AN AUSTRALASIAN OBLIGATION.

Evening Post, Volume LXXI, Issue 140, 14 June 1906, Page 5

AN AUSTRALASIAN OBLIGATION.

A SYDNEY PAPER'S SUGGESTION. SYDNEY, 13th June. The Daily Telegraph, in a leading article entitled, "An Australasian Obligation," says : — "The practical question arises, •what a country owes to a dead statesman's memory, and how that debt is to be discharged. Mr. Seddon did not belong to the ordinary type of colonial politician, lie was a man of Empire, a maker of Imperial hi&tory. If the value of the work ho did in this capacity was to be measured by a common monetary standard at the hour of death, he would have been one of the richest men in Australasia. During his thirteen, years of office he received a salary that a private mercantile concern of moderate size would pay to one of the heads. of its various departments. Viewed in the light of payment for services rendered, what he drew from the Treasury is therefore ridiculously inadequate. "We may take it for granted that New Zealand will rise to. a full appreciation of its obligations in this regard. It is not therefore with a view to making a suggestion to the eister colony that this article is written. There are others who feel under an obligation to the work of the dead statesman. We Australians, however, have special concern in that work, and it would not be out of the way if those citizens of the Commonwealth who wish to take part in paying a tribute to Mr. Seddon's memory — which justice demands — were given a practical opportunity of doing so. Why should there not be an Australasian recognition of the obligation arising out of the untimely death of one who was generally recognised as an Australasian statesman?"