NOTES OF THE DAY.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 903, 24 August 1910, Page 4

NOTES OF THE DAY.

- It is impossible to pass without notice a very singular sentence in Sir. William Steward's pathetic little speech in the House yesterday. He understood, he said, that the election of the Chairman of Committees was to be made a party one, and "it was his duty to show the same abnegation as ho had on previous occasions." He- then added that "if he could not be elected without depending on the votes of the opponents of the Oovernment his party loyalty would demand that ho should abstain from placing the Government in a. false position." Now, we fail entirely to understand this point of view, nor can we •understand how Sir ' William Steward, after his very long expedience, as a private member, as Speaker, and as Chairman of Committees, can so misapprehend the principles involved in this matter. The theory is that any member can nominate any other for the position, and this theory is based upon the principle that the appointment of the Chairman should be made by an absolutely unfettered House. He is not a member of the Government, nor a servant of the Government— in theory, at any rate, and in practice in Britain—but an officer of the House. His highest duty, apart from the conduct of the Committee machinery, is, as Mil. Massey well said, to protect the rights of the minority. * To make the appoints ment a party matter is to strip the position of all its grace. In the present*case the Government whipped its party into line, a'nd tho result is that the office of Chairman,''which is the office of DeputySpeaker, is not, as it ought to ,be, and as they arc careful to keep it in Britain, an office in which tho Government and the Opposition take nn equal pride and pleasure. Every niflnibcr knows, and ovuryoue

who follows political events knows,, that if, early in the session, the Government had nominated Sir William Steward, he would have been elected bv a majority of each party. As it is, we know that the Opposition opposed Mn. Colvin in a body and that despite their votes only a small section of the Ministerialists really preferred him above all others. It matters nothing that Mr. Colvin will do his best. By importing party feeling into the matter, nay,. by forcing its own party men to sink their feelings as members of the House and to vote as instructed, the Government has destroyed all the pleasure and honour that might have inhered in the election.

Most intelligent people know something of the London ■Spectator and of Mh. G. K.-Chesterton. They know that there is practically no common ground in current polities upon which the great Whig weekly and the brilliant Radical essayist can'meet' in amity, and they know that both the journal and the writer arc fiercely sincere and incapable of saying anything but what they believe with all their •strength. When, therefore, we find them in agreement on any general social principle we may pretty safely conclude that we have come very near to that rarest of things—the pure gold of absolute wisdom. In its review of Mn. Chesterton's new book, What's Wrong with the World, the -lays special stress upon his observations upon modern education. "The true educator," the Spectator says, "is the parent," but the modern idea is to take education out of his hands. Mr, Chesterton puts it this way:

The fashionable fallacy is that .by education we can give people something, that' we have not got. -To hear people talk, one would think it was some sort of magic chemistry,. by which out of a ■ laborious hotch-potch of hygienic meals, baths, breathing.exercises, fresh air, and freehand drawing wo can produce something • splendid by accident. It is odd that these people, who. in the matter of heredity are so sullenly attached to law, in the matter of environment seem almost to believe in miracles.

The formula of the modern educationist, "Save the Children," comes in for some severe treatment. Those who use this formula mean, "not improving their natural surroundings, helping to bring thorn up with a clearer idea of what is good for their minds and bodies, but relieving their parents as far a's possible from the responsibility of training them and the burden' of maintaining, them." Mr. Chesterton is even more forcible:

"This cry of 'Save the Children' has in it the hateful implication that it is impossible to save the fathers; in other words, that many millions .of grown-up, sane, responsible, and self-supjiorting Europeans are to bo treated as dirt and. debris and swept away out oi tho discussion."

Is this, not an exact summary of the position which the State Socialists'take up everywhere?

When the session opened a couple of months ago nobody, not even the Prime Minister, dreamed that Mr. Colvin would be appointed Chairman of Committees. He was not only not in the running: he was never even thought of.' He is therefore very specially a fit subject for congratulation upon his new dignity. No doubt he has riot yet got over his surprise at the situation, but when he does get used to it, we have little doubt that, so far as he is able, he will carry out his ' new duties with care and impartiality. The Prime. Minister is also to be •congratulated upon having got his nominee elected. It is true that it has taken him ■ about half the session to make up his mind, but then the thing he had to decide was not the simple matter of selecting the best man for the position. What he had to solve was the much more delicate problem "of finding, as ii were, a gun that was not loaded. He is to be congratulated, too, upon having been able to defend the selec-tion-of Mr. Colvin without giving any'reason why he did hit'upon the member for Bullcr. As he said himself—and he said it nearly, a dozen times in his speech, much more ornately than we have space for here—members had to recognise that more than one. person could not be appointed to the Chairmanship. The difficulty, it must be conceded, was a very real one. No doubt it was their recognition of it which reconciled the Ministerialists to the duty of accepting Mr. Colvin without receiving at the same time a reason why the choice did not fall upon, say, Mr. La why or Mr. Hall. It is highly probable—and no doubt members were, afforded facilities for realising this—that the-Prime Minister, after the long and anxious consideration he gave to the great problem with which he was confronted, had made up his mind that if he failed to satisfy the House he coiild no longer feel sure of himself. And in that'case, of course, he would, with whatever pain and reluctance, have decided that his hand had lost its cunning and have withdrawn from the arena of his triumphs. In the circumstances the Prime Minister must feel highly grafified at the manner in which his trusty followers sacrificed their own feelings and affirmed the perfect wisdom-' of his choice.'