NOTES OF THE DAY.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1505, 30 July 1912, Page 4

NOTES OF THE DAY.

; Intekviewing public men is a very good function of the newspaper press, but we are . afraid that in Auckland there is something of a tendency to_ overdo, and so damage, ■ the institution of the interview. Yes- , terday. for example, we had to re- ■ port the views upon Second Cham- . ber reform which some-.zealous but 1 indiscriminating interviewer secur- ! Ed from the Hon. G. Jones. Me. , Jones knows a great deal about the [ Council, but he appears to have left ; the fundamentals unstudied, per-, i haps because, like a great many . other people, he fancied thafthe so- . called "Liberal" Government would . go on for ever. It does not surprise us, therefore, that he should 1 have urged as an argument against ; an elective Council the notion that [ those would be elected who were i "best known to the community." He . developed his' argument only to . show more completely that his obr [ -jection to an elective Council is one . that is valid as against an elective • House. To-day it is the member for Awarua whom tho Auckland inter- . viewer has captured, the topic being ; naval defence. There is no occasion • any longer to discuss the opinions of [ the member for Awarua regarding I this great question, any more than j his opinions on Imperial Federation. But it is_ surprising that he '. should feel anxious to say that the . policy of Canada is on tho same lines as "that which New Zealand . adopted when giving its contribu- [ tion for the Dreadnought." New t Zealand, of course, adopted no polr icy at all on that occasion. We do j not wish in the least to deprive the i member for Awarua of any pleasure he may derive from regarding the 3 Admiralty, and Canada, and everyj thing sensible in sight, as acting ac- '. cording to his own ideas. But it 3 is not giving the British Empire the \ credit due to it for common sense . to suggest that a principle which nobody on earth would dream of chal- \ longing—a principle as simple as ". that a warsnip should carry guniv- . owes its recognition to his own mis'f sionary work._ It would have' been ' much more interesting had Me. 3 Jones been asked to talk on naval . policy and the member for Awarua B on constitutional reform. 1 A writer in the Christehurch , Press has been taking Coventry - Patjiore's well-known and exceedingly touching and beautiful lines ?. no Winter ms tho. text, for a enmp plaint about the weather. Excusing

the poet (without any real warrant) on the ground that the winter he loved was a winter of still gray days or frost and sparkle, the writer insists that only an incurable optimist amongst poets could see anything in "the phase of winter that has gloomed on us lately." That cannot be agreed with, of course; in the heart of poetry there is a smile for all things. Our contemporary, however, leaving poetry to the poets t goes on to the practical duty oi grumbling that Christchurch's reputation will suffer 'from the recent weather. Gloomily it remembers that the American tennis players had a dreadful time of it, and then there have been lots of other.visitors. Its only comfort is that the visitors were numbed into apathy, before arriving at Christehurch, by "the really appalling weather in Wellington." This 'rouses us. Not that we hold our recent weather in anything short of the most profound contempt; but one must protest against the way these others have of referring to Wellington as a sort of climatic sink, where all the dirty weather is drained off. In point of fact the weather of our city is, on the average, quite as good as that of Christehurch (its climate is tatter, of course, and healthier, than the climate of even the choicest "resort" in the Dominion). People do not appear nowadays to talk of "windy Wellington." We all know how_ our city gained this title. In earlier years the visitor, stepping off thi wharf, and confronted with a dirty, dreary, grey, and tumultuously irregular square, received such a frightful shock that no amou/.t of after-plpasantness could eradicate his first, impression. The lightest morning zephyr seemed to him to be a hostile gale. . An examination of tho wind and rain and sunshine records would probably set us above even Christehurch—where, in winter, the sweetest day spends its youth (up till 10 a.m.) in frost and fog, and its old age (from 3.45 p.m. onwards) in fog and frost. This winter we have been no worse off than our neighbours. It is mean not to remember that our weathe'r has hitherto been of good character, and cowardly not to believe that it may have a future. ■ It is one of the useful accidents of British politics that the frequency of by-elections—caused either by retirements or deaths or the appointment of sitting members to Ministerial posts—affords a very fair index of the trend of public opinion concerning the Government of the day. And it is duo to the equally fortunate circumstance that hitherto (under the new system of salaried M.P.'s and the other innovations of the Radicals tilings may alter in the future) British politics have been'a continuous war over principles. The by-election in the Crewe division :.f Cheshire has had a striking re&ult— Me. Bonar Law is within the facts in saying that it is "not an indication of the dawn, but a sign that the sun has risen." It is the latest and most remarkable of a long and, we believe, uninterrupted succession of rebuffs to the Government. The seat has been won for over 20 years by the Liberals (saving on one occasion) by majorities averaging nearly 2000. The triumph of the Unionists, who won the seat by a majority of about 1000, is an arresting fact. It has inspired Mr. Bonak Law to what appears, from the cabled summary, to be one of his most vigorous speeches. Just now, of course, Ireland is the topic, and the uncompromising tone of Mr. Bonar Law's references to the_ Ulster problem is significant. He is a cautious man, and his acceptance beforehand of complete responsibility (since it amounts _to that) for what Ulster may do if it is trampled upon suggests very strongly that, the Liberals are as likely to fail at the Ulster point as they began to appear to be last month. But if the Unionists are safe on tho Irish question, they are not safe, by any means, on the fiscal question. Me. Bonar Law's declaration that tariff reform is again the first plank in the Unionist platform will re-create, the internal dissensions that were allayed by Mr. Balfour's statesmanlike and patriotic undertaking to keep tariff reform subject to approval at a referendum.