The Chronicle LEVIN. THURSDAY, JULY 5, 1916. GOOD JUDGMENT POOR. PERFORMANCE.

Levin Daily Chronicle, 5 July 1917, Page 2

The Chronicle LEVIN. THURSDAY, JULY 5, 1916. GOOD JUDGMENT POOR. PERFORMANCE.

flhe -sympathetic statements m'acje the Hon. G. W. 'Russell ivlien he addressed tlio delegation from Horowhenii i (Levin) Racing Club this week were sentimentally pleasing. £He realised, lie said, that country racemeetings were generally; picnic events; they did not tend to 'become mediums for heavy gambling, as some of the metropolitan meetings did. There was, In- said, a disinclination on the part of the metropolitan olubr to apply tilie pruning knite to their own meetings; yt these should ibe reduced in prefronco to reducing the country club's meetings. These are striking and commendable statements; and in the light of tliem it is hard to realise what actuates 3lr Russell in saying that to interfere between clubs that have liet'ii "pruned" or not pruned by the recent action of the ißacing Committee does not come within his province. IVIr R.ussell, in short, shows himself a clear-viewed Minister by all iliis utterances except the last one; and in the last one ho shows himself fv politician. In him rests the powetr of \ eto; and! lie says that to exercise the veto would not come well from him. It was well said by a fellow member of E\lr Russell's—some twenty .Nears a,go—that Mr Russell's constituency of Ricearton was a most appro-priately-named electorate far the rickoty 'politician Who represented! it. Th jibe rings as true to-day as it did two decades ago; Mr Russell's jud|gment is as excellent as of yore, and his constitutional inability to act on it as pronounced as ever. "Whether his fellow members oif the Cabinet will bo able to "screw his courage up to the sticking point" is a problem that will bo watched with interest in this and other districts; and especially in Otaki, where a. differentiation most unfair to Levin has been exercised' in favor of the Otoki 'Racing Club, chiefly through predisposing causes which the law of libel prevents us from indicating.