NOTES OF THE DAY.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1189, 26 July 1911, Page 6

NOTES OF THE DAY.

» The deputation of delegates from the various municipalities owning tramways thoroughly well deserved the contemptuous treatment which they received yesterday at the hands of the Minister for Public Works. They permitted their chairman and spokesman to be insulted and browbeaten in a grossly offensive fashion, and humiliated themselves and the municipalities they represent at the feet of the truculent, over-bearing Minister, pleading as suppliants for favours instead of demanding as a right that the objectionable and oppressive tramway regulations should be amended or withdrawn. No doubt they are properly grateful for the crumbs of comfort so graciously and so gracefully thrown to them. They have been promised a conference, of a sort; because the Minister for Public Works dare not, for all his blustering, force through his absurd proposals. He is quite, as anxious that popular indignation concerning them should be smoothed' down before the coming elections, as the members of the deputation are to protect the tramway systems they are concerned with from the oppressive burden sought to be placed on them. The weakness of the Minister's position is plainly enough shown by the manner in which he sheltered behind his subordinate officials, courageously throwing the responsibility for the regulations on their shoulders in an endeavour to escape the odium which he well knows the Government has incurred in the matter. But the deputation apparently were only anxious to placate.—all the merits were on their side; they had behind them the support of public opinion, yet they shut their eyes to the strength of their position and humbly sought the gracious consideration of the Minister. They received the treatment they deserved: They have obtained an off-handed promise of a conference of a restricted nature, and by their weakness have encouraged a further onslaught on the, munijcipal undertakings which Ministers have been reaching out after for some time past. The occasion called for fighting, and such fighting as would teach the Minister for Public Works and the Government a lesson that would cause them to confine their energies to their proper sphere. Instead we have had the humil'. ol ':iT spectacle recorded elsewhere. There is no occasion to express our opi:nuii regarding the offensive attack mads on the acting-Mayor of the city. No one can read the report .of the proceedings without a' deep sense of humiliation at the depths reached in the standard set by the Ministry in their conduct of public affairs. What the citizens of Wellington should bear in mind, however, is tiiat the insult placed upon their're l preventative is an insult to themselves, and that they have the means of repaying it in full at the proper time. : ' ■■' •

The spectacle of the Minister for Public Works posing as the guardian angel of the public and holding up the Government as a sort of beneficent providence watching over citizens to protect them against the incapacity and indifference of tie municipalities 'is not without its humorous side when : one recovers, frpm the. first shock of its insolent effrontery. Me. E, M'Kenzie was the Minister in charge of the State Coal Department, and it will be recalled that an unfortunate member of the public who was injured in a collision with a State coal wagon was unable to secure the redress which is available against private individuals because the Government sought protection behind the technical shelter of the Crown Suits Act. Mn. M'Kenzie will perhaps need no reminder of the outcry of public indignation against the Government over this matter. It was only after long agitation that the unfortunate man secured through Parliament some compensation for his injuries. And how does the Government consider the safety and the convenience of the public in respect of the railways \ What a record of accidents and breakdowns r>nd general muddlcment has the past few months shown on the railways of the country—managed by the Government. The management of the .tramways may not be perfect, but it is at least reasonably good, and coniparatively free from serious complaints; whereas the railways as managed by the present beneficent Government are a standing reproach and by-word amongst travellers of all classes. Complaints innumerable arc to bo seen in the press of the Dominion concerning the inconveniences, the injustices, and even the risks incurred under the management of the railways as at present conducted. Equally unfortunate was this benevolent Minister's suggestion that the Wellington tramway employees should be better paid and the fares reduced by 25 per cent.—a clumsy attempt to "play to the gallery," that probably no one but the Minister for Public Works would have attempted. Has Mr. M'Kenzie forgotten that the Government of which he is a member a- short time ago provoked a general protest by increasing the fares on the railways, and thus imposing a serious hardship which fell mainly on_ the poorer' classes of the community! Has this Minister, who is so considerate for the welfare of the municipal tramway employees, forgotten also that throughout the lcngtli and breadth of the land there is no service in which there is greater discontent, or even anything like the discontent, which prevails at the present time amongst the employees on the Government railways. The grievances of the railway employees have grown to the extent of becoming a public scandal. And yet in the face of these things this Minister of the Crown takes it on himself to pose as a protector of the public, and the friend of the municipal employee. What a farce Ministers are making of tilings, and what fools they must take the public to be.

For. months past nearly every \vcek"s batch of English newspapers has brought the reports of one or more libel actions arising out of the general elections in Britain last year. In nearly every case the defendant has been a Liberal-politi-

eian or a Liberal newspaper, and their offences have been of all degrees rif seriousness. Last night two new cases were reported, and we expect it will be some time before all the punishable slandercis have been dealt with. Altogether its instinct for lying and calumny will have cost present-day British Radicalism many tens of thousands of pounds. That the storm of falsehood and slander came almost exclusively—quite exclusively, so far as we know—from the Radical quarter is not a very surprising fact when it is remembered that one of the tap-roots of Radicalism, Socialism, and Jacobinism is the doctrine that the end justifies the means. One of the cases of which a report comes this week was a suit brought by the Hon. Henry Lygon against a newspaper which had said he voted for purchasing flagstaffs in preference to food for childrenRadicalism's pleasant way of turning to account the plaintiff's opposition to paying for free meals out of rates. In this ease the jury very properly awarded damages, although damages far less heavy than has lately been the practice of British juries. In the course of his summingup Mn. Justice Pickfobd laid down an interesting rule. The only thing that had to be considered was whether the libel complained of reflected on the plaintiff's character. Obviously it did. The Judge insisted strongly that the jury had to put politics out of their minds, and was emphatic that "there was no such thing as 'political libel'. " Of course the fact that a man is a politician and his slanderer a political opponent slandering for political purposes in no way.mitigates the offence; to think otherwise is simply to think confusedly. The fact that "there is no such thing as 'political libel' " is one that a few of our own Radicals may do well to bear in mind during the coming general election.

There was a time when the Government was very fond of proclaiming its devotion to the interests of the "masses," but that was before they enjoyed tho luxury of an hereditary title • and s'o many knighthoods in their ranks'. Nowadays it is different. A Palmerston North resident called at The Dominion office on Monday evening last and made complaint that, not being able to return to Palmerston as expected, and as his ticket expired that day, he had applied for an extension of it, expressing his willingness to pay the fee usually charged for extending the currency of the railway ticket. Unfortunately he was not in a position to travel firstclass, and had only a second-class ticket.. To his amazement he was in : formed that the privilege of an extension of time is not obtainable by anyone unable to travel first-class. We ourselves doubted that this could bo correct, but on inquiry learned that it was so. There is no reason so far as we can see why a person who travels second-class should not have the same privilege of extending the currency of his railway ticket as one who travels first-class, so long as he pays the fee charged for such extension. But a "Liberal" democrat. Government thinks otherwise. It grants a concession to the well-to-do which it refuses to the man who is in greater need of it.

■-'•Sir Joseph Ward, it now appears/ touched in that,speech, of his at the ■Royal Colonial' Institute on "A Higher and Truer Imperialism" upon the question raised by the Vollissicm articles and the alleged interview with Mr. Fisher. The kernel of his speech was this: Two courses presented themselves at this juncture. First, Great Britain might acquiesce in the continuance of tho present system and permit ia time the great self-governing: Dominions to enter upon foreign policies of their own and into alliances, commercial or even perhaps defensive, of their own with other nations; permit them to develop on their own lines a naval policy, and ultimately to declare whether they would remain at peace while she was at.war. Inevitably they would have to declare for peace by tho assertion of independence. The only other course wns that of Imperial cooperation. At present millions of while British subjects beyond tho seas had no voice whatever in questions of foreign policy; no voice whatever in the maintenance, production, or control of the Navy; no voice whatever in the allimportant question of peace or war. While these people overseas were disfranchised in this way they never could, and never would, have a true Imperial system. Wo have not the slightest doubt that Sir Joseph Ward meant' well, but, as the Westminster Gazette showed, he did not think hard enough. First of all, as it points out, all the other members of the Imperial Conference were agreed that, ''as between the risk of an autonomous unit being overborne by the proposed Council of Empire by the votes of other units and the present condition which Sir Joseph Ward describes as 'disfranchisement,' they greatly prefer the latter." , After pointing out the practical and theoretical absurdity of using the term "disfranchisement," the Gazette said the "awful possibilities" of "the present system" left it quite calm, and this for a very simple reason: "So long as Great Britain is strong enough at sea to prevent a hostile fleet from attacking the Dominions, none of these questions arise. If ever she ceased to be strong enough, they would all arise and might be fatal to the Empire. So at the end of it all we get back to the .question of the Navy. . . .

If the Navy were not equal to its work, it would be hardly worth while to discuss the question of preserving Imperial unity against the strain of war. There would be no guarantee for unity or safety, not even, we fear, a guarantee that peace could be secured by the assertion of independence.*' Sir Joseph Ward, nobody would be so absurd as to doubt, will always feel, wherever he may be, that New Zealand ought to and will on her own account consider Britain's wars her wars. But it is most unfortunate that for want of an historical eye he really plays without wishing to into the hands of the meddlers and separatists.