CURRENT TOPICS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVI, Issue 190, 10 February 1914, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS.

ALTOGETHER UNSATISFACTORY. Mr. (.). R, Sykes, tho member for Mastertoi), has been telling lug constituents some astonishing things. He .says that the public works administration'is "altogether unsatisfactory," and grants are made "in a haphazard fashion." He lias brought these matters under tlinotice of the Minister of Public Works, who has "promised during the recess to see if an alteration could not be made." Surely this, from a member of tho Reform Party, is black treason! .Mr. Sykes cannot have consulted lately his copy of the historical Massey manifesto, which announced that the Keform Ministry was going to abolish "the wasteful and extravagant system of Parliamentary grants for vote-catching purposes," sweep away "the rotten system of political patronage" and generally conduct itself willi enormous integrity and intellience. ADVERTISING. A writer in the Century Magazine makes one speaker say to' a • mamifacttirer of parlor organs, "Whether you know it or not, you can't help advertising any.more than you can help breathing. Your instruments advertise you 1 ; your store advertises you; your clerks and your music-books and your own personality advertise vou; you advertise yourself in the street," in the factory, in your bunk, in church. Why? Because advertising i-, merely calling attention to yourself and your product." The whole story is a reminder that not until comparatively recent times was public sd-

vertisiug held to be the conventionally proper thing to do by the best business linns. The idea was that the maker's or merchant's goods advertised him and made him sought by those who wanted to buy. It was undignified to enter the public, ranks of applicants for the buyer's attention. A very large proportion of the conservative houses held this viewpoint till they found their advertising competitors were outselling them too far; then one. by one they ventured into print. The newspaper to-day is the most universal medium of advertising, been use it comes to the notice of many people every day. It lias also the advantage of a certain reserve and privacy which billboards lack. SAI'KTY OF THE COU.XTKY. The safety of the country is quite as secure in the bauds of the Liberals as it is likely to be under the control of the Tories. Kxtreme Labor can depend upon Liberalism for freedom from tyranny and the protection of its rights, with legislative progress on sound democratic and constitutional lines, but if that party is not content with this, there is absolutely no likelihood of a working alliance, with true Liberalism.—Wellington Times.