The Sun 42 Wyndham Street, Auckland, N.Z. WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 1927. POLITICS AND PANTOMIME

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 155, 21 September 1927, Page 8

The Sun 42 Wyndham Street, Auckland, N.Z. WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 1927. POLITICS AND PANTOMIME

WHATEVER else the Mount Albert Borough Council and the Mount Roskill Road Board fail to do, they at least succeed these days in acquiring a lively notoriety. Together, but in different ways, they contrive to attract more attention than that commanded at the moment by all of the six hundred and seventy-three other local bodies in the Dominion.

This prominence, however, is more spurious and silly than beneficial to civic service. It merely tends to invest local government with the comic features of a cheap vaudeville entertainment. It would be better for each district if the local bodies concerned made an end to petty nonsense and cleared the way to progressive administration on. the lines of common sense and without the exercise of individual conceit and the intrusion of absurd vanity. It has been well said that the pest of local and general politics in many lands to-day is the cult of the so-called “strong” man in government. In reality the right title for the type is that ofextremist whose tantrums and tactics merely hinder the progress of good work and load the moderate masses with an intolerable burden of poor government and stupid expense. Two demonstrations in Auckland last evening burlesqued suburban administration. One took the form of a farcical siege of the Mount Albert Borough Council Chambers, where the garrison of councillors, sheltering behind procedure as the first line of defence, had no difficulty in repelling the noisy raiders. The result was ineffective pandemonium. Nothing was done to correct the tyrannical manner in which the majority of the council recently dismissed the borough’s engineer, whose reasonable protest against unjust treatment has not yet been answered. The other demonstration found hectic play within the modest chamber devoted to the jjrofound deliberations of the Mount Roskill Road Board. It was more pantomimic in form and feature. There the rank and file of the local administration was not.perturbed about the dismissal of a servant. The cause of hysterical indignation was a brisk and blunt demand for the resignation of the master—the Mussolini of the place. “What happened to Jones?” in this farce. Nothing serious happened. Mr. Jones spurned the hostile motion as an insult and vehemently assured the road boarders that he did not care a rap for any one of them. A gentle lady, defying all the rules of procedure and precedent, intervened from the auditorium with a plea for the burial of the hatchet so that peace might reign once more over Mount Roskill. Her appeal failed. The spirit of Locarno had departed. It may be noted that in the other demonstration the voice of femininity was more militant. It called upon a thousand angry Mount Albertian residents to resist the council’s harsh treatment. Altogether, the ratepayers are getting some entertainment for their money, but it would be more advantageous to quell excitement and firmly demand the practice of justice and open government. Failing these, the next best thing is to amalgamate with the city. The metropolitan administrators may not soar to the zone of genius, but they are at least tranquil and dignified.

FOR A PATRIOT'S MONUMENT THOUGH born in Ireland, the late William Ferguson Massey was first of all a New Zealander, proud of the country which had reared him and of its people and its products. He was intensely patriotic in policy, and while he was enthusiastic in the common cause of Empire and demanded preference for British goods, he considered it his duty, and that of all New Zealanders, to patronise New Zealand industry wherever possible. Now he is dead a monument is to be built to his memory—and those who have designed the monument propose to employ foreign material in the building of it! If the dead could speak, there would assuredly be a voice of protest from a patriot’s grave on Point Halswell. The proposal to import foreign material for the memorial to Mr. Massey is to disregard the lead he gave for the encouragement of New Zealand enterprise. He lies in the soil of the land he loved dearly, and the stone quarried from that land would be all he would ask for his monument. It is a peculiar mentality that cannot appreciate what is fitting to perpetuate the memory of this great statesman.

The explanation of the present Prime Minister, the successor to Mr. Massey, is that “a very prominent architect, who has at his disposal the advice of another firm of architects,” makes a very definite recommendation as to the type of material to he used—definitely favouring a certain imported marble. The impression conveyed by a question asked in the House is that the proposed foreign material is Italian marble. It is not a question of an architect’s preference, when there is so much beautiful New Zealand stone available; it is a question of providing something in keeping with the life and policy of the late Mr. Massey—who certainly did not favour foreign materials for New Zealand works—and of satisfying the sentiment of the New Zealanders who have subscribed the money for the monument to a Prime Minister whose loss they genuinely mourned.

THE PLIGHT OF THE SENILE IN the opinion of the Director-General of Health, the destitute senile should not be committed to a prison or to a mental hospital, as is now too frequently the case, and he suggests that they should be cared for in the chronic wards of public hospitals and be a charge on charitable aid boards. None will disagree with the Director-General as to the cruelty of imprisoning poor old people whose only crime is senility; but, on the other hand, most people will incline toward the contention of Mr. Wallace, chairman of the Auckland Hospital Board, that it is the duty of the Department of Health to make provision for these people in some “half-way house.” The Government has been asked to provide such a place before to-day; but, as in many other things, the Government desires to load the responsibility on to local bodies. The sending of senile cases to prison or to a mental hospital is a disgrace to the community and it is well that attention is being directed to the scandal. Public sympathy has to be awakened to effect reform, and in this matter reform is long overdue.