NOTES OF THE DAY

Dominion, Volume 24, Issue 241, 8 July 1931, Page 8

NOTES OF THE DAY

An announcement that the members of the new Railways Board had left Wellington yesterday to make a personal inspection of the route of the Napier-Gisborne line, prompts the question whether these expensive tours are really necessary-. In -the Railways and Public Works Departments there are contour maps, surveys, and reports in abundance from which such questions can be studied. Why; then, these expensive excursions to find out what is already known and pigeon-holed? The United Party Cabinet, of course, has set a bad example. Members of the Government had no sooner assumed Ministerial office than they set out on tours up and down the country. But the Railways Board is supposed to have been appointed to replace political by business methods. * * * *

Political events in New South Wales have reached a point where questions of constitutional importance add complexity to the general situation. Mr. Lang declares that the Governor should understand that, he must follow the advice of his Ministers. Sir Philip Game declines to alter his views with regard to making fresh appointments to the Legislative Council in order to facilitate the passage of the Government’s taxation proposals. So far as the facts of the present situation go, they seem to meet the principle of constitutional practice which gives to the representative of the Crown a discretionary right to determine whether an act of government is in conflict with the feeling of the electorate, and to rule accordingly. There can be little doubt concerning the feeling of the New South Wales electorate toward Mr. Lang s. financial policy. Even members of his own party are opposed to it, and the Federal Labour Party has condemned it. * * * *

Numerous churches in Russia have been either demolished or converted into anti-religious museums or workers’ clubs in pursuance of the Communist policy of creating an atheistic state by propaganda or force. The latest religious edifice marked down for the executioner is the famous golden-domed Cathedral of the Redeemer in Moscow, which is to be replaced by a “Palace of the Soviets” for Communist congresses. History, no doubt will reveal to posterity the full measure of the Soviet’s mistake in supposing that human life can be divorced from religion, or that the spiritual, impulse can be thus extinguished. The Bishop of Wellington in his address at the opening session of the Diocesan Synod, yesterday, dwelt upon this very point. Can tottering human society,” he asked, “be reconstructed upon a Christian or upon an anti-Christian and atheistic basis?” When it is remembered that practically every principle and device of our higher civilisation and legislation are founded upon the Christian ’ Ethic there can be no question as to the answer.

More than once the danger of embarking upon false economies in a period of national retrenchment has been pointed out. In his address at the opening of the Farmers’ Union Conference yesterday his Excellency the Governor-General added a warning note to those previously given in this connection. “Economy which is not farsighted and discriminating,” said Lord Bledisloe, “is false economy, such as, for instance, a cessation oflthe progressive reclamation of potentially fertile land, or of the use of fertilisers and of lime where output is bound to shrink materially through their discontinuance,” The farming community, no less than the general public, should reflect upon his Excellency’s remarks. True economy consists in the cultivation of a higher degree of efficiency, the elimination of waste in time, effort, and method, to the end that lower prices may be balanced by a reduction of overhead expenditure, and a proportionately increased revenue may be won from smaller areas. As his Excellency pointed out, some farmers by modernising their methods are making profits ewep jq thess depressed Mines*