DOMINION DAY.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 143, 26 September 1910, Page 4

DOMINION DAY.

When the Premier returned from the Old Land with all his blushing honors thick upon him, he made a statement full of deep mysteriousness. He saitd that at some future time he would impart to New Zealanders a matter of great import. Expectation was roused to fever heat, and when the .occasion arrived Sir Joseph hurled his bomb. The fair country was no longer to be known by the ancient and honoxable title of "colony"; it was to bask in Moure in 'the dear delight of dominionship. Everything went on just the same. The sun rose and set, the moon beamed, the mortgages were just as heavy as usual, and there was no appreciable increase in the butter output. But although nothimg happened except a change of name, the people were told that they need not work on that day unless they liked. A holiday was tacked on ito the already (heavy list, but it was not made illegal to work. Dominion Day, as far as the holiday is concerned, means that Government offices and banks do not do business, and that although the average citizen does not relax his efforts, he suffers some dislocation of business. The spectacle of Government servants and the officers of banks being proxy for the whole of New Zealand as holiday makers is discouraging. Russia holidays in a very cast-iron fashion. On every saint's day, or other day the Grand Dukes like'to name, the whole of the population is bound to cease work or be run in and perhaps sent to Siberia. It is an offence to work. In the heart of New Zealand—the true New Zealand—Dominion Day is work day, and tine Government servant and the bank men celebrate the great national occasion in a lonely manner. Possibly the Government and the banks recognise the extreme ocduousness of the work of their servants, and grasp these frequent opportunities to palliate the pain of servitude. The paternal Government may some day send its inspectors into the backblocks to stand guard at the cow byres in order to forcibly prevent milkers working on a Government holiday, may hold up steamers and trams and ploughs andi busses, may insist that gas companies shall not make gas, and that everybody, including newspaper people, doctors and railway hands, snail not do a stroke of work. Bonk people and Government servants would feel less lonely, and they would hove someone to help them celebrate the occasion. The Government of the future will be able to indicate the days on which it is legal to work.