The Daily News. FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 1912. THE SIN OF PAROCHIALISM.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 94, 6 September 1912, Page 4

The Daily News. FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 1912. THE SIN OF PAROCHIALISM.

An Auckland journal recently remarked in the loud voice of one having authority that in view of the fact that the Queen \ City had been described by no less an I authority than Rudyard Kipling as being "last, loneliest, loveliest and best" of the Empire's suburban watering places it ought to have all the money available from the Government for the construction of railways in the north, for roading and bridging, for the establishment of sanatoria and free-lunch counters, for building fowlhouses for the residents, and for filling the crater of Mt. Eden ■with diamonds, and early asparagus and corpses and other trifling accessories to the social and financial body politic. Everybody knows that Auckland is the hub of the universe, and that its gorgeous suburbs of London and Boston and Calcutta and Opunake are among the finest residential districts in the neighborhood of Auckland. But even this willing admission of its many merits ought not to deprive Taranaki and Hawke's. Bay and Wellington and that terra incognita, the South Island, from collecting twopence each out of every ■pound of public expenditure. Incidentally, we notice that a paper published in Dunedin, where the Scotchmen and the mists and the fogs and several Jews come from, has been agitating for a concerted movement to see that the northern city does not get more than a fair share of the public expenditure. This, in its way, is just as parochial an attitude as that adopted by the northern city. It is equally parochial, equally absurd and equally unnecessary. Auckland's cry of "Give, give," and its demand for "more" has grown to be a by-word in the Dominion. Folks do not worry a great deal about this, for fortunately a complacent Parliament has long since realised that the metropolis of the north asks for a good deal more than it wants, on the principle that ''who aimeth at the sky shoots higher far than he that means a tree." The whole silly incident is really of value only as illustrating the lengths to which parochialism can go, There is absolutely no necessity why district should be set against district in New Zealand in a clamor for the loaves and fishes. Personally, we do not on re a bean whether Taranaki gels even the widow's mite from the public purse for its obvious wants if it can be shown that the money can be more wisely expended on the dredging of Lake Kanerei or the levelling of Mount Ruapehu. But when Auckland demands that its streets should be silver-plated, it 3 harbor wire-netted to prevent the naughty sharks entering its sacred waters, and its racecourse laid down in Brussels carpet, we just want to rise

up quietly on our hind legs and say vigorously and with dignity, "What for?" Jesting apart, thia form of parochialism is getting Auckland down, and we should like to see the press of what i* admittedly one of the finest cities in the Empire cultivating a more publie-spirited recognition of the fact that there are littlo places on its earth that are also requiring the bare necessities of life, and that before it demands patent leather shoes and exquisite lingerie some of us can do with a new pair of clog* and a suit of dungarees.