The Press Wednesday, April 22, 1925. Archbishop Julius.

Press, Volume LXI, Issue 18363, 22 April 1925, Page 8

The Press Wednesday, April 22, 1925. Archbishop Julius.

It is not a kindness to Archbishop Julius, who still has to-morrow night ahead of him, to thrust him again into the limelight. If we did what wc are sure he would like us to do, we should leave him to get through this trying week with a minimum of newspaper publicity. But if that, for obvious reasons, is impossible, we can at least abstain from embarrassing him needlessly by too solemn an estimate of his work and public services. As a secular journal wc could not in any case pretend to bo able to gauge his work as a churchman. Wc know, and have said, and say again, that as bond for thirty-four years of tho largest Christian congregation in Canterbury he has performed notable service for his Church, and conio nearer than anybody in the same office ever did before to tho members of all other Communions. As Primate also for three' years of the Province of New Zealand, he has given the Christian virtues of kindliness and tolerance a prominence that has been altogether admirable. But our chief concern as a public newspaper is the place he holds and tho work he has done as a citizen—a citizen who, without ever forgetting that he has been ;tho servant of Godj has been the friend and fellow of all kinds and conditions of men. In that capacity he has occupied a place which, because it has been so conspicuously his own, can never quite be .filled by anyone else. It has not been .a question of opinions, or of status, or of national or ecclesiastical policy, but of- a personality; and personality is rarer even than.piety. His opinions, as Canterbury knows, have often been violently opposed to ours, and to those of quite half of the members of his own Church, and yet he has never in all the long years he has. served the Province found himself out of touch With the oommunity personally. But as all these things will be said in the Barracks to-morrow night, and many that it lies beyond our province to say, we shall meroly add for those who may not find it possible to be present that the retirement of his Grace, now that it has actually come to pass, seems to close a chapter in the history of Canterbury.

Royalty and Geography. One comforting aspect of the return of the D.ukc and Duchess' of York is that we' shall liavo only ono Prince to follow now in our gazetteers instead of two. It has been really disturbing this last fortnight to discover how many capitals there are in the Empire of whicli we have never heard, how much Imperial sentiment there is in rogions that are merely smudges on the African Coast, how many eager allies we have where we thought there was nothing but malaria and mud. And it is astonishing, if not disturbing, that this knowledge is being brought homo to us by the grandsons of that Prince whose early life and training Sir Sidney Loe has just rovealed to us as a tragedy of stay-at-home repression. If King Edward had been allowed to wander as freely as King George, aud as early as King George's sons, we might never have had a South African War, and there would certainly not have been the long war of Windsor—which escaped being a national tragedy only because/ those' on both sides were at heart earnest, honest, affectionate, and patriotic. Some American the other day, with amazing ignorance both of the English Constitution and of the Prince of Wales, suggested that the Prince should give up "gsdditig about" and take seriously to study. But of course the Prince is studying—or learning, which is far better. "Seeing the world'' means to him what walking the hospitals is to a medical graduate or service in a foundry to a student of engineering. It is distinctly valuable also that the world he is seeing is not wholly British, since if it is the British world especially that is his oyster, politics are becoming increasingly international, and increasingly extra-European. Lord RothermcTe the other day, material and moral (but not mental) heir to his brother Jsortheliffe, set out to prove in the "Daily Mail''.that the British boy of to-day learns nothing. He leaves school, the "Mail" said, without a fact in his head, and with a mind quite incapable of taking exercise; and to prove its case the "Mail," when next it had a vacancy for an office boy, set the approved applicant a general knowledge paper. Mr Harold editor of the "Edinburgh Review," prepared the questions, and found the answers "de"plorable." But the sequel was a challenge to Lord Rothermere to take u similar examination himself, the editor of the "Daily Herald" to be the examiner, and if the "Daily '"Herald" has the courage to set an Imperial paper, a bald list of the places visited by the Prince and the Duke of York since March would probably floor the candidate hopelessly.

Tramway Finance. The fact that the members of the Tramway Board made no comment on the financial statement presented on Mondav is perhaps more hopeful than it sounds. If the Board is satisfied with a deficit of £IO,OOO, or regards deficits as inevitable, the position is distinetly alarming: but it is far more likely that silence meaDt some "devilish deep" thinking. In any case, some vigorous thinking is necessary if the Board is to remove the fear that the system is heading for the rates. A private company similarly situated would realise that if expenses could not be reduced or revenue increased it would have to go out of business, and tliere is nothing in the present state of affairs to justify the Board in taking a less serious view of its responsibilities. The ratepayers should not have to bear the losses of bad management, if there is bad management, or contribute to the cost of carrying passengers at something less than a payable fare. It is for the Board, and not for the newspapers or the public, to say where the system is failing, but as the fares are already fairly high for short journeys, and about as high for the long journeys as outside competition will permit, there does not appear to be much prospect of increasing revenue directly. And the Board has unfortunately succumbed to the idea that this outside competition is evil, and should be forbidden by law. It has certainly met bus with bus on the Papanui and New Brighton routes, but without, the official returns of those operations it is impossible to feel sure that the result has been a success economically. The popular belief is that it has not, and that the Board's experiment with buses on, say, the Xew Brighton route would not have been profitable if it had secured all the cr.stom and its rivals none. It would give confidence if the Board would make a frank statement on its bus war, but if it is not prepared to do that it should at least indicate what it proposes to do —or that it proposes to do something—to customers of the cyclists and motorists who every day pour into the city in thousands.