NEW ZEALAND'S PROGRESS.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 3142, 20 March 1909, Page 7

NEW ZEALAND'S PROGRESS.

DARING EXPERIMENTS, "You may be assured that a feeling of the deepest attachment and loyalty exists in the oversea dominions for the Motherland. Our children speak of the Old Country as Home. His Majes ; y is at least as much lovfid and revered there as in Britain, and we all look forward to a strengthening of those ties which unite us to the Homeland. We realise our responsibility as part of the Empire; and, whenever the occasion may arise, I am satisfied that in time of trouble there will be the same feeling of unity shown as was manifested in the crisis of 1899 and 1900.," These wr-re the parting words addressed by the Hon. W. Hall-Jones to a member of the staff nf the London "Morning Pos'," who interviewed him a few days after his ar- j rival in England. The "Post" says:—"Of all the British dominions beyond the seas, I New Zealand is perhaps the one which offers British statesmanship thebest opportunity of studying possible solutions of questions still under discussion in the Old Country. Nowhere have more daring experiments been made in the field of social legislation. Not merely have old age pensions been an accomplished fact' since 1898, [but woman suffrage has been in operation |,for several years past. The system of education is free and compulsory, with a leaving asre at the public elementary schools as high as 14; a system of labour conciliation boards has not only been working for some time, but has been recently revised in accord with new needs taught by experience; and a quite original expedient has been adopted to cope with the difficulties involved in dealing with the sale of alcoholic liquor. Not even a New Zealander would affirm that the solutions of all these problems arrived at by successive Administrations are the only possible, or that they are ideal, solutions. But whatever else they may not do, this at least is certain: they witness to a very sincere and patient effort to cope with the problems presented everywhere by the trend of modern civilisation, and not the least benefit to be derived by an older civilisation from the possession of daughter States is the object-lesson which they offer in the courageous handling of difficulties, which, whatever he their surface differences, are in essence those which any State, young or old, has sooner or later to face and overcome in the manner best suited to the peculiar conditions ; which govern its evolution.