NOTES OF THE DAY

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 154, 25 March 1919, Page 6

NOTES OF THE DAY

The annual cost of war pensions at the end of last month was stated to be £1,608,213. This amount for some time to conic may be expected to go on mounting up. Ultimately the country will be paying out in war pensions something over £2,000,000 annually. Not one penny of this money will be begrudged. The men stricken in the war who will receive the pensions arc entitled to all that the country can give them. It h a liability which the people of New Zealand should gratefully if not lightheartedly face. But it is not the only liability which the war has left. The annual interest charge on the public debt of the Dominion has more than doubled during the past four years. In 1914 this charge on the finances of the country was less than £3,000,000. Today it is about £6,000,000. _■ With war pensions and increased interest charges the country will be called on to meet a payment of some £5,000,000 a year as its financial war burden. Probably the. amount will l>3 even sreafcr than this. At tiro moment the high prices ruling for our primary products in •tho markets overseas enable this dram on the finances of the country to b= met without difficulty though not without some hardship. But no one who gives any thought to the question can fail to realise that we cannot hope to see these prices maintained indefinitely. The cry for increased production gains added force from the_ mounting figures of our financial liabilities.

It cannot be said that outside of the Labour Party any great interest has yet been shown in coming municipal elections; but this is the customary state of things in Wellington. Apparently the Labour organisation has been very active in enrolling its supporters, and it lias prepared for a big campaign. INO doubt it has been encouraged to contest the Mayoralty as well as the seats at the council table by reason of the prospect of votesplitting for the. higher office. So far, two candidates besides the Labour nominee, Mr. Read, have been announced for the Mayoralty. Councillor Barber, who has served on the council for a number of years, has come forward, and Mn. T. S. Weston, president of the Employers' Association, has also consented to stand. Some doubt appears to exist as to the intentions of Mr. J. P. Luke, the retiring Mayor, but even if ho does not again offer his services the Labour nominee will have the advantage of the vote-splitting which must result from Mr. Barber and Mr. Weston competing with one another for the votes of citizens who do not desire to see the control of the city's affairs fall into the hands of the Labour-Socialists. Should Mr. Luke be persuaded _to stand, then the position from this point of view will be still worse. It would seem that there is to be a very large batch of candidates for the new council. Here again Labour, through its organisation and the limiting of its . candidates, will have an advantage.

Queensland has been held up to the world as a worker's paradise— the one-country where a LabourSocialist Government has been in office, long enough to give effect to Labour-Socialist ideas. We had a, long eulogy recently from Mr. Kandolpk Bedford, a Labour member of the Queensland Legislature, of the achievements of the Government he supports—a sto'ry of the good times which have come to the people of Queensland and more especially to the working population as the result of LabourSocialist rule. Mr. Bedford contradicted the stories of misgovernment, hardship, and injustice which had come to us from time to time. The reports' of growing unrest and disorders were brushed aside as inventions of the enemy. To-day we are given an insight into conditions as they really are. "Disgraceful scenes" are recorded, and "many conflicts between pronessionists and the police," the processionists in question being "redflaggers" who object to the actions of the Government. In the end the leading processionists appear to have retired to their meeting-room, where they informed a detective that they were armed and would fight to a finish. Possibly by way of proving this some shots were fired at a body, of returned soldiers who were approaching the rooms and who had dispersed an earlier meeting of the processionists. It is very clear that there are possibilities of serious trouble in some of the States of the Commonwealth as the result of activities of a Bolshevik nature, and Queensland, where a Labour-Socialist Government has held sway for many years, is one of the centres 'where disaffection is most widespread and aggressive.