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Press, Volume LIX, Issue 17740, 17 April 1923, Page 8

Everybody must wish well to tho project about to be launched in Sydenham by the Young Women's Christian Association. .Enthusiasts are never done telling us that education is for the leisure hours of life even more urgently than for the hours spent at work or in business; and in so far as that really is the aim of education, as opposed to mere instruction, it is a wise and hopefufone. But the plain fact is, all the same, that the great majority of young people are not educated, and in that fuller sense never be educated. They learn t6 read and write, are instructed in the technical processes of factory or office, and' for the rest of their time are at a loose end unless they are given something to do or have somewhere to go. We take it that the aim of the Y.W.C.A. is to fill this' gap, as fax as it can be filled, for an indefinite number 1 of young people in Sydenham, and if we may judge by a' statement of th<?ir methods in advance they are starting in.th© right way. Compulsion, or even strong pressuro, too narrow or too obvious a desire to uplift, would be fatal. Hope lies in.the provision of a sooial centre which will in itself attract, and if the Association provides that it is entitled to all the help, financial and personal, that the community can spare for it.

It is difficult to believe that there slwuld be anyone still living who was mature and married in the genuine "Uncle Tom's Cabin" days—if ever these were genuine. And perlmps today there is 110 one.' But when our last exchanges left Canada there had just died in Richmond Hill a venerable coloured citizen who .had entered the Dominion withi her husband by. the "underground railway" well over 70 years ago. Her age, which was regarded as authentic by i'ellow.-villagers, was said to be 117, and if we allow a. year or two as a probable margin of error she still reached back to the days of the. great tribulation. A phoiogruph reproduced in the same issue of the paper reveals a person apparently quite cheerful to the end of her extraordinary career, and as she died a member of a white Church the latter part of her life was ns digniiiod as the beginning' waa dramatic. It not surprising either that slio leaves no direct descendants: slio had had a husband and four children, and although the ages of those at death are not recorded, they could all easily have reached the p-almist's span before leaving their mother to mourn for them.

An excellent example of Opposition, financial criticism appears in an editorial in the Oamaru '''Mail." Referring to Mr Massey's statement that the surplus would be something better than £BOO,OOO, the "Mail" expresses the serious doubts entertained by those Liberals who regard Sir Joseph. "Ward as the greatest living financier. Mr Massey's promised surplus, the "Jlail" says, "seems to be" a fine result. Indeed, if the actual revenue exceeded the actual expenditure by £BOO,OOO, it would be an "occasion for elation." But the "Mail," as becomes a Liberal organ with the orthodox diehard standards of financial genius, is quite certain that there is no real surplus. "The point to be determined," it saye, "is whether that so-called surplus is a real surplus on the year's financial operations, or, in other words, whether the year's revenue proper has exceeded the year's expenditure by £BOO,OOO, or is merely the balance remaining to credit after including in the revenue the balances brought forward from the previous year." It adds that it believes that the £BOO,OOO does represent the last remains oi the balance in the Treasury at the opening of the year. Since that initial balance was £7,531,3G7, tlie guardian of Liberal thought in Oamaru is telling its readers that it believes that the expenditure for the past year exceeded tho revenue by £6,700,000 odd! And, as everyone except' the Liberals knows, the revenue actually exceeded the expenditure by about a million. If they were wise> tho Liberals would leave finance alone, as we advised them to do years ago.