TOPICS OF THE DAY.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXI, Issue 91, 19 April 1911, Page 6

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

One may regret that Mr. T. E. Taylor has toned down the grandTho Wild cur of that Reeftoa meetWest, ing at which he broke a lance with the- R-e-v. W. Thompson, the champion, of License. Mr. Taylor has qualified the. telegraphed statement that the meeting was tho liveliest enjoyed by Reefton for years. This was a^large admission, for Reefton to make for Iteef ton's yeaTs have been, well streaked with colour. Many a man would be pjoud to hold euch a. confession from Reefton, and yet Mr. Taylor has incontinently put off the greatness that was thrust upon, him. He says that the duel lasted only twenty minutes out of two hours and a half of meeting. On Mr. Taylor's calculation it is 92£ per cent, of orderliness (remarkable orderliness-) and only 7£ per cent, of Taylor-Thompeoji clash. But was it not a beautiful 7^ per cent? Such quip and retort! What frankness in. the personalities- 1 It is small wonder that the recorder caw the (respectable 92£ per cent, coloured by the ruddy 7A per cent. Probably Reefton will mu«h longer remember the 7£ per cent. tJKtn the 92^ per cent. However, percentages are a base method of gauging the relation, of the thrilling twenty minutes to the balance of a hundred and thirty minutes. Supposing that the meeting had been orderly, as far ac the chairman could see, for 149 minutes, and in the last minute Mr. Taylor had been bombarded with garbage, the percentage method of assessing the order on the time basis would suirely have a kink. To a man scraping away bits of egg and venerable vegetable it would be small comfort to be assured by a friend that the eruption had lasted for less than one per cent, of the total time of the meet ing. It is a ca-se where the precious statistical method sadly fails. Reformers fall roughly into two groups — those who wish to Purging the forbid with a- "thou Book-Shelf. 6halt not," and those who prefer to arrive at a "thou wilt not" by strengthening the will. The problem of the more or less morbid book has exercised both these classes of reformers. On one side it has been urged that libraries and book-shops should be run on lines to leave the least possible amount of suggestiveness for the prurient or the degenerate. The notion was that the bulk of healthy humanity should tolerate a drastic censorship tor the sake of weaklings, of unclean mind and heart. Such procedure, however, would be as futile ab it is absurd and impracticable. There is already too much tendency to annoy a normal majority for the doubtful benefit of an abnormal minority. One of the delegates at the Libraries Conference gave good sense when he said : "If you want to take the thoughts of the young people away from these questions -you must put into them the <5-pukive power of a new affection." The process has to beg^in at home and at school. The stupidity and carelessness of_ thoughtless parents are largely responsible for a development of dank thought in children's minds. The schools, 1 with healthy games and sane education, are helping to atone for parental neglect, but this work of putting the healthy mind into the healthy body is far from being on a perfect basis. The duty of libraries i« obviously to exclude from circulation those books of which an alleged worldly "moral purpose" is a very transparent excuse for a flagrant exposition of indecency, but such a course is merely a minor detail in any plan designed to combat a growth of evil tendencies in the rising generation. Precocity on the shady side is generally more apparent in new countries such as New Zealand and Australia than in an old country j such as England, and one of the reasons I lies in the slackness of parental control. There is a happy land, not so very far away, where the magic The Magic money tree grows. It Money Tree, is in a garden close, and the Government is the dragon guarding the gate. But it is a gentle dragon ; if it is only stroked the right way it will not only clear the passage to the tree, but will shake down the golden fruit. This money tree is even more wonderful than those trees of the golden apples in the garden of the Hesperides. This money tree has roots which stretch through the whole globe, right to London, but the Government does not like people to think so much of the million .roots as about ' the glittering boughs. The Government has a rival in this golden tree culture. The Trades Councils' Conference at Christchurch has an assortment of seeds and cuttings which are all to be banyan trees of money, watered to golden fruition by the eternal springs of "Be it resolved." It is refreshing to see faith, burning faith, evon when the idol is just a bit of "whereas" with a hank of "so bo it." There are some simple men, almost wildly simple men, at the Christchurch assembly, and their intense faith in a remit or resolution is a fiery answer to the cold allegation that the world is becoming cynical. An enthusiast once urged that the law of supply and demand should be abolished. Some of the millennium-makers at- Christchurch have gone one or two better than that. According to them it requires only a bold

hand and a strong nib to change the whole economic system and make us all "comfortably off" while -we wait for somebody to get the country's work done.