NOTES OF THE DAY.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1136, 25 May 1911, Page 6

NOTES OF THE DAY.

It appears thai the grossly misleading report of the final proceedings in the Macdonald case which the press of the country printed as a Press Association dispatch was sent out, not by the association's subagents in Wellington, but by the head office of the association itself. Wc are exceedingly glad to have the assurance that this dissemination of a distorted account of an important legal case is due merely to an oversight on the association's part and not, like the earlier cases of "poisoning the wells" wo referred to, to the prejudice of a sub-agency. Our morning contemporary announced yesterday that it was a sub-agency of the association—an announcement that will cxpluin much to the Wellington public and that will not greatly increase the public respect for the association—and proceeded to fit to its head the cap of our mild comments. In the course of its article it denounced our statement as to bias and prejudice in certain Press Association dispatches from Wellington, and made tie very unhappy statement: "The general charge is absurd. No board of directors or subscribing newspapers would tolerate such conduct for five minutes." We would that this were so, but the facts are unfortunately otherwise. The fact is that twice within a week the association's night sub-agency sent out* messages which were so coloured as to be quite false. In both cases the falsity was miite obvious to Wellington people. In one case the falsity was macb particularly glaring by a comparison of the account of the affair concerned which was given by our contemporary in its own columns to the Wellington public, which knew the facts, with the account that it telegraphed to other centres where the facts were naturally not known. This conduct was not only tolerated for five minutes, but has been tolerated for' two years. No doubt the sub-agency honestly believes it is_ justified in using its position for its own purposes. Our concern is with the association, which tolerates this abuse of the public confidence. The choice between bias and incompetence in the dispatch of Wellington news to the morning papers in other parts is a wretched choice for the association to have to make.

In the course of a very useful speech at Eltham last week Mr. Dive, tho member for Egmont, made some reference to that hopeless sink for public money, the Midland Railway. He. had' lately gone over tho line, and ;had beon "amazed" :

Travelling from 11 o'clock to 3 o'clock ho never saw a cottage'except ono surfaceman's on tho top of the hill near tho Waimakariri liiver. For 20 to 30 miles they travelled down a river bed, and that of pure shingle with precipitous hills on either sido which could not carry more than a rabbit to tho acre. Ho was quite convinced that the lino should not have been constructed to within CO or 70 miles of Otira on the Christchurch side.

Everybody who knows the cold and dreary Siberian plateaux between Springfield, in' West Canterbury, and Otira knows that Mr. Dive's is almost a flattering picture of this gloomy land of desolation. The Eltham Argus, in an article upon the speech, said "the present Government is no more responsible for the East and West Coast Railway than is Mr. Dive himtelf. It is a legacy handed down by successive Governments dating back to. before Mr. Seddon's time, and the present Government in facing tho huge expenditure connected with the'Otira Tunnel is endeavouring to keep faith with tho pooplc in the railway and carry on.the ..work to which it. was committed by its .predecessors!" .We. arc sure that tho-Argus, will revise this ludicrous judgment when it looks up the facts. .When the Liberals took office the railway .was. a private project, and there was no responsibility of any kind upon the Government to build a -trans-alpine line. It, however, deliberately assumed .the responsibility. By. 1693 less than £45,000 had been spent on the connection by the General Government. The line was.slowly carried to Otira. On the' Canterbury side a little bit of construction was left idle and lonely for years, and might profitably have been so left for a couple 6f generations. As the result of a big deputation, Mu. Seddon promised to go ahead with the mad scheme which there was no obligation of any kind upon him to prosecute. On March 31 of 1910 the Government had expended no less than £1,135,675, and there were liabilities in addition amounting to £633,460. Tho Liberal Government cannot, therefore, avoid complete responsibility for this appalling 'enterprise, which will have cost over' £2,000,000 before it is completed (it is likely to bo nearer £2,500,000), which will not be able to pay working expenses, and which will accordingly mean a loss of not much less'than £100,000 a year. .And all this could have been avoided any time these 19 years.