NOTES OF THE DAY.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 789, 12 April 1910, Page 4

NOTES OF THE DAY.

A lettee, which appeared in our issue of yesterday, signed "One of his Electors," has, we regret to say, been taken by Sib Joseph Wabd as reflecting on himself .personally. We may say at once that the letter in question, which was from an Invercargill elector and asked.for information as to the.rumoured purchase by the Minister for Lands of a block of laud in the Awarua district, was published by us in good faith and without any intention of causing Sib Joseph WaSd personal offence. The rumour, we are now assured, is entirely without foundation and we take the earliest opportunity therefore of publishing, the contradiction made and of giving it the fullest publicity. We have differed on many occasions with Sin Joseph Ward on political issues, but we have no desire or intention to go outside the realm of politics or to allow others to do so in our columns in discussing his actions, or' those of any.other public man. That the letter should be regarded by him as reflecting,on his personal conduct we much regret, and we have no hesitation in . accepting his assurance that the statement it contained is.quite unfounded.

The Powelka sensation has assumed an aspect so dangerous to the public at large that it is time to enter an emphatic protest against the "scare" methods' which appear to have been pursued by the Police Department; ! Wo must confess to some uncertainty as to the extent to which the police have .called on civilians for active assistance in the task of capturing the escapee, but so far as we have : . been ablo to discover no serious attempt-has been made to dissuado armed civilians |rom joining indiscriminately in the] hunt. To turn loose oh the community armed citizenß, all in a' state of nervous excitement,- most of them,''probably quite ignorant of the appearance of the man they tare looking for, is a most unwise and dangerous thing to do. Already'it has been productive -of distressing .results". Last night two civilians, each apparently mistaking the other'for Powelka, met, and one shot the other, with fatal results. And the wonder is that the same thing has not occurred in half a _ dozen: cases. We can sympathise with the police, who are confronted with _ a difficult task owing to the. activity and daring of the man they are seeking to recapture. But the 'intense excitement and alarm into which Palmerston and the surrounding district have been thrown, partly by the. methods' pursued, is [ likely to prove not only ayery -grave I menace to the safety of inoffensive citizens, but is calculated also to hamper the efforts of the police; We trust that the Minister for Justice will, see the wisdom of immediately taking all possible steps to discourage civilians from taking an active nart in tho attempt to capture Powblka. Any information as to the man's whereabouts should of course bo welcomed, but the police should be able to do all that is required in other respects. <i •

Althodgh we do not usually, discuss any save temporal and secular topics in,'our leading columns,'.. we feel that a word of appreciation is due to Dr. Gibb's fine sermon on sin—"New Names for an Old Enemy!'—of,.which we printed a digest yesterday. Dr. Gibb's purpose ..was to combat the modern tendency to call sin anything but sin, to ascribe to it any origin that will relieve the sinner of responsibility. He enumerated the five pleasant theories that are most popular in this age of- flabby sentiment and apologetic tolerance, and he disposed of them all in a very matter-of-fact and convincing fashion. A misfortune, a defect in development, a vestigial taint, an effect of environment, a disease—that sin is any one of these De. Gibb most emphatically denies, and he pours his'contempt upon the shrinking sentimentalists in a passage excellent in its scathing humour:

There -were various indications that a school was arising that would regard sin even asa form of physical disease, and by and by they might be invited, if they had a tendency, say, to falsehood, to go to the medical man for the drug that would deal with the part of the brain responsible for untrath. For deeper moral maladies they might invoke the aid of surgery. .

There is sore need of many more such wholesome castigations of the tendency of the- modern community to recoil from the coldness of truth, to wrap itself up in the warm swathings of self-deception and dwejl in the soothing, but enervating atmosphere of the belief that there is really nothing wrong anywhere. Those who say that sin is a disease are exactly like those who find high purposes for obscene books; they will-not face the facts. Dit. Johnson had a short way with these sophists; his robust common-sense told him instantly when people began to "gabble." The 1 reluctance of modern people to admit that sin is a thing for which the sinner is responsible has been explained as an ovidonce of increasing kindliness and toleration, but this is simply one sort of gabble coming to the defence of another.' ■The flabby-'-school" that Dr. Gibb dees in process of establishment is

arising in other regions than that of morals. In the realm of politics in New Zealand it is already, doing much harm.

Ore. of our Christchurch contemporaries,, in a further article upon the distribution of railways expenditure, observes: The agitation for the constrnction of tho South Island Trunk Railway is not as loud-voiced or insistent as tho clamour that attends the progress of any one of the numerous Auckland lines, yet the northern people seem quite unable to realise that they alone are waving the banner of parochialism and calling High Heaven to witness the injustice of any .expenditure in this part of the Dominion. The dignified silence of the South prior to the current controversy is not quite so admirable as our contemporary appears to imagine. We could all display that majestic calm if the good things of life flowed to us with the regularity and abundance with which the public funds are poured into the lap of the South Is'land. The silence of the South has been' simply, the silence of fatness and repletion. Our Southern friends would show to better advantage if, .instead of. denouncing the people of this island, they attempted some defence of the policy complained of.