Germany's undersea warfare, conducted on the most extreme lines of sheer piracy, has of late proved a problem demanding increased vigilance and activity on the part of the British Government. To combat the submarine menace by the acceleration of ship-building is to employ a necessary but none the less indirect method. If the best brains of the British naval service could devise some means of direct attack upon submarines that would deter the Germans from sending them to sea the whole problem would of course be solved. But there seems little prospect of the achievement of so great a result as this. It is possible that the menace of the submarines as commerce destroyers would not have assumed the dimensions it has had the absolute necessity of the wholesale arming of her merchant service been quickly recognised by Great Britain, although such a measure could not have been instituted much earlier, perhaps, owing to the difficulty of supplying the necessary guns. If Britain has been backward in pushing to an effective length this fairly obvious precaution, it may be assumed that she is now making every endeavour to make up for lost time, and that this will be her reply to Germany's attempt to establish anything in the nature of a deep-sea submarine barrier against her commerce. There seems no question but that the carrying of defensive armament by a merchant vessel enormously reduces the risk of its being successfully attacked by submarine craft.
``The workers, who compose the mass of the people, and especially their leaders, distrust the Church,'' said Bishop Gore, preaching recently in Westminster Abbey.'' They think that it has been, on the whole, on the side of Capital against Labour, even when the complaints of Labour have been legitimate. They think that it has administered charity rather than contended for justice. They note the seating arrangements in our churches as savouring of injustice, and they are scandalised by the contrasts and inequalities which exist in the salaries of the clergy. They do not look to the Church to represent their point of view. At notable moments in history it has, in fact, been ranged against them.
Very rarely has it stood out corporately against bad wages or deficient houses, against the lack of opportunity and reasonable independence for the workers, or against an organisation of industry which treats men as `hands' rather than persons, or as mere instruments in the production of wealth. Church organisations, though vigorous and excellent, have had in them too much of the elements of patronage and control of the poor by the rich - not enough of the spirit of brotherhood or sisterhood. All this has produced in the democracy a spirit of distrust. Thus the atmosphere of working-class homes and working-class comradeship obliterates the influence of our religious education with marvellous rapidity.''
In conversation with an Ashburton Guardian reporter on Tuesday, a labour agent stated that there was a steady demand for men for harvesting work. There were any amount of men offering, the only difficulty experienced being in the shortage of heavy men for mill work. Parties of men from Dunedin and Timaru for harvest work have been placed without delay. - ODT, 24.1.1917.
