BRITISH POLITICS AND BIRTHDAY HONOURS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 1746, 11 August 1917, Page 4

BRITISH POLITICS AND BIRTHDAY HONOURS.

In commenting upon the party character of the Birthday Honours List, the London Times said that; this was “made the occasion, as is most fitting, for the decoration and promotion of a large number of those gallant soldiers and sailors who are the proper object; of these distinctions in the course of a titanic wav. To IhcTli, and lo the other recipients of ‘war work’ recognition, the public will offer appropriate congratulation. But this section of the list is neither the most prominent nor the most interesting, and we may be allowed to wonder, not; for flic first lime, whether our political system really requires u wholesale periodical output of jmeruges, baronetcies, and knighthoods in velum for some heavy disbursements or for purely parly services. Mr Lloyd George, after some hesitation, seems to have swallowed the system whole. For sheer hulk his recommendations will challenge comparison with those of any of his predecessors, none of whom can afford to cast a stone at him. Three viscounties, five baronies, twentyfive baronetcies, and fifty knighthoods ‘attest—as Gibbon would say —the variety of his inclinations.’ We do not suggest for a moment 'that all of them, as many have been in the past, are mere exchange either for ‘cash down’ or for Parliamentary docility. But the old atmosphere of parly bargaining hangs heavy over the list. One would say, at a casual glaum'., that it was compounded in the main from an ancient file of pledges in the Unionist Centra reinforced by certain special obligations contracted under the present regime. These serried rows of political climbers arc something of a public joke in times of peace. In war-time, when thousands of their countrymen arc making the supreme sacrifice unrecognised, they are nothing less than a public outrage.”