NOTES OF THE DAY.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1277, 4 November 1911, Page 4

NOTES OF THE DAY.

The public will be justified in wondering why the Mayor is attempting to rush the city into an agreement with the Public Works Department to become dependent upon tho Department for its electric power and lighting service. We should have imagined that the City Council had had a sufficient experience of tho Government's ways during tho last few years to ask tho Mayor for an explanation of his curiously-timed anxiety to make a deal with the Minister for Public Works. The Lake Coleridge hydroelectric experiment has hardly got far into the construction stage; tho Hutt experiment is years off at the best. Why this hurry on the part of tho member for the Hutt to open negotiations that need not be even considered for years, and that the city can in any case open as the dictating party at any timo after the Hutt scheme is in operation, if indeed that scheme ever becomes an accomplished fact 1 It may be said that negotiation can do no harm, but the very fact that negotiation is suggested under such unusual circumstances and at such a significant time will be regarded by cautious citizens as a matter for alarm. We shall show in a subsequent article that the financial aspect of the scheme is distinctly disturbing. In tho meantime our desire is to warn tho public that tho city's interests, and the interests also of all the suburbs, are in danger. The fact that the Mayor is tho member for Hutt and that an election is'taking place shortly will, we are sure, when he thinks of it, appeal to the Mayor as a special reason why he should explain his reason for wishing the City Council to start in a hurry to hx up a scheme that cannot be carried out for some years.

The feeling of Wellington that the Ward Administration is the greatest and most real enemy to Now Zealand's best interests is so strong that it would have been odd had Mr. Herdman's meeting last night been anything but eagerly enthusiastic. We are not at all surprised that the crowded audience showed a keen appreciation of the points that Mr. Herdman made against the Government. The fact that the Ministry has reached the stage when it dare not take a definite stand _ on any question that seriously divides the electors is so universally recognised as hardly to need stressing, and Mr. Herdman was not required to spend any time in elaborating it. What docs require emphasising, however, is that the Ministry is nothing hut an autocratic committee, flouting Parliament, defying its formal commands just as it defies its Acts, and treating the huge loan transactions of the country as the private business of tho Ministry. To our "Liberal" friends the success of the meeting will be very disturbing—not because they ever hoped that Mr. Herdman would not be reelected, but because they will conclude, and rightly, that the feeling displayed is symptomatic of a revulsion of opinion throughout the country—and perhaps nothing will disturb them more than the revelation that the public has a pretty suro grip of the broad facts of the Mokau ease. The Government has never expended so much care and ingenuity in endeavouring to mislead tho public as it has expended in connection with this act of maladministration.

Vol, l,li(! public linn nlivi'ni'ily Kiiuipod Hie. broad f;ut, Mint. I In: Ministry betrayed the public intero'il, in the inU'i'i'.sl. df private iipccnlnloni, The linm has curiic, mi Mi!. lli.iiiima:; mil,, fur l.lm imblic l,u police (nil' political life. 'Ilircc. yean; n;'o ■Sin Jnsni'ii W'/Mii) uwd to iwy Mia I, lie had every nuilidcncc. in l,lu>. Do inininn, iincl Min.l, lit! trusted the people. Times have ('handed, Tli'-. public, luu waled up l,n the, fuel, I.lml, it, is not Mil; mrviinl, find Mm (loVCnillll'lll, |.|||. ||i;i.lll,l!l\ Tin; IpiCiltinn is, rml, whether the. fiovcrnmcnl, (•fin ;;ivi; Mm i:minl,ry a testimonial, Iml, whether Mi<! country will not dincharge Mic (iovernineiil, without n, character ill, nil.

Nrcw Evangel;) scorn 1,0 lie, Mm fashion. According 1,0 Mic Now York Svn, a now religions movement., financed by 'Alii. J'ii;i!l'ont Aloiioah .and a score of lesser-known rnillionaims, Iniß been launched with Mm object, of reforming Mic political and InisinesK morals of Mm United ritatcii. The all,il.ii(lc of these New I', van Relists mny lie. feathered from thin statcnmnt by the general organiser:

'"I'lm ilfcp ciMicinl lommtiim nx)maoil in this country ilurin;,' the lust ten years can only lie cnnil hy religion. Ainimi; liiljli nnil low Hiiro cxkls I lie |,'inv(st, concern ns lo whore ire nic i;oing. 'i'herc is FMinlfil everywhere. llankciT. ami imliliciaiir, have lieen shown to lie ilislimiest nnil immoral. Von can buy Unilril «nnlws in Illinois lilio shcr>p on ii ranch. Tlio best, men nil over the country are anxious lo co-oiicrnte lo do somi'lhinjf lo niiso us from the slouch into which wo have fallen, lint nil efforts will lie useless until wo employ a dynamic force that is rooteil in religion."

The idea is that "teams" of "missionarics" will hold eight-day "revivals" in sovcuty-six cities of the United Slates. In each of these places they will canvass the churches, business houses, shops and factories in order to enlist workers to arrange similar "revivals." There is no reason to doubt that some of the promoters of this scheme may be sincere; but the whole affair will strike most people as rather overdoing things. It is not by millionaire organised "revivals," big drums, sensational meetings, and eight-day convictions iu Wall Street that religion is a good thing, that the Spirit of God can be mado to descend upon men. That this scheme should have been conceived, or, being conceived, should have been taken up with enthusiasm, shows only how far modern America has drifted from an understanding of the old truths of religion. To syndicate regeneration, to advertise Heaven as one advertises a now motor-car or a new .cereal food, to go after souls with a whoop and a bang as one goes after dollars—this is to have reached the region of utter spiritual darkness.

An echo of the excitement over the Stead-Fisher interview comes in the shape of another interview with Mr. Fisher in the columns of the London Laboui\ Leader. Mn. Fisher has not quite satisfied some of his London critics as to the soundness of his attachment to the idea that the Empire must remain undivided, but wc think there is no longer anv need to doubt that so far as the fundamentals arc concerned he iB sound enough. In the Labour Leader interview he used an interesting figure: "Tho best parallel [to the Empirol I can give is the Selar "System, whore each planet has its own untrammelled orbit, and is a world all of itself, and vet is lnrtisFolublv bound up with everv 'other planet in the system. Every planet exerts an inflnenco and a control on every other planet, and if one should perish all tho others would be in danger of collapse. Instead of pltnels put States, Colonies, Commonwealth!:, or Dominions, and you have niy conception of tho relative'independence, interdependence, harmony, and union of the British Empire."

This parallel is a great deal moro true to political facts than even Mr. Fisher imagines. If one planet perished," the Solar System would go on with hardly any change. If even the Earth "perished" the Moon would continue in its course around the Sun, since it is an elementary astronomical fact that the Sun is a far more important thing to the Moon than the Earth is. So with •if £. m P il ' c - If a Dominion "perished the Empire would go on. But if the Sun perished-if it lost its control of its planetary system—tho planets would instantly slip into space, either to end in ruin or to becomo cometary or planetary subjects of some other Sun. So, if Britain perished, tho strongest Dominion would at the best sweep into some new orbital subordination. Mr. JMShers figure illustrates, in the most unconsciously happy way, the fact that while Britain can do without any selected one of her Dominions, not one of them can do without her.