CURRENT TOPICS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVI, Issue 25, 30 June 1913, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS.

THE SELLARS FAMILY. Writing on May 14, the London correspondent of the Lyttelton limes says. The Sellars family will, police and weather permitting, be exhibited in public on Sunday week. They are to be staged on the plinth of Nelson's monument in Trafalgar Square, on the occasion of a workers' demonstration "in protest l against -militarism." It seems, by the way, somewhat incongruous to hold such a meeting under the shadow of the monument of the man who raised that famous signal —a signal that is still the trumpet call to Britons everywhere—"England expects that every man this day will do his duty." Dr. John Clifford's espousal of the Sellars' cause does not appear to have roused the charitable instincts of the Home anti-compulsory service folk. The fund opened by the Daily News at the eminent divine's instigation to give the "ruined family" a fresh start has now been open a week, and, generally speaking, it is in the first week or ten, days that appeals of tais kind produce the best results. Yet we find that, including £lO from Viscount Haberton and a couple of guineas from Dr. Clifford, the total amount subscribed to> date to the Sellars fund is £33 15a 6d, of which some £25 was sent in during the first two days the fund was open. The total amount received yesterday by the Daily jtfews was about Bs. Of course the' intervention of the Whitsun holiday may have temporarily stifled the charitable instincts of the "antis," but the result of the first week's appeal is somewhat significant. RAILWAY WORKS. In a young country such as New Zealand railway works should be energetically prosecuted, even in a time of financial stringency. If loans are unprocurable at low rates the Government must be prepared to stretch % per ctent., so that the country shall not be allowed to lag behind its neighbors. TBe Prime Minister said at Dunedin on Tuesday night that he looked forward to the remainder of the present financial year with a very light heart. In keeping with this optimistic announcement the country will expect the forthcoming Financial Statement to foreshadow a more vigorous policy of railway construction than has been carried out during the recess.—Auckland Herald. PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION. The Ministry cannot avoid some amendment of the electoral laws applicable to the House of Representatives. They are pledged to abolish the second ballot, equally certain is it that the country cannot revert to the'' system which prevailed prior to the adoption of the second ballot. Presumably some form of preferential voting will be resolved on, but wliat we are more concerned with is that when the amendment takes place the opportunity shall be embraced of grouping the city constituencies. The four cities should return each five members, and to these combined electorates the system of preferential voting known as proportional representation should be applied. By universal acknowledgment, the abolition of the triple constituencies in 1902 was a great mistake. That community of interest which during the n-ist few years has led to the enlargement of the boundaries of the city municipalities requires the extension of their electoral limits.— Dunedin Star. A FAIR TRIBUTE. "New Zealand is indebted to Sir Joseph Ward for the Advances to Settlers Act," said the Hon. T. Mackenzie at London recently. That splendid service was per- , haps the best that the late Premier (then the senior lieutenant of Mr. Seddon) has done for this country, and many a family, comfortably settled in healthy rural areas, is grateful for that help. Obviously, the best thing that organised society, such as New Zealand's, can do for itself is to encourage the production of goods on which it lives. Plainly, it is good business for the general public, through the Government, to lend money to men to enable them to increase the national wealth. Cold calculating selfishness alone should have commended this policy to representatives of the public long before Sir Joseph Ward's time, but the people had liot been sufficiently instructed in common-sense economics to look for such a natural reform. Besides, there were powerful vested interests which desired a "cut" out of the wealth won from new fields. They looked for that share by lending the development capital, at high rates of interest. The voice and the hidden hands of large money-lending institutions were mighty in the land when Mr. Ward (the title came later) introduced his Bill, but he persevered, and thus these islands obtained one of their best statutes. —Wellington Post. Otp* UNIVERSITY SYSTEM. There can be no doubt that a thorough enquiry will have to be made into the whole question of university education in New Zealand. So much has now been said on both sides that the public are not likely to be satisfied until a Royal Commission has been set up to go into the matter. Great care will have to be taken to get men of the highest standing and of acknowledged ability to deal with the various aspects of the question.— Dominion. BANQUETING MINISTERS. When one recalls the angry vehemence with which the Hon. W. F. Massey was accustomed to denounce the banqueting peregrinations of Liberal Ministers and the bitter persistence with which he perennially demanded returns of their travelling allowances, with the object of showing that they supplemented their incomes from this source, it becomes difficult to reconcile his virtuous indignation of those days with the practice of | himself and his colleagues in office. Ithas been exceptional, as our Ministers are aware, to find two of the Ministers in Wellington attending to departmental duties at one and the same time—Wellington Times.