Evening Post. SATURDAY MAY 13, 1911. GETTING BEYOND A JOKE.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXI, Issue 112, 13 May 1911, Page 4

Evening Post. SATURDAY MAY 13, 1911. GETTING BEYOND A JOKE.

'Auckland appears to be agitated and superheated about The Post's protest against a bounty of New Zealand taxpayers' money for £he projected' Auckland Exhibition- of 1912. Shntiltanieously with Auckland^ insistence on a right to that money comes an agitation: led by the irrepressible Mr, Gunson against the pushing of tho East Coast railway from the Napier head instead of the Auckland head. The Queen City's contention ie that any decision to link Napier with Gieborae before joining Gisborne with Auckland will benefit Wellington at the expense of Auckland. A public meeting is threatened up there, and that formidable political engine, the "large and representative deputation" is looming up. Surely a large bark is coming from that quarter which has the much-advertised 109,000 people. Auckland and ita environs are credited with a tenth of New Zealand's population, and it is a valiant tenth, eager and ready for onsets that recall the derring-do of Cassar's Tenth Legion. Why has not Wellington a Mr. Gunson and a Mt. Bart Kent? With such dictators, and a complaieaait Prime Minister to yield either to honeyed words or beetled brows, the Capital City would be making much interest at New Zealand' 3 cost. It is dedaied horn Auckland that ,the genial §k Joseph -has, undertai&n

to bo generous with New Zealand's money; this is a habit which heads of political administration* inveterately get. The same genial Sir Joseph made a pTomiee some years ago that an enlargement of an Auckland railway (duplication of a. tunnel) would depend on the verdict of a purely Auckland "commission at the end of a fixed period, and the commission duly set to work not long ago. It has taken much ingenuity on the part of the Minister of Railways and other members of the Cabinet to fob Auckland off with some other concession (we presume). Reading of these promises by the obliging Sir Joseph and the demands of the Guneons and Kents prompt® the quotation of a fragment of Milton's " Comus".: .... But this Isle, The greatest and the boßt of all the main, Ho quarters to his blue-hatred deitieß. Also another fragment from the same " Comus ".: And give* them leave to wear their sapphire crowns And wield their little trident*. The Post's temperate protest against a cash subsidy to the Auckland Exhibition has provoked one of the Auckland papers to urge a backing of "the full strength of Auckland public opinion." Will the valiant tenth prevail against the nine-tenths? Will the tail (for all its 109,000 vertebrae) wag the dog? Mr. Leo Myers, lees parochial than some of his Northern brethren, has expressed sorrow because he believes that The Post, national in its outlook, has failed to be national in this Exhibition matter. The Post has made ite protest exactly on national grounds, because The Post believes that if the State has any money to spar* for Exhibition purposes a far better national use can be found for the funds in the world's market places than in Now Zealand centres. Is it not more sensible to display our produce at the consumers' end than at th» producers' end? An industrial Exhibition, such as the self-supportujg one to open soon in Wellington, can. do good by stimulating public interest in local manufactures, and fighting the blind preference for imported articles, and the enterprise here is quite large enough for that purpose. We do not wish to see another costly fair like the Christchurch one of 1906 for a long time yet. This "advertisement" cost the taxpayers very many thousands of pounds, and we have looked in vain for the compensation which thne was to bring. During the past five years ■colonial opinion about Exhibition policy has changed for the better. Australia recognise*, and thinking people in New Zealand recognise, .that the State should spend its money and energy in displaying the country's products and resources at the tight side of the world — In the market-places. Wo hope to see New Zealand thoroughly roused on this question, for, unless New Zealand public opinion is stimd, the Auckland agitation may command still another surrender from the Government.