Rangitikei Advocate. MONDAY, JUNE 8, 1908 EDITORIAL NOTES.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXIV, Issue 9165, 8 June 1908, Page 4

Rangitikei Advocate. MONDAY, JUNE 8, 1908 EDITORIAL NOTES.

THE Commonwealth Government is making a new departure in its old age pension scheme. In this country the pensions are practically 'a charitable allowance to those who have not sufficient means of support and the same method is being followed by Mr Asquith in England. In Australia, however, the Deakin Administration boldly proposes not only to make it a “pension” in fact, payable on demand to every male citizen who has attained the age of 65, and tins without regard to the wealth of poverty of the claimant, but to lower the age entitling women to the pension at 60, and to pay at 60 to men incapacitated from work; there is also an ‘.‘invalid pension” scheme attached by which any person over 16 who is incapacitated will be similarly pensioned. The cost of the scheme will probably amount to little less than two millions per annum though estimates are of little value in such matters as the term “ incapacitated” is of so elastic a nature that it is difficult to tell beforehand what claims will arise under this head. Pension schemes have the disadvantage of leading to unknown expenditure which it is almost impossible to reduce in the future. The cost to New Zealand of a far less ambitious scheme than that of Mr Deakin is already ignore thau £835,000 per annum and 39 per cent of those aged over 65 are in receipt of pensions. This means that in New in spite of all our prosperity, about one-third of our population at the age of 65 do not possess £260, or an income of £6O per annum and have no children or relatives willing to support them.

THE danger of putting new wine into old bottles was never better illustrated than by the results of the education of Eastern nations in the knowledge of the West. Among the Hindoos especially it is found that natives who become acquainted with the teachings of modern science and criticism lose all their old beliefs and having nothing to replace them are guided by reason and appetite alone which prove poor substitutes for the moral law established by religion or custom. In the West, men who”give up their okLbeliefs do not make such a wide departure since centuries of Christianity have established a moral code which agrees in the main with the teaching of religion. In Japan also, among the upper classes at any rate, the ethical code of the Samurai, the Bushido—the way of the warrior—as it was called, provides a very adequate substitute for religious motives aud thus the introduction of modern knowledge has not produced the same results in Japan as among other Eastern nations. In India the problem presented is a difficult one and the acceptance of Christianity by educated natives has not hitherto provided a solution as the reaction against old beliefs caused by education is almost certain ;to carry the student far into the regions o f unbelief or agnosticism.

THERE is a proposal in South Australia to buy a mine lor the purpose of supplying coal to the Stateowned railways, a departure which hitherto has been made in New Zealand only. The Sydney Morning Herald, in discussing the question, makes some remarks which seem to put the case for and against such State-owned mines very fairly. “If the State is to own the railways there is no logical reason why she should not own the coal that runs them any more than there is reason why she should not build her own rolling stock. The argument is a purely practical one. Oau the State demonstrate that it can produce more cheaply than it can buy in the

open market? If fit can its enterprise is justified.’ ’