The Dominion. THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 1907 THE DOMONION

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 1, 26 September 1907, Page 4

The Dominion. THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 1907 THE DOMONION

This is a day .of origins and the realising of responsibilities, not. alone for The Doni-iiotf, as it makes its first address to the puo--lie, but for every private patriot aud every public leader in the greater Dominion that is acknowledged to-day. 'l'ho national event of this September 26 imposes upon, our country obligations of a kind with the obligations of our own journalistic purpose; aud our consciousness _ of this' companionship at once stim • ulates and reassures us as we take up our burden. The change in. the oSicinl classification of New Zealand is not a promotion of the country; it is a recognition of what it has for long actually been- as a member of the treat I Empire. > In materials there_ is no alteration, but the assumption of the new title has,a moral fruitfuluess which will in the end yield a larger harvest of progress of the right national land than any variation of our constitutional structiiTje which is at present desirable or possible. It was once said that "it is not names which give confidence in things, but things which give confidence in names," but .from the beginning of recorded time history has ■ run counter to the implication of this pious apophthegm. There is, as all men biow, and as every page of history can be found bearing witness, " a woundy luck in names, and a main mystery, if a man knew where to find it." New Zealand has but recently begun actively to grow towards a national consciousness, and that growth cannot but derive an .impulse from the citizen's future habit of thinking and writing "Dominion" when he thinks or writes of his homeland. The duty before the Dominion is the duty that is before all young nations —to tend always, through whatever side-winds of circumstance, to the development and preservation of a society that will express nationhood, and to remember without intermission that our acts of to-day will be the tradition of a race of men in centuries to come. The Colony has passed into a Dominion under the protection of that Empire which has given us birth—perhaps the greatest in moral grandeur which the world has ever seen. We should strive in loyalty to our great parent to be worthy of our race and lineage. Of our own private interest upon this day we have not a long explanation to offer. The coincidence of this journal's first appearance with such a stimulating birthday as to-day was not necessary to intensify a naturally serious conviction of the importance to a country of the manner and methods of its newspapers.' A well known American editor once wrote that " the true policy for the newspaper-maker, as indeed for every other manufacturer, is to produce a good and attractive article by honest, open methods, to harness brains, incessant energy, human sympathy, art, trained judgment, knowledge, patience to his honest purpose, and he may then safely await the issue in public confidence and support. If it is the duty of every live man to do good work in the world, that responsibility rest's especially on the .-journalist, because oi his exceptional opportunities, powers, and professions. He should seek to make his daily output interesting, helpful, stimulating, productive of better living, and saner, sounder thinking by his readers. If his business is iu one sense that of a manufacturer, in another, and higher and broader sense it is like also that of the learned professions, law, incdicinc, the ministry; and it should be conducted in conformity to the standards which are supposed to rule iu these callings. The journalist has one client, one patient, one {lock— the(t is to nay, the wholj community, and nothing' should stand in the way of his hift'li-iiiiisded and devoted service of that one common interest. JJe sbouid beware of. all en hng-lljiif a iliai.'ces —political, soda 1. commercial —which may limit or einlv.rrass such service. The independent newspaper may lie and should be, the most vifa.l and elective instrument that democratic society can produce for its own advancement aud protection ; and its true business welfare, in the long view, lies in a complete, intelligent, sympathetic devotion to public interests.

The Dominion" aims to bo the Independent newspaper here expressed. It is concerned, not •with the past, but with the present and tie future. There is no profit, but only heat and waste of time, in re-lighting the battles of an older period, in readjusting old rights and wrongs that are only closed controversies to-day. Those controversies and those battles are of interest to us only by the results which have boon left in our present-day society. Groat questions are agitating', and will continue to agitate, the public, mind. Our view of those questions is decided, not by the strategic requirements oi any established party, or vested interest, but by the natural, requirements of the whole public. Our

policy, to meet that view, will I necessarily mean the acceleration : of this existing' tendency, and the retardation of that—in brief, a broad poilcy, free from narrowness or exclusiveness in any direction. It will look, not to the effecting of temporary ends, but to the sceurin!? of valuable permanences. We begin the discharge of our 'functions without prejudices, but with convictions. No individual or party engaged in administering the affairs of our constituency, the public, can by the ordinary rules of probability as applied to tho variations of human temperament, be expected to share all those convictions, but wo aspire to this distinction : that The Dominion will speedily come to be recognised as a journal which, when right ideas are advocated, is not concerned as to the quarter from which tlioy originate. llero shall a Press tho People's causc maintain Unawed by Influence and unbribod by Gain.