NOTES OF THE DAY
A pretty quarrel seems to exist as to whether the true Liberal Party is Mr. Wilford’s slender following or the leaderless remnant outside. The Wilfordites met on Thursday and the gathering was innocently referred to in the Press as a caucus of the Liberal Party. This raised the ire of Mr. M’Callum, who declared the meeting no caucus of Liberals, but merely one of a coterie of Oppositionists', and a coterie with which he as a Liberal would not be identified. Mr. Wilford replied that the report only referred to members of the Liberal Party led by him. Mr. M'Callum, however, seems to get close to arguing that the fact that Mr. Wilford is their leader precludes his supporters from being Liberals at all.. It is a sorry pass to which the once-omnipotent Liberal Party has reduced itself by its own folly and mistakes. Where Mr. Wilford’s following begins and ends nobody seems to know. Apparently nine members attended his caucus, and another member is absent on leave applied for by the Wilfordite whip. Our evening contemporary has endeavoured to elucidate the mystery, and states that a member who can speak with authority estimates the Wilfordites as numbering at least thirteen, while one optimist puts them at fifteen, but pathetically adds he is "confident" there are thirteen anyhow. It seems to bo a case of counting noses every morning in the Wilford camp—but thirteen, we believe, is Mr. Wilford’s lucky number.
Allocation of Government dwellings according to the needs of the applicants and the degree of hardship being suffered by them is a step in the right direction. This’ is the basis on which tenancy cases are dealt with in the courts, and it is a pity it was not applied at. the outset in parcelling out the new houses. However, the bulk-.bf the Government housing still a waits completion, and it will be good news to heads of families to know that they are to have special consideration henceforth. The suggestion has been made in more than one quarter that until the housing shortage is relieved there should be some form of rationing generally to ensure that workers who are urgently needed in a given locality shall have a preferential claim on vacant accommodation, and that preference shall also be given to those whose needs are greatest. Tho situation is changing all the time, but if need be the Government might well exert itself to see that relief is given to urgent cases in. the allotment of vacant tenements.
Sir Robert Stout might have gone further in hie comments on the evils of bookmaking on. Saturday. A prisoner was before the Court who admitted having embezzled JMOO from his employers in the hope of making good his betting losses with bookmakers. Many people are unable to understand why the totalizator should be permitted while the bookmaking is made illegal Gambling is an instinct that is planted deep down in human nature, and people who view with horror the. idea of backing a horse will often enough indulge it with disastrous effect in so-called business transactions. To suppress all opportunity for a straight-out, honest gamble, with the money risked, put up in actual cash on the spot, is to ask too much of human nature, and, is like sitting on the safety valve. Most business plungers would be infinitely better off if they went to the racecourse and worked off their desire for a flutter there without humbugging themselves as to what they were doing. It is not usually the purchaser of total-, isator tickets who embezzles money to pay hie gambling losses, but the person who has transactions with bookmakers or speculates in other ways without having to put up in advance the money he risks. These are the people who most commonly go from bad to worse in their efforts to retrieve themselves, and if all temptations to these forms of gambling cannot be removed we can at any rate eliminate that non-productive and useless person, the bookmaker, and his yearly toll of victims.
Householders will not be pleased to learn of another penny increase in the price of bread in consequence of the reduction of the Government subsidy from .£500,000 to £150,000. There is something anomalous in bread prices eoaring in Now Zealand, while Australia has on hanld) so large a wheat harvest that she does not know what to do with it. These sort of situations • seem inevitable with the artificial prices and State regulation .A industry which the war has left as one of its legacies. Provided there was free competition and no cornering of commodities, the pressure al eapply. and
demand, kept world prices and stocks at a fairly steady level. Arbitrary control and rationing during the war and postwar shortages has been a necessity that could not be avoided, but it has been far from an uncfpalified success. The Commonwealth Government, for instance, has fixed a price for Australian wheat above world's parity, and now it cannot export its wheat surplus while supplies can be obtained elsewhere. The result is that the flourmills are working short time, as stated in a messagei today, and the farmers are building silos to store the grain and hoping they will be able to keep the rats from it. Neither seller nor buyer is much better off with Officialdom putting their affairs through its mill, and the moral seems to be that the world, will be a pleasanter place all round when business affairs generally are handled by business men and not by State Departments
It is quite a pleasure to read of a New Zealand district team giving our Australian visitors an experience of leather hunting, and the Canterbury players aro to be congratulated on their efforts. It is true that the Australians lacked the services of Hornibrook, who is in a class by himself as a bowler, but their score of 310 is, nevertheless, a good one, and deserved the generous tributes paid by the captain and the manager of the visiting team. The Canterbury team does not appear to have been afflicted with nerves to tho extent which other teams who have stood up against the Australian bowlers have been afflicted. As a matter of fact, with the exception of Hornibrook, there ia nothing very startling in the repertoire of the visiting bowlers. As one old-time representative player remarked after watching the bowling carefully during the recent match at. the Basin Reserve: "If they (the bowlers, excepting Hornibrook) were playing for clubs in the Saturday matches in Wellington, they would be treated with no more respect than our own best bowlers are now treated by local batsmen." It is a psychological rather than a physical question. Cer-' tainly, Australian and English cricketers who visit us at wide intervals are mor? skilled in the game than our New Zealand players, but it is seldom that our men play up to their best form against them. They usually are overpowered with a sense of inferiority as players, and so do not perform as well as they otherwise might. What we really want to improve the standard of our cricket, however, is much more frequent visits from Australian teams—say, every two years—with an occasional visit of a New Zealand team to the Commonwealth.
Efforts are being made in the United States to improve the moral qualities of the American moving picture. To thia end a "National Motion Picture League’’ has been formed. It acts, first, by conducting. and supervising children’s matinees, and assisting churches and other organisations to secure proper pictures for adults, children, and young people; and in the second place by proper publicity for good pictures and a campaign against immoral and objectionable ones. Films to be approved by the league must be clever ' and wholesome, and moral throughout. Any films unwholesome in detail are rigidly excluded, even if the details emphasise the moral ending. Films that.' are inaccurate from a scientific standpoint are rejected, as are those with undesirable inaccuracies in reproductions of well-known stories. No crimes are allowed unless they are faintly suggested or play a subordinate part. Scenes of actual killing nnd senselese use of weapons are forbidden, and there must be no cruelty to man or beast. Infidelity or sex pictures are not accepted, and scenes showing women smoking, or men and women, smoking and drinking are not tolerated. Titles and letterpress must be grammatical and free from slang, and vulgar grimaces are forbidden. Most of the films that survive these tests are geographical and educational. Of the few stories that get into the league’s approved list most bear notes such as these: "In Part 3 cut scenes of mixing drinks.” In Part b cut sub-title "You don't care a damn, etc." The unadulterated American picture is not all that is desirable, but the bowdlerised world on which the league would have us look is rather too tepid a place to appeal strongly.
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Dominion, Volume 14, Issue 144, 14 March 1921, Page 4
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1,496NOTES OF THE DAY Dominion, Volume 14, Issue 144, 14 March 1921, Page 4
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