WELLINGTON TOPICS.

Auckland Star, Volume XLVII, Issue 51, 29 February 1916, Page 9

WELLINGTON TOPICS.

THE HUN PERIL. LABOUR 'TROUBLES. (Special Correspondent.) WELLINGTON, February 25. Mr. Join Payne, M.P., who very properly takes a broad and comprehensive view of lie representative duties, extending far beyond ( the confines -of his own constituency, is carrying on in ■the daily Press and in a little monthly journal of his own a vigorous campaign against what he calls "The Hun Peril," and which, to his mind, is a very real peril indeed. He claims to have collected a vast amount of evidence showing that the Government has been culpably remiss in administering the laws designed for the protection of the realm in time of war, and that the Minister Defence has actually allowed anemy eubjects to get away with the Expeditionary Forces dispatched from thi= country. The evidence produced by the member for Grey Lynn, which, of course, does not exhaust hie brief, is not always conclusive, but some of it is very striking. It seems that since the commencement of the war 355 enemy subjects have teen interned, and that 256 of these still remain as prisoners of "war, while forty-one have been released on parole. What hae become of the twenty-eight persons unaccounted for the Defence authorities hare not yet explained, but at the moment Mr. Payne is more concerned about the social standing and finan. ; ill condition of the forty-one released. He implies that it is not the German flaxmill hand and the Austrian gumdigger that have been treated with this special clemency, but enemy eubjects who move in good society and operate on comfortable banking accounts. He seems to have made out a .good ease for inquiry. THE IMPORTERS' RESPONSIBILITY. The Patriotic Exhibition which is toeing held here for the purpose of advertising the merits of British manufactures is attracting a good deal of favourable attention, and the promoters are improving the sJiining hour by getting prominent men to proclaim from tlie platform of the Town Hall the duty of pnrchasers in regard to the trade of the Empire. Mr T. M. Wilford was one of the chosen speakers the other night, and eschewing the .repetition of mere platitudes, the member for Hutt emphasised . with . characteristic force and directness a point which his predecessors had missed. Having asked wiio could stop German trade, he proceeded after the appropriate pause to answer his own question. '.MJ the importers ■who are running the exhibition want to stop German trade,' , he said, 'they have the matter in their own hands, and 1 hope that this exhibition is going to focus public attention upon them. When thin war is over, are the importers going to buy and sell as traders or as Britishers? Are they going to import and sell German goods, or are they going to be patriotic enough to refuse to handle the foreign articles that return such big profits? The general public cannot answer that question. The women do the buying for the homes of New Zealand, but they cannot distinguish German tM&AtJjm vrfTOfe -$°fc. wit "' out the assistance of the importers. The importers are running this ..'exhibition, and they will run New Zealand trade after the war. That is. why I ask if they are going to be patriots, or merely traders. If the importers bring the German goods into the country then the public is helpless." Of course, - the importers are mainly responsible for the hold the Germans had got upon New Zealand trade before the war, and it is now for them,' a≤ Mr Wilford said, to apply the remedy. THE RAILWAY WORKERS. The Minister of. Railways and the General Majager appear to be making . light of .the discontent among the railway workers, and so far the Prime Minister, has not thought it necessary to intervene. The disposition of Mr. Herriea and his chief seems to be, indeed, to . throw the whole responsibility for the prevention of further trouble on to the broad shoulders of Sir Joseph Ward. When a deputation from the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants waited upon Mr. Massey and Mr. Herriea a little time ago and asked for a definite reply to the men's demand for increased wages, it was told that it "all depended on the Minister of Finance," the implication being, presumably, that if Sir Joseph could find the money the men would get what they wanted. Naturally the deputation did not regard this as a very satisfactory answer, and the men themselves are pointing out that the employees in no other branch of the public service have been asked to wait till after the war for the remedy of their grievances. Whether or not the men's demands are. reasonable it may be for the experts alone to say, but on paper the rates of pay in several grades appear extremely low when the nature of the work and the high cost of living are taken into account. It is held in some quarters .that tiie railway servants are out of court in this matter, they having declared last year that they would postpone their demand for better wages till after the war; but at that time they were assured by the Prime Minister the cost of living would bo kept down, while, as a matter of fact, it has gone up by leaps and bounds, and now is out of all proportion to the pay of many of the men. MEETING OF PARLIAMENT. Wellington is accepting an 'early session of .Parliament as a settled thing, without, it may be said, taking inucli interest in the matter one way or the other; but Ministers still are politely declining to be drawn into any definite admission. The popular prediction now is that members will be called together earlier than was at first intended, probably in March instead of in April, and that the Government will try to get sufficient work done to make another session before the usual time in June of next year unnecessary. This would be a very comfortable arrangement for Ministers, and might serve all practical purposes well enough; but it is doubtful if a majorit} - of the members of the House would be content to go into recess for a whole year. The only thing certain about the position is that it will not be the fault of the rank and file of either party if the special session.is either short or uninteresting. A score of members have pledged themselves to make it as long as the forms of-Parliament will allow and as lively as the Speaker will permit.