THE WEEK, THE WORLD AND WELLINGTON.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 2994, 19 September 1908, Page 3

THE WEEK, THE WORLD AND WELLINGTON.

(By Frank Morton.)

B BATING TUB KBCORD.—POINTS IN Urief.

There is a tradition f that a glacier is one of the siowest things in the world. That may be right, but there are sower things than glaciers. There is, for instance, the Treasury of New Zealand. It is so slow that no man living has ever caught it in a stat J of motiuri. It is so slow that if anything is heard to move in one out of the outer corridors all the clerks blush and turn away. It is so slow that it has become a standing cause of irritation and despair to everybody that is forced into connection with it. It is the Circumlocution Department in paralysis. In other countries it is a matter of d\y * getting a voucher through th e Treasury; in New Zealand it is a in if.test of weeks or months. If a of the Treasury or Audit Decrement gets sick or married, or anything like that, he carefully locks imp utant papers in his desk when he ■jioua on leave, and the public is kept waiting till he returns. You must not iitcempt to hurry the Ireasury. If you do, some stale old clerk will 1 jok at you reproachfully with his di.n disconsolate eyes, and you will yo away with a horrid sense of having crueily 'ill-used a poor dumb animal. About a yeat ago I did some little literary work for a Governmeont Department, but I had to stop because the Treasury became a soit of nightmnra to me. I reckoned that it took me so long—say 24G hours—to make inquiries and protests about the delay in payment rf sin account of two guinea-, that the game was really xut worth the candle. Everylo3y knows all these things; but apparently nobody cares. Parliament is wonderfully submissive and ir.eek. The Treasurer feigns ignorance of the colossal immobility of his department. There is no reason on earth why the Government should not pay its debts with reasonable promptitude, and so enable its creditors to pay theirs. There is no reason why things should not be done in a businesslike way, even in the Treasury. There is no reason at all why the Government should continue to tolerate things t ntamount to a chronic public scandal. But nobody talks about these things, if exception is made of the aggrieved parties and an occasional journalist. I suggest that Government should pay all its bills promptly by promissory-notes payable in a month. > Then people •would at least know where they -were. The City Council of Chnstchurch-on-A von has decided to protest against the proposal to observe Dominion Day as a holiday; so that it seemß as if something can come out of Nazareth, after all. This holiday lunacy goes to absurd lengths when Ihere is a s .ggestion to dodge work over this Dominion-tag. An American syndicate of con- ' spiratora has undertaken to make ti.e United States a monarchy within three years from now. "The fact is,' says the leader of the syndicate, "a republic is an unnatural form of Government, just as it would be an unnatural form of Government for a btehive to be controlled by the majority." The syndicate has chosen a woman to reignj, and the farce seems to be taken in hand with much solemnity. You are invited to think of the Kirgdom of America and smile.