The Dominion. WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 20, 1909. SIGNS OF AWAKENING.

Dominion, Volume 2, Issue 410, 20 January 1909, Page 6

The Dominion. WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 20, 1909. SIGNS OF AWAKENING.

.The ; public; may .prepare itself. for an intimation'from the Government that retrenchment—the, long-dolayed retrench", ment which years of boom and squander have rendered inevitable—is to come at last. The signs are too plain to be overlooked or misread... Almost ..immediatelyafter: the elections the various Departments, of the Civil Service, wo under-' stand, were commanded by a circular to keep down expenses. ■ In announcing the >eve»ue for. the December, quarter, Sib Joseph Warp spoke , guardedly of an increase, in. _the: public expenditure and of the .necessity' that, existed-,'for taking .the matter in' hand. :Mr.. : Mim,ar. has-to}d the public pretty plainly that he intends, if he can, to reduce the annual loss . upon the. railways;, he .has already ' effected some.' economies on some of the, southern lines, and his General Manager has startled; the public and the railway service by. waking \up and exhibiting alarm. at the. wastefulness that exists in one of the large railway workshops. Finally, we have something like ■ a regular campaign in some of the Ministerial journals on behalf, not only of retrenchment, but of reform also. The general elections had not been over long enough tq have\ disappeared from the currency of popular, discussion when a prominent 1 Ministerialist newspaper in the south began to talk severely about the ; maladministration of the Railway Department. This was the, first of several articles in. which some of our -Ministerialist contem-' poraries'bave been writing as very candid' friends of the Government which, prior to the elections, they refused to admit could,have a single defect in any. of its parts. This curious phenomenon may seem.easy of explanation, to the average man. '"The Government's:, journalistic friends," hemaysay to himself, "knew perfectly well before- the elections took place, that the whole, system of .'Govern? ment. administration js one great engine of..waste—the. •waste arising. out of the natural' tendency of- State officials, and employees to regard economy as a virtue necessary only to -pirivati and the:waste inevitable in a public service that is ■ used- as the private : farm of the parfcy in power! But the party- attitude of mind is so ingrained in the - Govornment's journalistic allies that they were unable to see, before tho elections, what they aro able to see and condemn to-day as strongly as thoy condemned 'he Government's critics for seeing" when honest vision and plain speaking were most required." But: the true explanation of the' cynical volte face oi the Ministerialist press is-probably. that. : that press is still ruled by' party, affection: it is less concerned with the national good than with the necessity for paving the' way for Sir Joseph Ward's next move. These considerations inspire us with the hope that the Governmcnfriritends to turn over a-now;leaf.' : When \yc find the Governmont charged with "spendthrift" t propensities, responsible for "on espoadi-

ture which cannot bo sustained without grave detriment to the community"; when we, find tho Government charged with having placed such "huge staffs of State eiffployeoß" on the Government pay rolls that "the salary lists'have'mounted up enormously, to tho palpable embarrassment of th,oso charged, with the administratipn of the country"; when we find the Government charged with having oncouraged waste in nearly every Department so that ''there is soarcoly one branch of the public service in which abuses have not grown up in the fat and careless years"—when we find these charges brought; forward by'a journal I that had nothing but abuse for'those'who made exactly the. same charges three months ago, we can forget the old dishonesty of the-Ministerialist press in our satisfaction that, the cause of reform haa made such notable progress. When Sm Joseph Waed took office as Prime Ministee, the necessity: for reform and retrenchment was greats and had been growing for years; since 1906 the wild optimism of the Prime Minister has made the necessity so. great that even the most reckless admirer of boormind squander can no longer overlook it. ' The public debt'is growing :with unabated rapidity; the railways are losing more than ever; the taxation per head is approach' ing to breaking point; tne cost of: administration is still on the increase.. ; We h'aye-'ovor and over again .quoted figures upon each of these points, and-we shall have, frequent; occasion to quote them again. New Zealand is a country of great resources, and its development has been abnormally rapid, yet even these great resources are feeling the • strain o{ "Liberal" finance. The country. will watch with much interest the Govern-, ment's proceedings for the next year. Frankly, we/have.no ; great confidence jn the ability of Sib Joseph' Ward to sustain the role of financial refonjwjv While he is jn ; power there is smali prospect of a successful carryingrout of the policy that', the .country urgently, policy .of, undoing the ovils of the. sham '.'Liberalism"; that has reached its'olimax under Sir Joseph Ward. ' ' ;