WELLINGTON ECHOES.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 52, 10 June 1910, Page 7

WELLINGTON ECHOES.

(Special to the News.) Wellington, June 0. The echoes are like the sound of trumpets—in other words they are for the most part military. This nation of shopkeepers (busies itself much albout soldiering. And it is time.

Firstly, the three good men and true of the site commission have stultified all the land experts who have been declaring ever since the close of the session that land would never ihe found in suitable places for the training camps under the new system. Either the cost or the situation would have been the flaw fatal. But the commission went out, took a look at the country recommended by the land officers and chose at once. About the northern site, in the heart of the famous Waimarino, no one has as yet thought of making any complaint. We may take it as certain, then, that it is proof against the most inveterate political grumbler. The southern site is not in the same happy position, for a local river board complains bitterly that its reserves, well leased to somebody, have Ibeen rapined from them, and declares that there is more land on earth wiucli ean satisfy their ideas of revenue. Which is seen to be nonsense on the smallest reflection. In the first place, it is i«ie to suppose that the defensive system of the Dominion is to be paralysed because a loeal river board has let a few acres on good terms. Secondly, the tenants can be compensated by the State and the (board can an equivalent for what has been taken for a paramount public purpose. There is no difficulty whatever. But the fact is that the country is filled with "toasts and butter" who, when they are crossed, in the smallest degree fill the air with unmanly howlings. They are of the modern political gospel which is to enterprise nothing, to endure nothing, to change nothing, to go for ever lying ou an idle back and being at regular intervals fed with pap.

But this is a minor matter. Public opinion is roused by another military echo. This one purports to come from Colonel Robin, in the shape of a request to have an enquiry held into the matter of the intemperate charge brought irrelevantly against him 'by ex-Captain Knyvett. Now it is unthinkable that the Colonel really wants an enquiry into that which on the face of it is, as a cnarge, absurd. This is the universal opinion in the street. Every man declares that if even the Colonel wants a thing which is absurd that is not a valid reason why he should get it. fe-til! less does anybody think that the obstacle in the way—the technical obstacle that there is not an officer of the rank necessary for the court of enquiry—should ibe removed by law. The idea of changing the law for the delectation of a parcel of Aucklanders who are like children crying for the moon is most distasteful to our people.

Of course, lli\ Fowltls declared that the Government would rather die in the ditch than give way in the matter of exCaptain Knyvett. But to agree to enquire into the charges made by Knyvett in his special act of insubordination is too much for any supporter of the Government to endure with equanimity. It was indiscipline to flout the Colonel when the Colonel would not see eye to eye with the Captain. Why, then, enquire into the substance of the flouting t

British energy is the thing we hear most about in connection with the question of military service. It is, of course, at the root of the question. The energy of the fathers made the Dominion and the energy of the sons must keep it. Of this energy we hear much from Sir George Reid in these times. No such personality has ever been honored with the representation in London of a self-governing dominion. Hence no man has contributed such a series of brilliant speeches to the questions of the day which concern his ipeople. He is one of those men of genius who prove by their conduct that genius is only another name for perpetual commonsense. Amongst the subjects dealt with by that genius we observe the energy of the race and its adaptability for colonisation; and, what is more, its mission to colonise. Now there are vast spaces of the earth's surface which are both under the British flag and empty of human beings. Everybody agrees that those empty places should be filled by British folk. Everybody sees that millions sterling are wasted every year. in Britain in pauperising hundreds of thousands of the British stock. Everybody has also come to the agreement that the problem is one for Governments to solve, the Home Government working with the Governments of the overseas dominions. * * * *

Has Sir George Reid come to London in the nick of time? Is he destined to bring about this combination of Uovernments in the vital work of maXing tlie Empire inhabited as well as habitable, and in defending it as well as talking I about the British energy which is to defend and keep what the older generation have won? There is no difficulty. Great Britain found none in handling the transport of a quarter of a million of I men during the Boer War. There is no 1 more difficulty in transporting a quarter 'of a million for peace purposes. Hie nation possesses the money and the ships for transporting a million people a year from one end of the world to the other, under the system which shall "bed them out" like plans, with every prospecv, 01 taking root in a congenial soil. Talking will never do it, Nothing but good, well and l practically organised work will do it. If it is not done soon it will be done by some other nation at the point of the bavonet. That is the last word about the outlying territories of the British Empire.

The University people arc quarrelling like mad aobut the raison <T etre of the ] University at all. There are a few new, professors who roundly declare that, as j at present constituted, the University is a fraud. This they seek to prove at the rate of columns and columns of diatribes and statistics in the newspapers. Other .professors and men without names, chiefly the latter, tear the figures of the professors to pieces, but they do not prove that the University is the best of possible universities in the best of all possible countries. The only way out seems to be the appointment of a commission to resolve the question 01 what ou«ht to toe done in the matter of reform. Somebody said the other day that he fears the German gas flasks mow than their Krupp guns and Dreadnoughts. Some of us here seem to think that 3 a commission will convert the professors into gas flasks. There are some too, who think that commissions ought not to be appointed to do the work which is already done, automatically and well.

An echo of the meat market has raised the spirits of the men who are tor ever feariii" slumps. It came in the shape of a statement by the National Federation of meat trades to the effect that meat cannot fall to recent low levels for some time to come. This, we feel, gives a respite to the much badgered directors ot meat comrjaaies and. Ue asals \\±Q are

supposed to ''let everything rip" mice the meat got out of the owners' sight. It means that wc shall have rest from such controversies for a time. But the producer has to keep his eye open and his mind alert. The opinion is gaining ground in the Old Country that the New Zealand producer is not getting the benefit of the superior quality of his goods. A good market is the best opportunity for investigation and possibly consequent action of drastic character.

A Christchurch echo is puzzling. What does Tommy Taylor mean by the apparent admission that he regrets the failure of the compromise offered last year? It does not seem as if he could mean anything but that the compromise is tne only" possible solution of a difficulty which increases with the apparent success of no-license on its present lines; in that there is some sense for it is becoming evident in the opinion of many that noJicense will never solve the liquor question. If that is correct, then the sooner no-license is discarded in favor of some other method the better, of course. The Rev. Mr. Isitt shudders at the idea of seeing the supporters of the '•top-line" tactics in a minority. But it does uot follow that because he shudders he is right. One begins to think tkat the matter will be revived during the coming season.

What Bishop Stretch thinks on the subject of no-license is very clearly set forth in the morning papers of Monday. It is a fine, manly protest against the degradation of politics to narrow ideals and the worship of personal nonentities. His words are running through the city just now in the way that makes people think.

There is another echo of the same kind —a clerical kind. Twenty-five people met last night in the Opera House to hear the Rev. Morton-Barnes propound his theories on the subject. He proposes that licenses should not be for houses but for individuals, based on a system of tickets with a .punch for every drink. When a man gets drunk take away his punch, and there you are. But the punishment must ! be used with discretion, for, in some wav not made clear to the audience, but fully revealed to the rev. gentleman, alcohol is going to become, shortly the "elixir of life." This will probably be done by a mixture of the same with radium. In fact, at the present moment, the reverend gentleman is awaiting the salutary effect of a dose of the mixture which he has been enabled—"■by the kindness of a professor of Victoria College"—to take. An ingenious friend, talking of the chances of the establishment of this new cult of alcoholic badinage, says that at the rate of twenty-five new hearers a week it would take Mr. Barnes 6000 years to get the ear of the whole (population of Wellington, and that even then he would be just as far off from anybody's conversion as ever.

"In the name of the Prophet—Figs!" Mr. Barnes scorns to be in the same noat as regards reform as Mr. Coleman Phillips, of the Wairaiupa. Mr. Phillips is out on the warpath which lies in the correspondence columns of the newspapers, as everybody knows, engaged in the praiseworthy attempt to found a new religion. Filled with this master idea, he smiles benevolently across columns of small print, seeming to talk with breath bated but self-satisfied. He is taken seriously by a select few wno follow him in the war-path he has trodden, a divided band, some on his side, some against him. The general public looks on as it looks on at Mr. Barnes. It is amused. At the same time we all resipect this evidently sincere reformer who wants us to accept from him a re-j ligion which in the absence of precise details we may describe as Mahomcdanism without Mahomet. We agree that it might save much trouble, especially if Coleman takes the place of MahometAllah akabar!

Some of the social reformers amongst us are afraid. They see signs of the collapse—crumbling away they call it—of the Arbitration Act. The shearers have declared that they won't take less than a pound a hundred and this has ibroken them up. They want to what Labor is going to do about it, especially as the Auckland election gives an opportunity. The general sentiment, however, is that the time has gone by for hysterical drawing of firm lines in this matter. Let us be modest and &°P e ' # , • .

Another thing we are asked about is the land tenure. The tremendous profit obtained by one of the original settlers on an estate near Ashburton resumed some twelve years ago from the private owner is burning the usual hole in the minds of the leaseholders, and we are asked what we are going to do. and at once. Well, the first thing we are doing is to compliment the seller on his good fortune, and the second is to conclude that the benefit of cutting up is proving very much greater than any one suspected in the beginning. The probable third in this series is that prices will be going up before there are many more resumptions.