The Manawatu Herald. Thursday, August 31, 1911. NOTES AND COMMENTS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIII, Issue 1037, 31 August 1911, Page 2

The Manawatu Herald. Thursday, August 31, 1911. NOTES AND COMMENTS.

In Magistrate Thompson, the Justice Department has an officer of whom it may well feel proud, possessed as he is of lolty ideals, a judicial mind, keen perceptive faculties, and not bereft of the milk of human kindness. Yet one who knows so well how to temper justice with mercy sometimes delivers judgments which appear to the layman out of comparative proportion to the crime. Here is our point: At yesterday’s sitting of the Court, a local publican unwittingly served a prohibited person with liquor. The licensee did not know his man, but the law does not make allowances for such circumstances. The fact of supplying a prohibited person other than a non-resident, even though a comparative stranger, constitutes a breach, and the licensee was fined 40s and costs. The man who deliberately broke the law, and knew all about it, got off with a fine of 10s —just a quarter of what the publican was fined. And yet the former’s wilful act may have cost the licensee an endorsement of his license.

A recent issue of the Evening Post, in a very interesting article, deals with the prospects of a Labour success in the forthcoming general election. The Post sees little hope of Labour winning many seats, but says it is possible to suppose an unsought, accidental and quite temporary alliance between the “ Reform Party ” and that loose and rather undefinable organisation termed the New Zealand Labour Party. There is only one of the nominated Labour candidates of Wellington who has any chance of success, and he is Mr D. McLaren, the sitting member for Wellington East. The Post concludes :—We see no evidence that Independent Labour will achieve

very much at the next elections I outside of Wellington province than in this province. Great things are expected from the oratory of Professor Mills, of America, This genial visitor is a likeable man, and an admirable speaker in some respects, but he does not wield the force to weld the raw material ot Labour. Mr M’Laren has also been appointed an organiser, but for all his earnestness and his industry in preparing bis themes, Mr M’Laren is not a galvaniser, nor a political electrician. He cannot thrill, he cannot compel. His composition lacks the vitalising element necessary for organising triumphs. Labour, too, is hindered by the noisy ultra-Socialists, the raucous Revolutionaries, with all their clamour for general strikes, and their contempt for conciliation and arbitration procedure. Moderate Labour has sensibly disassociated itself from the wild lurid doctrine of the Red Socialists, but the nonsense preached by some members of the New Zealand Federation oi Labour (quite distinct from the Labour Party) may injure the genuine Labour cause.