THE KORERO COLUMN.

Evening Post, Volume LV, Issue 137, 11 June 1898, Page 3 (Supplement)

THE KORERO COLUMN.

[By Katipo.] How acuto are the Premier's sympathies with his kind only those who have listened to his stump oratory can properly understand. Regardless of till canons of taste, all conventional ideas of deconoy or veracity, ho pours forth a turbid stream of bathos whenever he has before him an assembly of the democracy he professes to serve. Not long ag6 he was speaking at Fowler's, in the Rangitikoi district, and, according to a correspondent of the Manawatu Standard, actually broke his own record for false sentiment. He told the assembled rustics that his heart bled for those unfortunates who, with small means, had to go out into the wilds and struggle for a living. So deep were his fuelings on the matter that he felt it necessary to apologise for seeming moody, uncommunicative, and taciturn to those who travelled with him on the box Boat of a coach or otherwise through the country where such misery existed. He could not help brooding over the trials and difficult •" as of the settlers who had to sacrifice themselves for the Bake of posterity. This must have sounded pleasantly in th<' oars of colonists who, whatever thoir faults, aro not wont to whine and frot over tbe pioneer work which hasi made their race tho object-lesHon it is to the world. They do not want a Premier with an ever-bleed-ing heart, but one who will curtail public expenditure and lessen the cost of necessaries. As the Premier warmed to his subject, he at last reached a perfect climax of bathos by asking forgiveness for his extravagance during his Jubilee trip becauso the boitows of his unhappy country drove him to do something or other to drown the crunl grief they caused. Did any Prime Minister in the world ever before excuse his waste of the toiling masses* money on the pretext that he wns obliged to drown the sorrow he felt for those manses' straitened circumstances ? If that country correspondent be not a dreadful perverter of the truth, then bathos, audacity, and trickery could not further go. In his lecture at Nelson last week about the sights he had seen and the people he had met on his Jubilee jaunt Mr. Seddon rose to transcendental heights of descriptive oratory. His language was Imperial in its purple colouring, his sentiments were regal in their kingly condescension towards such lesser lights as tho Prince of Wales, the British Cabinet, the French Foreign Minister, and the Italian Premier, and hif imagery was more than worthy of the Doctor a hood and gown. The naively patronising way in which the quondam 'Dick the digger' spoke of his fellownotables was delightfully humorous. He hud. been prejudiced against President M'Kinley, but a sight of that remarkable man had convinced our ductile Premier that 1 the Americans had done well by electing him.' The ' Pope, too, he folt to be 'an illustrious, divine, and true man.' The destinies of the British Empir • he thought, to be safe in the hands of the statesmen who now guided them, while the 'affability of the Prince of Walos ' evoked from him high terms of praise. Mr. Seddon was careful on all occasions when he described honours paid to himself to point out that he only accepted thorn on behalf of New Zealand. C 4 his ride in a Royal carringe upon arrival in London he expressly dec!nred that ' he accepted the situation on behalf of the people of New Zealand.' He had paid his respects to the Pope whon in Rome ' because he deemed it his dut;' to do so as representing the oolony, and it was an honour to the people of New Zealand that he had been received by His Holiness.' ' When ho himself had donned his Windsor uniform he had felt that he would not liko to show himself in it on the West Coast '— ' Katipo ' quite believes h;m — 'but he had considered thar, in being honoured him.«elf the colony he represented was being honoured.' Mr. Seddon Beoined surprised that people ou board the Campania should think the Premier of New Zealand must be a coloured man. Ho evidently did not allow for the fact that some confusion must have arisen in American minds over the resemblance iv name of the ' colour question ' in the Southern States and the other even more grievous ' colour question ' in our looal politios. In tho course of his travels the Premier visit ed the Mormon state of Utah, and seems to have been impressed with the 'fine, up-to-date' stylo of Salt Lake City, which he described at Nelaon in glowing . colours. He also corrected a wrong impression that prevailed about Mormou polygamy. Tho wives are not housed together; Brighara Young 1 , for instance, had 17 wives, and each wife had a house to herself, although all 17 were ranged in one street. This arrangement certainly modifies the horror of the plural wife system, and evidently impressed Mr. Seddon favourably. It is interesting to compare our Premier's notes ou this unique settlement with the account given in a recent isMie of the London Daily Telegraph of some Latter-Day Saints from Suit Lake City who have recently inauguiated a vigorous* crusade in England. At the first meeting held after their arrival in London the missionary descendants of Brigham Young showed the advantages, in a pronounced American accent, of setting out for the headquarters of Mormonism in time for the Millennium. A few ladies, it is said, were among the saints, and it muse be admitted that the peculiar marriage customs which are «aid to be an important puit of this faith appenv to be entirely favourable to female health. Most of them 1 wore big, strong, healthy women, capable of reflecting credit on the nutritive capacity of n prosperous agricultural district. Each of them seemed Utter to take charge of half-a-dozen of the male btiitiia th.in did one of the latter to superintend v bevy of stalwart women. No wonder that the Premier with his portly person thought well of the Mormon settlement ; be must have seemed a veritable Hercules and Adonis rolled into one among the enervated male stunts of Salt Lake City. A Christchuroh journal, which generally takes a fairly level-headed view of the world and its ways, has recently indulged in its editorial columns in the wildest of speculations about the future relations of Great Britain and Russia. The fervid utterances of an Anglo- Israelite are sandwiched iv with a recent speech of Lord Roberts on the Indian frontier policy, and the effect is painful in the extreme. Both the British general and the prophet Ezekiel seem, according to this new journalistic bearer of the Banner of Israel, to acrree in placing the 'final battle for the mastery of tho world ' somewhere in Asia, and in agreeing that, the combatants are to be Russia or Rush and Britain or Israel. The cruelty of classing the judgment of an expert like Lord Roberts with tho— well— doubtful statements of a ' seer ' liko Ezekiel may bo passed over in the glorious hope inspired by ' the prophetic declaration that ' the upshot 1b to be the utter annihilation of the hosts of the Prince of Rosh : the burial of the dead by British and American Israel, extending over seven months,tho feast of the feathered fowl /and the beast of the field partaking of the great sacrifice upon the mountains of Israel and the silence of death in the Valley of Hamougoy. •No One ' winds up this strange artiole, ' reading the events of the day and the signs of the times can fail to be struck by the apparent fulfilment of these ancient predictions.' ' Katipo ' wonders if there is not some subtle religious poison in the air of Christohurch, due to Worthingtonian, Socialistic-ecolesi-astical and other epidemics, that has sapped the brain power of even the most case- j hardened journalists.