NOTES OF THE DAY.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 780, 1 April 1910, Page 4

NOTES OF THE DAY.

Some further attention seems to bo due to the attitude of the Advances to Settlers Department in its endeavour to promote the business of the State Fire Insurance Department. Since we referred /to the very improper method followed in certain cases some of our contemporaries have taken up the matter. The Government refuses to make any statement upon the subject, and the Ministerialist press is almost unanimously silent upon what is unquestionably a disagreeable matter. Only one Ministerialist journal, so far as wc are aware, has offered any comment, and very surprising comment it is. "Surely," it says, referring to a journal that endorsed The Dominion's criticisms, "our contemporary does not really believe that the Advances Department niakes a practice of discussing the financial position of its clients with the Insurance Department." And this is said in defiance of the proof, of this practice contained in the letter read at the meeting of the Taranaki branch of the Farmers' Union —one of many letters written by agents of the Insurance Department asking farmers who had obtained advances from the Advances Department to transfer their insurance from a private insurance company that was named. The Ministerialist journal goes on to say: "What the Advances Department does is to require that the people to whom it lends money shall effect their insurances in the State office. This is a very different thing." This is a peculiarly inaccurate statement. It not only contains by implication a denial of the plain fact that the Insurance Department does obtain confidential information from the other Department, but is also a mis-statement of fact. As_ the discussion at the Farmers' Union meeting makes clear, it is not necessary for an applicant for an advance to patronise the State Insurance Department. The Ad. vances Department does, indeed, very improperly attempt to impose this condition on applicants for loans, but it is quite wrong to say that it refuses to make advances unless that condition is complied with. The public can come to only one conclusion when it finds that the only attempt to reply to the criticisms in The Dominion and other journals is a clumsy denial of proved facts.

Mr. Andrew D. White, ex-Ameri-can Minister at St. Petersburg and Ambassador at Berlin, has been conducting an inquiry into the administration of the criminal law of the United States, 'and according to an interview published in the New. York World, he has arrived at some rather staggering conclusions,- For instance, he says he is convinced that at-the present day "it is safer to kill a man in the United ' States than to kill a deer." • Speaking on January 28, 1910, he predicted that by January 28, 1911, five thousand men and women in the United States will have been murdered. As'affording . grounds for this astonishing estimate, Mr. White states: 'Twenty years ago there were about fifteen hundred murders yearly in the 'United States. There are now eight thousand. The percentage of murders in the United States to the population is forty-three times greater than in Canada and eight times greater than- in Belgium, which has the -worst -record ■ in : Europe." The growing tendency to bcstow_ sympathy on criminals guilty of capital offences is quoted by Mn. White as a most disquieting feature of the situation. While it can hardly be said'that in Now Zealand there is, as a rule, any public sympathy for the criminal guilty of taking ■the life of another, there certainly is a section of the community very ready to. intercede on small justification against the enforcement of the extreme penalty' of the law* Fortunately, however, this country is. remarkably free from the class ' of crime under notice, and which is spoken of as such a-blot on American civilisation.

The "free-place" trouble between the Minister for Education and the College Governors appears to be endless. When the difficulty as, to accommodation at the Girls* High School was patched up by the Government agreeing to contribute £3500 for the purpose 'of building additions to the High School the final obstacles to a settlement appeared to have been ovorebme.This, however, unfortunately has not proved to bo tho case. When intimation was given by the Education Department as to the money being availablo for the purpose of building tho additions immediately required, a stipulation was made to the effect that. the building should be erected in such a manner as would eventually permit it to form part of a permanent structure in brick. This, stipulation was sufficiently vague to load the Governors to request further information frOm the Minister as to his idea of the proportions the pormanent structure in brick would eventually assume, and its possible cost. They considered this information necessary to guide them in preparing plana for the portion of the building now to be put in hand. The Minister's reply ' could only be taken as a very pointed snub to tho Governors,-and as such it was strongly resented by tho Chairman of the Board at the meeting yesterday. It will be a great pity if this troublesbmo free-place question is to bo reopened again for the want of a little tact. A subcommittee has been appointed to endeavour to overcome the difficulty as to the plans for the building, and it is to be hoped that the Minister will'see the desirableness of' assisting to end what might very easily develop into another deadlock.