TOPICS OF THE DAY.

Evening Post, Volume LXXVI, Issue 76, 26 September 1908, Page 4

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

This is the first birthday of ''the big D." It is just a Its Natal Day. little over a year since the Prime Minister (only a Premier in the pre-D days) foreshadowed in the Town Hall a great secret, and the people were kept in awful suspense for a day or so. The mountains of Slate in New Zealand and England laboured and brought forth a "big D." However, the people have survived their disappointment, and have grown reconciled to the weight of the greatness thrust upon them. The new silk hat is making us a trifle top-heavy, and does not .quite harmonise with our workaday dungaree nether garments, but we are struggling along. The Government has striven desperately to get New Zealanders excited abAut the celebration of the first birthday, but unwisely decided to have the lighting, the flagging, "the parading, and the certing on a Saturday, (the worst of days for a public holiday. As The Pobt remarked previously, it is a case of "dollars before holloas." The shopkeepers are patriotic, but , and the Government has not taken the "but" sufficiently into consideration. It seems that even the sacred Dominion Day must be "Mondayised" in future, if the Government expects the people to dance to the giddy tune which the Ministry loves to pipe on such a day. By the preparations that have been made locally, one would imagine that a democratic Government was honouring some such anniversary as the proclamation of freedom of speech. Is the "big D" worth all the pother? Very creditably the Wellington Education Board has deFor tho cided to invest four Children's Sake, guineas for the sake of the school children's health. Tho board has agreed to commission a medical man to inspect one school as an experiment. Perhaps the board very pardonably hopes that the four guineas will be good sprat bait to catch the' Government whale, which th* Minister is holding now in check. The Hon. G. Fowlds lias admitted that a reasonable system of medical inspection for New Zealand's schools would nofc cost more than £2000 or '£3000 a year, but has declared that the money cannot be spared. This country, it seems, cannot afford to spend £2000 or £3000 on an important life-insurance policy, but can afford cash for more or less useless limelight on the night of Dominion Day, and can splash the public funds on gorgeous opening ceremonies which are more or less vain. There is cash for the "trifle" that upsets the national digestion, but none for wholesome bread ; there is money for frills and flounces, but none for a plain, warm garment. The money spent, by the Government to-day on trappings and prancings and electric light would go far towards paying for a comprehensive medical overhauling of the children in the schools this year. It is another demonstration of the old fact that common-sonso in the taresi kuid of sense. Ten ambulance stations, with doctors handy, were established The Motor on the route of the Madness. motor-cai race in the Isle of Man, temporarily converted into an Isle of Mad Man or an Isle of Mania. The motor, with the goggled speed crank at the lever, is becoming a thing of dread in Europe and America. Ifc is nofc long Bines an infuriated Italian, whose child had been killed by a rushing car, sho.t two of the occupants. It was a terrible vengeance, but the fienzied father had almost irresistible provocation. The worship of the Moloch of speed is one of the saddest fetishes of the age. The men in tho whirligigs do not scour the roads at sixty or more miles an hour to serve an;. r good purpose. They merely crave excilrn.ent, seeking to glut their appetite for the sensational, but the appetite glows and grows beyond bounds. What splendid materi.'il for the leading of forlorn hopes and other desperate but useful enterprises is wasted on the box-seats of motor-gars ! Man, still with some devil in him and a Kcorn for death, <;an no longer seek out'pintes or the Spaiish Mam, but he can run over children on the Spanish road. The energy which their forefathers once used to extend the boundaries of the , Empire, the men of to-day squander in stirring up the dust of the Empire's ' roads and polluting the Imperial atrrcsphere with the fumes of petrol. One may admire the pluck and endurance of the racers, but one regrets the misuse of qualities for which there are many better uses.

Another phase of the Hutt gas question was seen last night at a large gathering of ratepayers in the Lower Hutt Town Hall. , Mr. J. W. Reade, who had summoned the meeting, defended the attitude 'of the Borough Council. He declared that his object in speaking on the subject was to endeavour to remove a'false impression in the minds of the 'public on the question of the day. The establishment of a separate gasworks must benefit the Lower Hutt financially. Gas could be produced at a lower rate than that offered by Petone, namely, 4s 3d and 4s per thousand feet, and thero would be no burden on the ratepayers at all. There was no question of the estimates of tho Borough Council being correct. He challenged the opponents o? tho scheme to prove their contention that the estimates were £3000 out. The ratepayers would save £300 a year by making their own gas. He simply asked them to think seriously and consider the question entirely on its merits without prejudice He asked the meeting to pass no resolutions at present*