The Daily News. TUESDAY, MAY 14, 1912. HERE WE GO ROUND THE MULBERRY BUSH!

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 272, 14 May 1912, Page 4

The Daily News. TUESDAY, MAY 14, 1912. HERE WE GO ROUND THE MULBERRY BUSH!

Ever, since "Phairson swore a feud against the Clan McTavish, and maircht into their land to murder and to ravish," Scotsmen have been kittle cattle where tlieir dignity is concerned. It is probably this spirit of intense loyalty to his clan that has induced the Prime Minister to engage in a controversy that is singularly puerile, both from his own standpoint and from that of the Leader of the Opposition. Mr. Massey, in some inspired moment, is alleged to have said that the Mackenzies could not tell the trut'h, or catch worms, or play cribbage, or stand from under where a brick was falling, or commit any other heinous political offence. The retort courteous for this grave indictment comes from Mr. Mackenzie himself, who states that the clan, clad in proper and appropriate tartan with a dash of heliotrope in it and taffeta revers of mousseline de soie, had even refused £30,000 to disclose the hiding place of Bonnie Prince Charlie, or sweep away the cobwebs which concealed the cave where Robert the Bruee was hiding on the eve of the Battle of Waterloo. We are all intensely interested in the result of this controversy, and no doubt Parliament, when Mr. Massey raises the question, will throw the Address-in-Reply overboard, consign the question of land settlement to the limbo of forgotten things, push Imprest Supply into the forty-eighth pigeon-hole, and devote its attention solely to settling this grave and important matter. Personally, we do not believe that either the Mackenzies or the McMasseys ever tampered with the truth, or that they can be bought at any old price per gross. They are all unimpeachable gentlemen, except where politics and other things are concerned, and we just hate to see them playing the Kilkenny cat game which resolves itself into "our big cat and another one." Mr. Massey is one big cat and Mr. Mackenzie is the other one, for the purposes of this particular dispute. But the country is not interested. It is no doubt of immense moment that Mr. Massey's prize Leghorn cockerel was the son of Rudyard Kipling's "camel that lay by the roadside," and that Mr. Mackenzie's queen bee was born four yards and two-eights of an inch south of a line drawn from Fort William to the Bay of Oban. But we want some roads, and some railways, and some bridges, and some schools, and some doctors, and a lot of other things in the far backblocks, and there is absolutely no necessity why Parliament should worry about "the bones of Brown's lost mule" or spend its time discussing a "Bill for the Abolition of Zymosis and Housemaid's Knee." As a plain, simple matter of fact both the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition are making fourteen different kinds of

goats of themselves by indulging in a childish and inane quarrel over the 'hind leg of a broken butterfly which is neither useful nor edifying. They will both earn the respect of the community if they decide instanter to "drop it."