NOTES OF THE DAY.
Two questions will shape themselves naturally in the minds of those who read to-day's report "of the little deputation that waited on the Prime Minister yesterday to urge that the Lawrence-Roxburgh railway should be put in hand again and carried at least as far as Beaumont. The first is, Have the Minister for Railways and the Minister for Public Works resigned their portfolios 1 The second . is, When did Sin Joseph Ward become an engineering and railroading expert? Ho told the deputation— which consisted of Messrs. Jas. Allen and Scott—that although he did not think the railway would pay for very many years he would shortly go south and personally look into the matter. We iiccd hardly say, since everybody probably knows it, that the PitniE Minister knows personally just as much about the value of any particular territory as a railway field as he knows _ about the theory of stress and strain in bridge-construction. His proposal to make the. future of the railway dependent upon his personal observation therefore looks very much like an affront to the executive officers of'the Railways and Public Works Departments, as well as a slight on the public's intelligence. Of course Snt Joseph AYahb has' never thought of it in this light, but this "personal inspection" procedure of Ministers where expert evidence only is wanted, and is available, amounts to nothing less than ive have stated. From an electioneering point of view the position naturally is very different. It may be that the Prime Minister is preparing to execute a. somersault in an-' ticipation of the- next general election, and his acrobatics are more likely to be appreciated on the spot than anywhere else. He has stated many times, in the most emphatic manner, that the line cannot be recommenced, and we shall quote his past references to the subject if it turns out that his "personal inspection" is a vote-catching device. The people of the district affected will be very, foolish, however, if they place any faith in promises of the kind that may bo looked for during' the next twelve months. This particular line was promised andbegun just before an election. Its stoppage was ordered just after an election. If its recommencement is promised or ordered just before another election, what guarantee will the people have that there will not be another reversal after the votes are delivered? ' ' • '
If they will look up the debates on the Budget in the House of Commons in. :the 'early part of last month, member's of the House -of Representatives will find a good deal of food for useful' thought about debt extinction. The annual sum set aside out of revenue for , the payment of interest and capital' was left at £28,000,000' by : Mr. Austen Chamberlain, and although this has been reduced by £3,500,000. since 1906, the ' process! '■ of. repayment is going along very well. On July 8, Mr. Lloyd-George showed . that this year tjie net liabilities of the country had been ' reduced by £9,000,000. Ketorting upon the Unionist critics of his reduction of the debt-charge, he made a point that is appropriate for quotation just now, when the Prime Minister talks' of setting aside £12,000 additional to pay off our debt of £70,000,000 odd at the same time as he forecasts a staggering load of new debt.
Whilst with ono hand (Mr.' Lloyd-George said) the Unionists wcro nominally reducing the debt, they weio creating frosh debt. In 1903, for instance, they reduced Uio debt by .£3,800,000. Iu 1904 they reduced it iby- JE8,600,000, but at the samo time they created new debt to the amount ot ,£11,750,000. The net result |duriiig the Unionists' term of office] N was that instead of reducing the debt, they , added to ; it .£2,238,000. . . . Always, under tho Liberal Oovernuiont, there had been a large reduction of debt, and not an apnarent reduction, which was a thoroughly dishonest proceeding.
AVe wonder whether our Ministers, who talk of taking a leaf out "' of Mr. Lloyd-George's book, will alloAT us to. take another leaf, the leaf we have quoted, and say that it is a thoroughly dishonest proceeding to pretend that- debt can bo paid off by paying a few thousands and borrowing a couple of million 1
In a letter to the Petonc Borough Council,' read at the meeting of that body on Monday eveniug, the staff officer to the Commandant of Junior Cadets, and presumably tho mouthpiece of Ms superior officer, sought to explain away the Department's extraordinary request that a member of tho Council's clerical staff should bo permitted to absent h'imself from his official duties for the purpose of drilling the local cadots on 'Friday of each week, it might, no doubt, be that .'this suggestion—"this purely Departmental request"—if acceded to, would be in the best interests of the Borough Council and itvofliciale;-since, the letter points out, the alternative under the defence system might be "eighteen drills and seven clays' consecutive training in camp." But that is not the point.' What we desire to emphasise is the desirableness .of having the junior cadet corps officered only by the teachers, who are best litted, from their professional experience, to control and instruct boys. We arc perfectly well aware that the Act of 1909 makes express provision for the appointment of junior cadet officers, who are not teachers, from the General Training Section or the Reserve of Officers. We strongly "disapprove of this provision, for, if it means anything at all, it suggests the perpetuation of that ludicrous parade of militarism which has been a most objectionable feature of the school cadet system. So long as the instruction of tho cadets remains in the hands of the teachers, so long will it be possible of intelligent co-ordination with the school work,' and so be freed from the menace of militarism as expressed in paragraph after paragraph of the cadet regulations. .
I In an article last week, discussing the relative returns on invested capital in respect of the North Island and South Island railways, we stated that the capital cost of tho open lines was £12,977,258 in this island, as against £15,305,716 in the South. The Christchurch organ of the Ministry' calls attention to tho fact that Iho cost of the Northern lines should have been stated as £13,077,258, making tho return 4.18, instead of 4.21 per cent, as compared with 3.46 per cent in the jSouth. It is only fair to say that our contemporary made no attempt to suggest that the trifling difference between 4.18 and 4.21 per cent mattered 'anything to our argument, On the
general question, however, ib still will not admit that the people'of the North Island are being unfairly treated as compared with the South.. The 'old claim is made afresh that the State owes the Canterbury and Otago provinces £1,787,741, the cost of lines transferred to the General Government in the ancient past, together with interest, which, it is alleged, "would amount to at least six millions." But has our contemporary worked out the total of the losses which the State has borne tor the benefit of Canterbury and Otago 1: Has it considered that although the South gets the bulk of the good things, the bulk of the people are in the North? As a matter of fact, as we pointed out on April 11-last, in handing over their lines to the General Government the people in tlie South made no present to the people of the North. On' the contrary, they did an excellent stroke of business for themselves, inasmuch as they transferred to the North the trouble of making up the annual deficit on those and all the other Southern lines. This point, however, has little or nothing to do, excepting by way of an iilus. trative detail, with what we havo always made the main point to be kept in mind so far as future policy is concerned—namely, earning power. And we are very glad to note that our contemporary admits that its strange calculation "does not affect the comparison between the earning power of the two sections." This is a most satisfactory admission.
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Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 904, 25 August 1910, Page 6
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1,357NOTES OF THE DAY. Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 904, 25 August 1910, Page 6
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