NOTES OF THE DAY.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1115, 1 May 1911, Page 4

NOTES OF THE DAY.

Thj; result of the Referendum upon the unification proposals of the Federal Government—a result over which the true friends of Australia cannot but rejoice.—is an important fact for thi students of government, when we couple with it the continuance in office of Me. Fisher and his friends. To those who feel that a Government should resign when it is defeated upon a vital point of policy it will appear that the retention of office by the Fisher Government is a serious argument against the Eeferendum. It does not however, to be dogmatic in asserting that there is an end of responsibility when tho electors reject a policy proposal, for. there is a great difference between defeat in Parliament and defeat on a poll of the people. When a Government is defeated on a firstclass issue in Parliament it resigns simply because it cannot carry on; if it tried to carry on it would be refused supplies, and could bo dismissed from office by the Crown or its representative. But a Government can very well misjudge its mandate, and, after being-corrected by the electors at a special poll, continue to carry on satisfactorily enough. It does not necessarily foilow from the defeat of the Australian Government's proposals that the people wish for a new Government, although there is a strong presumption that ,the people do so desire. But what the result of the Referendum does clearly show beyond all doubt is that a Government may very quickly become utterly out of touch with public opinion. • It is Australia's gond _ fortune that tho. Government's unification proposal? had to go to the people. Otherwise it would have had on the Statute Book by now a law to which, as it turns out, the great bulk of the nation is hostile. Mil Asquitii is in much the same case with Home Rule. There is undoubtedly a majority in the Kingdom against Home Rule. A

poll of /.he ticoplo would probably the Parliament Bill. ]t would certainly have vetoed the 1009 Bud get. So 'n New Zealand many Acts have been passed which the public would have ruled out if it had had a clear opportunity. The day will have to arrive when a Government will be required to state its wholo programme at the election ?.nd co:iiino itself to that prolamine untii the next appeal to the people.

One of the most useful and instructive political speeches delivered in the Dominion for some time past is that of Me. W. Fraser, a report of which appears in the Otago Daily Times of April 22. Mn. Fraser was addressing his constituents at Waikaka, and he took advantage of the occasion to place on record a review of the Government's land policy dating back to. the Land Act of Sir John M'Kenzie. Most people have a very fair idea of the shuffling and wobbling of the Government on the land question, during the past eight or ten years, but when the complete story is told it discloses a series of somersaults astonishing even to those fairly familiar with the political happenings of the country. SIR John M'Kenzie's devotion to the lease-in-perpetuity system of land tenure wan sufficient to induce the Government to maintain a strong front on the question of tenure for some years, but it is moat interesting to note the changes of front which followed his departure from political life. The shifts and expedients to which Me. Seddon resorted in order to prevent a straightout vote on the merits of the tenure issue taxed even his ingenuity and great resourcefulness to the utmost. At last he was driven to shelter behind a Boyal Commission, which reported that the freehold was the popular form of tenure, but this report was never acted on. Then in 1906 Mr. M'Nab brought in a measure which was heralded with a great flourish of trumpets, but its weaknesses and imperfections were so soon demonstrated that Sir Joseph Ward promptly withdrew it, and next session abandoned it altogether in favour of another Bill. This was the famous measure which locked up 9,000,000 acres of Crown lands against the freehold tenure under cover of the title of endowments. The Government wanted to lock up 16,000,000 acres in this way, but was forced to amend this proposal as stated. Then as a sop to Certain Crown tenants they were given the right to purchase up to 90 per cent, of the value of their holdings at the original value, and 100 per cent, at the present value. The merit of this proposal can be judged by the fact that, according to Mα. Fraser, only 17 tenants have taken advantage of the 90 per cent, terms. The Act of 1007 also repealed t!:e leasc-in-pcrpotuity form, of tenur' , , and substituted the renewable lea?e with revaluation every 313 years. Mr. M'Nab, the Minister for Lands, lost his scat at the general election the succeeding year, which no doubt accounted for the- change of policy in the next Bill, that of 1909. Under this the Government proposed to concede the holder of land on lease the right to purchase on terms which would not enable, him to get a title for IGS years. Th'is"Uill was dropped in deference to tin leaseholders, and then came the extraordinary measure of last session, which, while conceding many of the demands which the Government had bitterly opposed for years, introduced also the compulsory leasing provisions with the outrageous terms condemned from one end of the country to the other. This_ Bill also was dropped; oven in its improved form as amended by the Lands Committee. And so matters stand to-day. We would recommend a perusal of the icport of Mr. Eraser's speech to all who wish to refresh their memories regarding the extraordinary convolutions of the Government on this most important question of land scttlemont.

"Education was never in America so strictly taken, to task as it is now." This is the- somewhat astonishing verdict—practically unani-mous-secured by the World's Wvrk from 300 educational, writers in response to an invitation to explain what the school will do for the boy and girl of to-morrow in contrast to what the school did for the boy and girl of yesterday. The opinion of these 300 writers pointed to the conclusion that the school will get greater and greater emancipation Irom "method" and theory, will pay less heed to dogmas of "intellectual discipline" and memory work and examination tests and all such things, and that it will drive ahead more directly toward training the young for the life that they must lead and the work they must do. A schoolmaster of distinction who assisted in judging the three hundred articles drew the following conclusions from his reading of them:

Education was never in America taken so strictly to task as now. The bulk of the year's speeches and articles are more than mildly corrective, they are dissentient, remonstrativc, iconoclastic. It is the school men themselves, from class teachers to State superintendents, who are railing at traditional usages. From the Chairs of Education in the colleges and the investigators of endowed foundations issue the most disconcerting suggestions that the time-worn assertions of old educational theorists do not stand tho ■ cold trial of statistical or investigative research. Of the 300 papers submitted to the. "World's Work" by men and women teachers, school officials, physicians, settlement workers, and parents, practically everyone r.ttacks the schools of yesterday and concedes that the abuses, exist little abated in the schools of to-day. The most frequent charges are: Too few brains u-eu in meeting present-day problems; mental laziness, content with unthinking subservience to educational form; too much system, too much shell, too little merit, wooden methods, unlocated responsibility, no connection between good service arid eood pay, local politics in management. Remarkable is the repetition that the boy and girl of to-morrow must be the centre of the school system, their natures, their capacities, their needs determining what the school exercises shall be. Tho school shall be for John and Mary. It is not that now.

This is very interesting, if in parts somewhat vague. That discontent with existing conditions should be so widespread will probably surprise, a good many people who hold up American methods as an example in many respects for the rest of the world to follow.