The Evening Star SATURDAY, APRIL 17, 1909.

Evening Star, Issue 14036, 17 April 1909, Page 6

The Evening Star SATURDAY, APRIL 17, 1909.

It is not in any Pharisaical spirit that we deplore the disThs grace which lias beChrisichurch fallen the City of Scandal. Christchurch during the past week. We dare not deny that, given the psychological occasion, a similar phenomenon might occur in Dunedin. In every considerable community there is a proportion of undesirable characters who, knowing and caring little about public questions, dearly love a row, and who scent the possibilities of disorder with malignant keenness and pursue them with barbaric abandonment. Larrikinism of this kind is an ugly and hateful thing, hut it is not new, and we can only hope that “ civilisation in its journey with the sun ” will ultimately put an end to it, or at least reduce it to impotence. In every city, too, there is a comparatively small but not altogether insignificant, section of extremists and perverts (not to be confounded with the merely' rowdy and irresponsible “brass mouths ond iron lungs” just alluded to) : misguided souls who have virtually denationalised themselves at the bidding of a false philosophy and a yeasty cosmopolitanism: soi-disant Socialists of an essentially anti-social turn: feeble (but rot always ill-mean-ing) folk who fancy that they show their superiority in flouting the Flag of the Empire and disowning the accepted ideals of British polity. This also is an ugly and sinister phenomenon, hut neither is it novel nor is there any good reason to believe that it is progressively strong. Normal, rightminded. patriotic people need not be alarmed because a few rabid fanatics manage to insult the Flag during a scene of excitement, or because some scores of howling hoodlums shout down a couple of excellent bishops. They would shout down the archangel Gabriel ■ —unless, indeed, he showed “a sign,” and then they would he howling on their knees in a trice. After all, what can they know of the Empire, who only Christchurch know? But while thinking that it is .possible to make too much of the pandemonium 'at Christchurch tlie other night, we cannot but feel that the incident has a lesson for certain individuals who have no direct connection either with" the larrikins or the anti-patriots. To he explicit, H should have a lesson for Mr T. E. Taylor, M.P., whose striking parts and magnetic influence in some quarters is, unfortunately, not accompanied by a sober sense of political and social responsibility. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the erratic member for Christchurch North is largely to blame for what took place at the King Edward Barracks ou Wednesday night" and it is fortunate for him that he will not have to face his constituents at the polls for more than two years and a-half. Prom his first interposition in the Dreadnought business he has displayed a tactlessness, a pert self-asser-(tiveness, and a wanton disregard of the main trend of popular feeling which—though, having regard to his past, they may be said to he characteristic—have greatly disappointed those who had been led to belive that his controversial methods had changed materially for the better. While freely' acquitting him of the charge of sympathising with the worst excesses of anti-imperialist feeling, we are bound to say that (not for the first time) he has shown his patriotism to be of dubious quality, and that he has made use of a great Imperial occasion for purposes of wrongheaded deniagogism, not altogether unassociated with party spirit. The scandalous scene on Wednesday night can be traced directly, step by step, to the despatch of his presumptuous telegram to Mr Asquith. Mr Taylor, as we have said, has an unquestionable power of magnetism, but one of these days lie may find himself unable to lay the spirits he has raised. There was an anticipative hint of such a development at the meeting on Wednesday. For the rest, it would be a pity to exaggerate the significance of an incident which however deplorable, has no appreciable relation to the great fact of New Zea land’s share in the sentiment and cause of Imperial solidarity.