NOTES OF THE DAY

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 111, 4 February 1919, Page 4

NOTES OF THE DAY

Onslow residents should have nohesitation in going to the poll tomorrow in favour of the i amalgamation of-their borough with the city of Wellington. The Mayor, Mr. Dale, and councillors of the borough have put-the position so plainly and so convincingly before residents and ratepayers; they have anticipated and met all reasonable grounds of objection so fully and. so thoroughly that even the most timid ratepayer should bo able to support the proposal with confidence. If anything has been understated it is the prospective benefits -likely to accrue to this attractive but inadequately served suburb. Though Ngaio and Khandallali can point, to" considerable progress in recent years it is nothing to the progress they might have madewith better means of access and with a good water supply and drainage. Linked up with,,the city theso bene--1 fits would be in immediate prospect instead of, being, as they have been for years' and are at present, a shadowy hope belonging to the distant future. With Onslow included in the- city boundaries the just claim of the people of Kaiwarra and Ngaio for the right of an extension of the city tramways along the Hutt Road would be still further strengthened, for.even a Government so narrow and so shortsighted as that of. 1905 could hardly object to a municipality providing reasonable means of transport for its own ratepayers and_ residents within its own boundaries. However, .the advantages -of amalgamation are so evident that the chief danger to be faced is that ratepayers and residents who aro called on to vote, to-morrow may be inclined to take it for granted that the poll will be carried whether they vote or not. This is always ! a perilous point of view. Everyone should vote.

A lot of wild talk has been indulged in by advocates of "the one-big-union" movement in Australia, and the infection has spread to what one newspaper described as certain people of "weak, illogical and criminal: minds'." Some of theso people —they are more noisy than numerous—are openly confessed Bolsheviks, and demand "the overthrow of the existing social order" and abolition of a ' capitalistic Parliament, and so on. The Melbourne Argus applies this very effective cold douche to this "phrenetic babble":

The'-simple fact is, it points out, that these Bolshevik incendiaries are asking the people to revolt against themselves. Since the foundation • of the Federation, Australia has been governed by the votes of all the men and women over 21 years of age. The Parliament is their Parliament, the social order is their social order. Whatever reforms are desired may bo effected by their votes.

Which, of course, is an answer that might be given with equal force to noisy extremists in this Dominion.

In the United States_ there has been some revival of discussion recently _as to whether that country is or is not an Ally. The point, perhaps, is merely technical, but in all 'diplomatic exchanges between the American Government and those of Britain, France, and other Allied countries the phrase "the United States and the _ Allies" is scrupulously used ; Pointing out that allies may he united by community of interests and purposes and need not necessarily be bound by treaties or compacts, the New York Outlook maintains that no such distinction as is made between the Allies and the United States is justified. "It is true," it observes, "that we have no treaty alliance with Great Britain or France as to the war, but is it straining the meaning of the word 'ally' to use it of a nation which has worked and fought for those other countries which President Wilson himself described When we entered the war as 'the nations with whom we have now made common cause, in whose support and by whose side we shall be fighting'?" The practice of which the Outlook complains no doubt in the first instance arose out of regard for American susceptibilities, but its continuation can hardly bo justified in view of the later developments of the war and the peace negotiations.