CURRENT TOPICS

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 114, 22 August 1910, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS

THE GiRiOQEiRiIS BILL. A civil servant appeared before a magistrate on a judgment summons a day or two ago. This ipan earned £l7O a year, he had a wife ajSd four children, the eldest of whom was twelve years of age. The debt was upwards of £l2. The •most curious point about the case was that the magistrate said it was "a scandal" to bring a civil servant earning so little money before the Court on a judgment summons. He further said he (lid not know how the defendant "mjide both ends meet" and made no .>rder. In such a 'case the outsider is entitled to be just as sorry for the grocer as for the man who.cannot'pay. It is impossible to see how it can be "scandalous" for any tradesman to use the law by way of obtaining what is his due, It would be a scandal if a civil servant, on going for his pay, did not receive it. It cannot be proved that because a man ia obtaining tM* lowest possible living wage that tradesmen should supply his wants gratis. If it were a scandal for , (business people to demand the money owed to them tllwre would soon be no business people. At bedrock, the credit ■yiatem is to blame. It will be accepted as a truth 'that no person should.receive goods for which he is not able to pay, andi no person should supply goods that he suspects will not be paid for. But it can never be accepted that, having supplied 'goods, it is a "scandal" for the supplier to use every legal means to obtain his dues. There is no guarantee tha,t a £250-a-year man, who is suddenly in possession of £SOO a year, will meet ■ his liabilities, and while the credit sysr tem is the basis of our commercial i operations, the delbt and the judgment j summons must figure as the only avail- ' able methods of discovering the ability i of a debtor to pay. 'Where a magistrate . asserts that a tradesman creates a "scandial" by refusing to supply a customer witlh free goods, it follows that tradesmen must necessarily protect them- ! selves by urgent enquiry as to the bona fides of customers and by the refusal of credit, which is the (basis of all debt cases in Magistrates' Courts. A TAiLK TO TERRITORIALS. J If one teukes the liberty of mentioning to ( a New Zealand soldier that discipline is the first essential of his service, that his duty is to 'his lance-corpoTal, just as it is to his captain or his King, he will probably say, "Oh, but we are only volunteers!" Ai territorial soldier should ibe ashamed to do anything for which a regular soldier would be punished. If he is a good territorial soldier he is

willing to abide by the most regulations of the Imperial service, and while he is soldiering the discipline should! be as rigid aa if the drill hall or the manoeuvre field were at Aldershot. The territorial soldier has perhaps not yet learnt that it is not his function to question either the orders of his immediate superiors or t'he Department that controls his superiors. Personal pique, if it leads to unsoldierly methods, is military crime. The cablegram published on Saturday may teach some wholesome lessons to colonial territorials. It shows that one territorial was sentenced civilly for disobeying a sergeant-major's orders and that another was sentenced for insolence. As a result newspapers are advocating compulsory service. Compulsory service is coming in Britain as surely as night succeeds day. Ktew Zealand has 'laid the foundation for diluted compulsory service, and it will be better for those soldiers who do not feel equal to the task of obeying, to "get out" before the grip falls. The men who do get out will demonstrate that they never had any right to call themselves soldiers. 'To quit out of pique is mere desertion. The soldier who deserts and then defends himself by saying, "Oh, but I'm only a volunteer!" has not much idea of the real duties of an armed servant of the Kingu

A WORD ABOUT AIRT." j Americans ransack the whole world ofj art, not .because they love art so much as possession of valuables. The average American is generally understood to V e the sort of person who would expectorate on the tomb of Napoleon and use a Canova bust for pounding pills. There was a cable in Saturday morning's paper showing the enormous amounts Americans spend in buying works of art, but one would notice that America itself does not produce any of them. The commercial and artistic temperament are rarely ever allied, and no man who puts dollars before all else ever achieved any distinction in the world of art or science. The worldi owes most of its advance not so much to the intensely practical person who races for every threepenny bit and secures it before it rolls far, tout the man who is so engrossed in his specialty that he cares nothing for its money value. America, which certainly has a 1 6<mall artistic element, obviously hungers ; for what it lacks, and because America [ has more dollars than most countries, it ] sends emissaries into all old countries to ! collect gems that are absolutely priceI less. Indeed, it is the price put on works i o ,f genius by material Americans that has made them too valuable for any but millionaires to purchase. Art grows as slowly as a coral reef. Thie young countries have ephemeral art and ephemeral literature because of the slow growth and the fact that material matters must come first. In the colonies we are absolutely dependent on the Old World for our art and our literature. The colonies are not old enough to have any Longi fellows or Keatses or even Tom Hoods, i Art also is scarcely worshipped in new countries as it is in old ones, and hurrying colonials have no particular yearnings to do something for art's sake. The capital' city is without an art gallery worthy the name, and any notable possessions of artistic value in New Zealand have come from elsewhere. We have no collection of Maori art half as valuable as Germany has, and it is very probable thai the British Museum authorities might tell the average New Zealander much more than he knows about his own country, its' aborigines and their art. It is unfortunately true that in countries where the conditions of life are hardest on some sections of the people and where wealth and culture exist (and is opposed to the massesi) that art flourishes in its finest form. It is because we have not yet so many disparities as, say, Italy, at present that art ia sleeping. We must have the great joys, the big despairs of older countries before art awakens in this country, it ■would ibe much nicer to produce art than to buy, it by the mile like our cousins in America.