The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, JUNE 29. THE GOVERNOR'S SPEECH.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 68, 29 June 1910, Page 4

The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, JUNE 29. THE GOVERNOR'S SPEECH.

Traditionally, His Excellency the Governor has made a speech at the opening of Parliament. Although the speech, as usual, is in the first person, it is obvious to every person that the Speech has nothing to do with Lord Islington. To the person whose fate it has been to read every Governor's speech for many years, the dear old phrases sound familiar. The Speech seems like an oid friend, and recalls Lord Ranfurly .and Lord Plunket, as well as introduces Lord Islington. The Speech, as before, says we have been prosperous, that the efforts of the uuvernment are to be made on behalf of the people "as a whole," and contains quite as large a number of promises as any previous Speech. The public knows that these promises will be kept if Parliament finds enough time during the session to keep them. A curious thing about a Governor's speech is that it is by no means a surprise. Every item of intelligence contained in it has already been made public, and the formal repetition of it is by the way, we suppose, of driving it home to the brains of the people. The Speech has discovered that there is a "land hunger" in the Dominion, and that much is being done, land will be done, to increase the number of small holdings. This is the most important reiteration in the Speech, and even if Parliament set itself steadily to work to effect the results promised, without attempting to deal with the one thousand and one other subjects, from public holidays to noxious weeds, it would earn its year's salary in three months. But, as usual, the programme is so full that "the slaughter of innocents" is assured, even though the Speech does not mention it. Wireless telegraphy is "in the air," and, if really inaugurated and not merely promised, must be an immense boon to. everybody. Communication with the backbloeks is said to be desirable. Comment is absolutely futile. Everybody knows it is impossible to road the wilderness in twelve months. All that is wanted is a sincere application, the granting of bigger votes, and the judicious spending of the votes. The Speech mentions the news item that Lord Kitchener has been in New Zealand. It is surprising how fast news travels. But the Speech is exceedingly vague in connection with the Field Marshal's scheme. The people who read in the papers that Lord Kitchener was visiting New Zealand, were subsequently informed that his . scheme was to be used "almost in" 'it's entirety." This Speech suggests that a small piece of the scheme will be used', and that almost : as many men as formerly will escape military Service. Maternity relief is also promised, but the point remains that the, people who are best able to afford children are not the people who have them. Whatever relief is, or is not, afforded, the mothers who need help most are the women who produce the largest number of children, and who are therefore the State's finest asset. The State has already done splendid work in midwifery, and has taught many women (who, through modern circumstances, had forgotten their instincts) to preserve their children alive. If the promrse to assist poor mothers is kept. New Zealand will have cause to bless the instigators of the scheme. But, in itself, the necessity for such relief points to presence of a great problem. Why are tjhere any poor mothers in New Zealand, which has millions of acres of land that do not grov anything? Kill the parasite, in New Zealand, and you increase the birthrate. Open the country, make settlement of land, increase of population and adequate communication the goal of all legislative effort, and the problems of poverty to a very large extent will cease. The old friends (Bills that have paraded for a brief space and then retired to their dust and their pigeon holes) are affectionately mentioned once more in the new Governor's Speech. They will probably be affectionately mentioned in the Speech of Lord Islington's successor. The perennial subject of trusts is mentioned, and legislation will be introduced to benefit "the people as a whole." If the anti-trust legislation does not deal with American combines, we modestly suggest that its extension to one or two combines in the Dominion would meet with some approval—except from the Dominion combines. The revision of I the prison system is to be undertaken. The | " people as a whole " already know that Dr. Findlay intends to make prisons more like home. When the prison system is being revised, a method of insisting that prisoners shall not break ■bounds might be added. One of the most notorious criminals in our history —at present undergoing his "Kathleen Mavourneen " was such an exemplary character that he was released to go on a farm. Everybody knows the sequel. The beginning of the revision had then started. "In the interests of the Dominion " the water power of the country will !be utilised, if legislation is passed empowering it. The industries of New Zealand as at present constituted might easily be run by the water-power available. There is a disposition to prevent private corporations from acquiring the rights to water power. This is all very well if potential industries are not nipped in the bud by such prohibitions. The " meat" of the Speech is in its tail, and in the concluding paragraph so many promises are contained that the ordinary high-flown padding has no , chance. The Speech indicates that there 'is much work to do; precedent informs us that much of it will be left undone. From Thursday next onward for a week or two, we may expect thousands of compliments and a general rehash of the news we know. Then the real work of the Session will commence.

SHE " SUFFRAGETTES." We do not call our mothers, our wives, our sisters or our sweethearts by opprobious epithets—if we respect them — but because the other fellow's sister is [trying hajd to get a vote m Britain we coin a Btinging word for her—"suffragette." The comic paper conception I of a suffragette is a woman whom no I one would care to have for a relative—] a grim visaged person of no particularly' denned sex, wearing skirts and waving I an umbrella, with accompanying yells. | It is very unkind of Britishei s. It seems to sound the knell of the knightly days of chivalry, when men dared death for the ismile of a woman. Perhaps plenty of Britishers would still uare death for their ladje-loves, but dare aot give them votes. It seems eowardly, doesn't it? Mind you, it is not altogether certain that the women of Britain want votes, or that if they got them they would use them, or that if they used them they would use them uninfluenced by their men folk. It is impossible to regard womenkind as apart from menkind. The one is the complement of the other—necessary, inseparable, unified. Woman does not get a vote in Great Britain, because she has never had one. That is the] British reason. It was impossible to conceive a few years ago that a woman should ever want to smoke, or play cricket, to speak in public or learn jujitsu. Yet she has accomplished all these seeming impossibilities, and man accepts the inevitable and does not grumble. He knows he must be beaten in the long run in any enterprise where woman is opposed to his conservative estimate of her as his chattel. She refuses to be a chattel, and that settles it. If she says she will have a vole in Britain, she, will have a vote. Mr. Asquith and both Houses will not be , able to gainsay her. Many people affect to believe that "suffragetting" is conducted at Home by boisterous women of the lower orders, whose exuberant physical spirits lead them to ebullitions i of rebellion. But the real fact is that Britain is permeated with the influence of both great men and great women who have decided that the marital partnership and its honors and responsibilities shall extend from the home to the polling booth. It is merely a question of patient waiting. The burly male fool who has forgotten his manhood sufficiently to create disturbances at women's meetings is to be dealt with* We have allowed women to go out of the fainting] industry and to step over the crewel work handicap. She plays hookey, and is athletic. She is'going to form a iii-' jitsu corps to throw out the male hoodlum who has a vote, but no manners. We desire that she shall throw him very 'hard with the jugular vein "hold." A few years ago a few quiet women had the effrontery to gain medical degrees in a great Home university. At the necessary ceremony, these women were not only hooted by the men students, but were badly hustled. Sueh a thing could not happen nowadays. Such a thing as a London policeman hauling a gentle lady out of a crowd and throwing her into Holloway will not be tolerated in a few years time. Men will begin to remember that they had mothers, | and their chivalry will bubble back into j its old place. A man may reason something like this: "I'm not a particularly brilliant specimen. I drink; I gamble; Fan a horn loafer; I don't work if I can avoid it; I'd sell my vote for a pint of beer; and 1 I haven't the least idea of politics—but I have a vote. There is Mrs. J. She's got brains; she's reared a family; she, is straight, honest, opposed to social evils, and works for their destruction. ' She hasn't got a vote, and I'll see that she never 'gets 1 one!" The man hasn't got a hope of | stopping hnr for more than a few years, j