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Press, Volume LVII, Issue 17116, 11 April 1921, Page 6

In our commercial columns to-day we reprint from the "Monthly Abstract v of Statistics" the of Jhe public revenue and expenditure for the' first eleven months of the recently-ended financial year. Theso figures have appeared before; they were contained in the interim Financial Statement presented to Parliament during''the short session. But for the snort session we should ha?e nad to trait until to-day—-nearly the middle of April—to receive the February accounts. It is not necessary to comment on these particular figures again, and we mention them here only in order to renew our complaint that some more' satisfactory method of giving the public prompt information concerning the national finances ought to be devised. The accounts are published weekly in Britain, and on April Ist regularly the public is presented with a full statement of the finances for the just-ended year. They are never accurate to within some tens of thousands, but that is of no consequence—where the totals run into hundreds of millions—when ' only a closely approximate statement is re-

quired. The public in New Zealand should not have to wait for four weeks while the last few pounds are being nccounted for. Mr Massey, by the way, has announced a surplus of five millions. — *— ■ Mr Edison celebrated his seventy.itoirth birthday on February 11th by taking a half-holiday from work. It does not appear from the Teports of this remarkable occurrence that he did it because he liked it, or because of any idea that the occasion warranted such a gross waste of time. He expressed emphatically his wonder that people should make a fuss about Ihis .attainment of his seventy-fourth year. As his father iived to be 04, his grandfather to be 102, and his great-grandfather 104, he did not. see why his own birthdays should be regarded as an adequate excuse for celebrations for at least another quarter of a century. However, on being pressed, he consented to spend a social afternoon with a number of old friends and workmates, who have banded together under the name of the Edison Pioneers, who forthwith elected him a member of the organisation under tho title of "The" Pioneer. Newspaper men, of course, dropped in at tho gathering, and immediately asked the guest of honour what advice he had to give to men over seventy. "The trouble with the man of that age," he replied, "is that he doesn't take enough interest in many things unless he hits been mentally active in his earlier days. If he was, he can find much to occupy his mind. There are so many hobbies to work on that a man can continue active up to his death." Somebody rashly said something about Edison's retirement. "Retire!" he retorted, ''l never want to retire. When I see the doctors bringing in the oxygen tank I'll know it's about time to start thinking about it." This buoyant young old man finds the world to-day more interesting, if somewhat mote complicated, than ever, and is keenly concerned in. the elucidation of some fifty problems that are still nuzzling him. 4 , The TCgrettod retirement; of Will Crooks, Labour member for -East Woolwich, from tho House of Commons, was due to ill-health, from which he. has sufI fered for four yenl'3. The immediate cause of his withdrawal from public work, of nil kinds was an illness induced by overwork during the war, when ho travelled 50,000 miles recruiting for the Government. But the main,cause of his breakdown was the reaction following an air-raid, when a fdiool close to his homo was bombed and eighteen little pupils, all the children of well-known neighbours, were killed. Mr Crooks, tho friend and counsellor of the Poplar people, who took him all their troubles, seeking his sympathy and advice, was sent for and did what he could. But the shock so reacted on his warmhearted, kindly nature, that he was never the same again. He takes with him into his retirement, which is to be spent in his old home, a larger measure of the affection and respect of his fel-low-men, from the King down to rho humblest worker, than is accorded to moat public men by those whom they serve.