NOTES OF THE DAY.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1579, 24 October 1912, Page 4

NOTES OF THE DAY.

It is not surprising that some members of the Opposition should be feeling that they would be better off with a leader—any leader. Yesterday the Prime Minister had to inform the member for Napier that he would not help forward a certain motion unless it was endorsed by "a leader or leaders of the Opposition." This is in accordance with ordinary Parliamentary practice. Mr. Brown, with a candour uncommon on his side of the_ House, seized the opportunity to give_ his friends a dig. He was, he said, in the awkward position of having no leader. There was nobody, therefore, whom ho could consult, and be went on to say, fairly enough, that he did not see why the ordinary business of the country should be blocked because the Oppositionists have not got a leader. Ko faras the Government is concerned, this absurd position is perhaps as. satisfactory as it is amusing; but looked at from the constitutional angle it is really regrettable. Supposing an occasion arose, as occasions have sometimes arisen, when it is expedient, from this point of view, that the head of the Government should consult and confide in the Leader of the Opposition, what is Mr. Massey to do 1 He cannot deal with all and sundry, and he cannot pick and choose. Then, there is the point that a, properly organised Opposition under a recognised Leader is almost essential to the proper working of the Parliamentary machine. We recognise, of course, that the chaotic state of the Opposition mirrors very faithfully the actual fact that to-day the country consists of a solid party of ltcform on one side, and, on the other side, a heterogeneous collection of people who have no common policy, and who even have each one his own reason for opposing the Government. It is not as if in this case there was wisdom in the multitude of counsellors. When, a day or two ago, Mn. G. W..Russell, the most persistent imitator of a Leader that they have, announced .that'he. favoured taxing'the leasehold, his colleagues shouted their dissent. This silly situation has almost ceased to be amusing. The only .joke left in it is the really rich fact that our occasional suggestion that they should . choose a Leader is naively denounced by the Oppositionists as an insidious counsel oi disaatcv. IFhej'ought to Xboik' ,

decce. a eerj' 6aa( d'scasswa to. ( ) fta Yieg\&aVwc CovmcW yesterday (he Public Service Bill was read a \ tfcm<\ t™. I\\c passage ftnowgh both Houses of this very important measure of reform, requires some notice for more than one reason. AVc need not now discuss the Bill itself, which has been discussed for years, and the principle of which was long; ago admitted by every reasonable person to be sound and wholesome. The great 1 value of the speedy settlement of trie question lies in the fact that it will persuade all but the most obstinate that the Reform party was not elected simply to obtain for its supporters' benefit the control of the powers so seriously misused by tho old Spoils party. As we noted the other day a good many of the Spoils politicians were obviously convinced, until lately, that the Reform campaign was not honest They really believed, some of them, that Mn. Massey and his colleagues, ones settled in office, would forget all about the undertakings to which they owed their success. They are doubtless wiser now. Mn. Heudjian's measure has' been very fully discussed by Parliament, but it is a notable fact that the opposition it met with was' of little account. And up till last year the very mention of Public Service Reform used to call into action all the artillery of the old Government. There never was any spark of honesty in the old obstruction of Mn. Herdman's proposal; and it is now apparent that that obstruction was due, not to any real conviction on anyone's part that political control of the Service was good for the country, but simply to the fact that the system now about to perish was a convenient one for Spoils politicians. The passage of the Bill marks a turning point in the political history of this country.

The English newspapers that arc coming in arc still_ very full of speeches and letters" and sermons provoked by Dn. Schaefee's recent address on the origin of life. Many of these arc very dull, but there are some sprightly and refreshing criticisms. At the present time Science, at, the British Association, is a suppliant of the general public. The only practical effect the discussions upon the origin of life can have at present must be their effect upon the current of popular thought. They arc wise, therefore, who, remembering this, seize the opportunity to appeal to the ordinary tastes of men. The ordinary man is far more likely to be convinced by the following caustic observations (by a distinguished scientific member of the Jesuit order) than by the most complete and learned destruction of Dr. SoiiAEt'Eit's propositions:

"The blackest dead-matter materialism has at least one distinguished supporter. AH the universe, says he, is matter untouched by supernatural intervention, which is dubbed, forsooth, tin 'unscientific idea.' Evolution, we are asked to believe, has produced everything out of its atoms and molecules. Wo may early look for tho atomic weight of toothache, (he chemical composition of a sneer, the elements they mix to make joy or grief. The learned professor has already given us tho chemical composition of death. Shall T be asked to define eternal damnation in terms of electrons? Surely we are not expected to-day to treat all this scmously. The movement is retrograde, Monism itself Is a. revolt agalust so crude a materialism.."-

Put in just that way, the people whose treatment of Dn. Schaefer's theory most matters, will certainly not treat it seriously. And those people are, after all, not the scientists, but the general mass of mankind.