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Press, Volume LVI, Issue 16883, 10 July 1920, Page 8

The' suggestion appears to have been made in Auckland that tho price at which sugar will be sold to the public will leave a profit in the Government's hands. The matter was mentioned in the House yesterday, and the Minister in charge of this department of the Government's affairs replied that nothing in the shape of an ordinary business profit would be made. It seems to us that it is a mistake so to tako it for granted that the Government would bo acting wrongly if it sought to make a profit. Why should it not? If the sugar were handled by private persons at all stages, profits would be required, and reasonable profits would not be objected to. Why should tho Government forgo the opportunity of making a little money honestly out of its handling of the sugar? It is not so overburdened with cash that it can afford to leave uncollected any of tho money which the public would have to pay if tho State machinery ■ were not used. This notion that the State must do everything foi nothing is a bad one. . ♦ I Mr H. E. Holland pressed Mr j'Statham very hard in his analysis of the position into which the Dunedin apostle of independence got himself by moving a vote of no-confidence in tho Government. Whatever Mr Statham did or did not mean, he certainly did lead everyone to understand last December that; to quote Mr Holland's version, "he would not give a vote to turn out the Government if that vote had to depend for support on the Reds." Some of the Liberals—Mr Isitt amongst them —gave a similar pledge. How they can reconcile their pledges with their deliberate support of a noconfidence motion which could not be carried without the support of the Reds, it is for them to explain. They may say that the vote of no-confidence could not be carried anyhow, but that does not excuse them. Since the Liborals are in a hopeless minority, and are obviously a moribund party, those of them who are amenable to reason ought to see that their own pledges and a common-sens© view of the facts of politics direct that they shall abstain from supporting these foolish motions and, recognising that the Liberal Party is done with, face their political future with open eyes. —4 "Pro-renter's" arguments in favour of building terraces as a remedy for tho shortago of houses leave us still unshaken in our opinion that it would be a bad thing to introduce such a system in Christchurch. His letter, and the previous one by "Travelled," published a dav or two ago, suggest very strongly that neither of the writers has a firsthand knowledge of housing conditions at Home, or they would .have to admit that, without being a slum, a street of terraces is often the most inexpressibly dreary example of man's handiwork that can be imagined. Wo were not thinking of slums when we opposed 'Traveller's" suggestion, but of the mean, dull streets of London suburbs and many big provincial towns. Houses, built in terraces cannot .possibly be aj wholesome to live in as detached houses are, because they must receive far less direct sunsliino and fresh air. The idea that such a system of construction "comes within the scope of sane Lownplarining'' is too fantastically wrong to require contradiction. The system, by the way, is even losing ground at .'Home, partlv, apparently, because af tho methods of construction. A number of builders' operatives refused nut long ago to continue work on a terrace, of which one of the speakers at a subsequent meeting said that the partition walls were so thin that the occupant of one house ''would be able to hear the man next door change his mind." — —*• Labour's conception of the "brotherhood of man," as applied to coloured fellow-subjects, was exemplified on \Vednesday night at Carterton, where a crowd of 60 or 70 men mobbed seven Hindu scrubcutters, who had just come in from a oack-blocks station, and compelled . them to leave the township. This dis- i play of courage—there were only ten Europeans to one Hindoo —gives point to the assertion by "Wage-earner," in a letter in this issue, that "Labour's attitude in respect to Hindoo workers needs no extouded explanation.'.' None at all, we should think; or, at most, it can be condensed into the historic remark of the British miner:—" Ere's a stranger, 'eave 'arf a brick at 'im."

"Wage-earner"' also confirms the opinion, already fairly generally held, that all the beautiful sentiments uttered from time to time by Labour leaders or organisations about the brotherhood of man do not represent the actual views of Labour. '-Such a policy,'' says •'Wage-earner.*' "would be too dangerous to fiftit into practice." In other '.voids. Labour does not mean what it says: its fine sentiments are mere window-dressing. They "believe in liberty,'* but only "cz fur away ez Payris is." They love to "draw resolves and trippers'' for liberty's sake, hut. like the pious editor we are quoting, they hold that "liberty's a sort of thing that don't agree with niggers.*'