NOTES OF THE DAY.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1553, 24 September 1912, Page 4

NOTES OF THE DAY.

"Arbitration 1 Call that arbitration '/ Why, they've given it ageii us 1" This classical summary of the Labour agitator's conception of justice is as true as ever. As a cable message records to-day the Hox. W. Hughes, the Attorney-General of the Federal Ministry, takes precisely that line in his comment upon the High Court's final dismissal of the suit against the Coal Vend. The Court held that the Vend had not transgressed the law; Mr. Hughes, therefore, holds that the Court is wrong. Indeed, no judgment can bo right in his eyes that does not condemn what he wants condemned. The judgment, he says, means that "there are no trusts in Australia, no combinations in restraint of trade." It will take more than this union secretary's angry sarcasm to persuade the public that anything more was determined than that this particular combine did not break the law. ■ It did, indeed, trangrcss what Mr. Hughes would like the law to be, but what the law most certainly is not (unless, of course, Mr. Hughes knows more law than the High Court). The fact is,, of course, that Mr. Hughes and his like arc not merely opposed' to lawless combines, but to all businesses which are merely large. He admits it: "It is perfectly clear," he says, "that antitrust legislation is of no service against a combination with capital." Pie had hoped otherwise. No doubt the l seaucl will be an attempt to alter either the law or the Constitution so that the Labour agitator can punish or crush whatever he dislikes. We need hardly point out how, subversive of good government and justice is this readiness of some La-bour-leaders in New Zealand as well as in Australia to say: "Justice? Call ''that justice ? Why, they .gave it agen us." In the long run, however, tho angry exclamations of Mr. Hughes will turn out as futile as a certain celebrated allusion to a decision in this country as the decision of "a fool or a quibbling lawyer."

The English papers bring us the full text of the"epistolary-duel between; Mr. Bonar, Law and Mr. Churchill last month. Mr. Law, it will, be'remembered, maintained that it was only by warning the Government, that the horrors of civil war in Ulster would be averted, for "there would have been a real danger of civil war if the Government had been allowed to move blindly towards the precipice without a clear warning." And he does not anticipate that Ulster will he coerced after all. Mr. Churchill's letters were an indictment of the contention that Ulster should resist, but the'force of his solemn lectures was much damaged by the republication of pas- : sages from his Life of his father, Lord Randolph. In this excellent book, Mr. Churchill described with admiration and enthusiasm his father's visit to Belfast in February of 1866 and the famous speech in which this passage occurred: If it should turn out that the Parliament of the United' Kingdom was so recreant from all its high duties, and that the British nation was so apostate to traditions of honour and courage, as to hand over the Loyalists of Ireland to tho domination of an Assembly in Dublin which' litust be to them a foreign and alien assembly, if it should be within the design of Providenco to place upon you nml your fel-low-Loyalists so heavy a trial, then, gentlemen, I do not hesitate to tell you most truly that in that dark hour there will not be wanting to you those of position and influence in England who would be willing to cast in their lot with you, and who, whatever the result, will share your fortunes and your fate.

Lord Randolph, as his son goes on to narrate, received exactly that treatment now being accorded by the son and others to Sir Edward Carson and Mr. Boxar-Law. It is made quite plain by Mr. Churchill thatall his sympathy was with his father's attitude—made, quite plain, not only by his manner of narration and his veiled satire of Mr. Gladstone's wrath, but by his own comment that while "constitutional authorities will measure their censures according to their political opinions, the fact remains that when men are sufficiently in cai'nest they will back their words by more than votes." And he added with approval a statement by Mr. Gladstone in 1384 in defence of Mr. Chamberlain's threat to march 100,000 men from Birmingham to London in support of the Franchise Bill. "1 am sorry to say/ - ' said-Mr. Gladstone, "that if no*instructions had ever been addressed in political crises to the people of this country except to' remember to hate_ violence and love order and exercise patience, the liberties of this country would never have been attained." Mr. Churchill wrote his book as recently as 1906.

It is very probable that this mail for England will carry to the Manchester Guardian and London Daily News abundant proof of the monstrous absurdity of the Home misrepresentations of our Defence Act. The Daily A'ews will print no corrections—it is very modern Radical in its partiality for suppressing the truth—but the Manchester Guardian has still an old-fashioned habit of giving both sides of a question. For some weeks during June and July it printed not a tew replies to the multitudinous correspondents who condemned our Act and painted an unrecognisable picture of its working. No doubt the.chief correspondent of the Guardian who is misrepresenting the facts so amazingly, is the one who recently sent his paper a short special communication concerning the Massey Government. This precious communication, after a. long and absurd eulogy of th? old Spoil's party, contained a confident prediction of an early collapse of the Government, and «ur.b statements 35 this; '"The new Government is so

poverty-stricken, as far as its policy is concerned, that probably it would never have reached its present position had not the Liberals been absolutely at a loss for leaders." Wo can all laugh heartily at this particularly stupid statement (and especially the last clause of it); but it is deplorable that the hands that write, such rubbish should write also the letters defaming our Defence Act. The authors of such communications are merely ill-informed and vindictive partisans. Ma. Massey and the Minister for Defence will be unlikely to say, as another man we know of would say in a like situation, that they are inspired by the New Zealand Opposition. It is important, however, to check the evil that is being done in _ England to the sound principle of military training; and it would be an excellent thing if those people who feel strongly about it were to write to the English press and send a few newspaper clippings to show that the whole of the daily press, practically the whole public, and all the M.P.'s save, five arc ardent friends of the system of compulsory training.