment in this crists, the higher also will be its own stature."

The more it insists ppon the full performance of Parliament's func- tion, the more profoundly it will secure the perpetuation of its own freedom.

And it must, above all, remem- ber as it watches the proceedings in Parliament, that its heart les in the duty of the Opposition fear- lessly to analyse the operations of the Ministry.

Criticism in war time is even more the sovereign duty of the Opposition than it is in peace. These weeks havo already demonstrated the power of the Labour Party, as that Opponition. to concentrate the mind of Parlament, and through th of the nation, upon the pivotal things.

One function. in the days that le ahead, is to reinforce that power with all the energy we have. In the degree that wo do so we make certain tho success of the great ends we hold in common with one another.

GRIN AND BEAR IT

Who took my otam?"!

By Lichty

John Blunt Opposes

INCOME TAX

I responsible public opinion

counts for anything in the British Empire (and of course it docs) the Income Tax proposal for Hongkong cannot be support- - ed. The Unofleinl Members of the Legislative Council presum- ably represent the public. They have cast their votēs against the proposal, and have given cogent reasons for their objections. The public may be said to have expressed itself in no uncertain manner through the columns of over- the Press. There is an whelming objection from every section and nationality of the community.

One can readily sympathise with the Financial Secretary in his strenu ous efforts to justify a scheme which he himself has admitted must be largely a matter of guesswork. His speech last Thursday was cleverly conceived, but even his facile mind could not sweep

awny the many weaknesses und objections which are all too patent in connection with the proposed tax.

Through its financial spokesman, Government admits that the existing systems of revenue collecting are not 100 per cent. emcient, but at the came time, is prepared to put into Torce measure which is too vague- even to chance an estimate of either cost of administration or yield.

Actually, the Financial Secretary believes, or, rather buzards à guess, that the cost of collection would be "something between $300,000 and $400,000 per annum, although he' stated ""we expect to draw the ma- jority of the staff required from other branches of the Government Service whose activities will have lộ be re- duced to some extent and whose leave is, under present arrangements, being drastically curtalled, so increns- ing the number of available officers." Does this mean that the minority of the staff needed, or believed to be needed, would cast from three to four lakhs per annum?

It is, of course, claimed that In- come Tax ensures equity and justice and in most countries, this state- nient is unquestionably correct. In the proposal before Hongkong, how- ever, the claim cannot hold good, and the Financial Secretary himself supplies one of the reasons. He pro- poses to grant special concessions to newly established factories!

. If this not a contradiction to the assertion that Income Tax will not.

know drive capital away, I don't what it means.

Surely it is an admission that the Tax might dissuade people from in- vesting money factories in the Cotony, or any rate, cause them to think twice before so doing.

In order to overcome this pro- bobility, Government proposes to make special concessions, to newly established factories,

Why do this if the tax is so scru pulously fair and equitable?

In other words, it is proposed to subsidise people who hesitate to in- vest their money in the Colony, bo- cause of the fact that they, would be taxed for so doing.

What of the factory already estab lished, paying the tax, and managing to earn a reasonablé return? The new man would start off with pre- ferential treatment tantamount to being granted a subsidy, enabling him to undercut his established compe *iitor]

Much Too High

}

If this is high finance, it is so high- as to be beyond my reach,

I am sorry to be caustle, but if a Government Official announces that he proposes to be caustio (at the tax- payer's expense, and I am a tax- payer) then why should I not be enustic in return?

I certainly rescht' the 'imputation [that European British people. must. pay until it hurts, because it is that

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