The Evening Star TUESDAY, DECEMBER 24, 1912.

Evening Star, Issue 15066, 24 December 1912, Page 4

The Evening Star TUESDAY, DECEMBER 24, 1912.

The town is just now emptying and rilling again. Dunedin people Christmas and are dispersing all over the Country. the country; tho country people are converging on the City. Everywhere there is evidence that the spending power of folk has at least not diminished. In a way, the average suburban resident has not had an easy winter. Lhing lias not been cheap. Prices for some commodities have been unusually high, notably so in tho case of market garden produce; and the elusive coyness of Old tjol, in months when he might reasonably be looked for to overcome the too persistent watery vapors, has made tho average monthly fuel bill for the whole of 1912 approximate far too much to those of July or August to pleaso anybody lmt tlio.se in tho coal trade. But business, somewhat susceptible to climatic conditions, has been able to rise superior to bad -weather. "Work has been plentiful. Seldom has such a winter been accompanied by so little, unemployment. Town people seem to havo saved money for a holiday, and all they need now is a beneficent mood in tho clerk of the weather to enable them to enjoy 'it to the full. Country people—those on the land—are in excellent heart. Primary producers have indeed little to complain of. On the whole the wet season, whereby tire ground has had such a soaking as it has not had for years, was desirable, rather than otherwise, after a succession of exceptionally dry ones; and yields of nearly all kinds of produce have been excellent. And as to the prices realised, these have been so uniformly high that bank accounts have mounted like quicksilver in a thermometer suddenly exposed to a hot sun. Luxuries are attainable even after provision has been made for renewals and additions in the important matter of machinery at:d implements. The motor car is displacing the farmer's gig and tho "carry-all": trips abroad are coming nearer than the mere contemplation thereof. Happy indeed the lot of the man on the land, especially if he established himself there before land values had climbed to their present level! Km-al pursuits have been attended with a success which has turned envious town eyes towards the land. Too often that has meant, for Otago eyes, the North Island. But the limits of settlement have not yet been reached in this province. Central Otago, too long neglected, is coming into its own; and it is not an idle prophecy to say that the fruit that it will be producing within a few years will be a substantial factor in the wealth of Otago. Much depends on the activity of the Government in the pursuit of their irrigation schemes. With the introduction of foreign money (which the country has recently been assured by a high financial authority should not be difficult of attainment) solid progress in irrigation can fairly be assumed. For this reason, while the outlook for the whole of New Zealand is excellent, the prospects of Otago are particularly bright'—more so, perhaps, than they havo been for some years. Optimism and Ghristmostide harmonise well and naturally, but it is with the feeling that hopefulness was never more well grounded that we wish our readers the compliments of the season and full realisation of what the year 1913 seems to hold in store for them.

One need not be a pessimist -when at times one doubts, even Peace and though God is in his Good-will. Heaven, whether all is right with the world. The prevalence of peace on earth and of good-will among men is haTd to find. The most casual glance through the day's news at this Christmastido affords food for thought. The superficial observer has only too much cause to say there are no signs of peace and few of good-will. Every great civilised nation of Europe, every Christian Power—our own included—is spending one-half of its revenues—the toll extracted from the products of-industry—-on instruments of destruction. In every civilised land the busiest factories and yards are those that are given over to the building of warships and the making of cannon; while under the shadow of every cathedral cross doctrines that are the negation of the lessons of that cross are, in one form and another—industrially, socially, politically, and racially—being proclaimed. There is a restless, brooding, ominous spirit abroad; the faiths and principles of generations are being tossed aside; and in an age that boasts of its reason, the argument of unreason,,of passion and hale and force and destruction, i notamong.one.,i!lass..pr,sne sex 3 but in all

classes and by both sexes, has become, the supreme test of right and wrong. If we turn to the Mother Land, we find that political partisanship has contemptuously or wrath fully flung aside sobriety and decency of discussion as well as the conventional restraints of law and order. Small wonder, then, that half-crazed fanatics should, in the United States, draw the revolver on eminent citizens, or in Italy plot to assassinate its King, or in India hurl bombs at the Viceroy, or in Spain fatally shoot its Prime Minister, or that every city should furnish forth its tale of indiscriminate, callous, and cold-blooded murder and wanton suicide. And beyond the indictment that may with • ease, be framed •against men and women in their individual and social capacities, there is the even more formidable one that can be laid at the doors of the nations through their policies and Governments. No human being can estimate the volume of preventable physical miserv that is being endured by hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children in Southeastern Europe at this hour. We need not dwell on them; we do not even care to think of them; to attempt to describe them would bo only to pile horror upon horror. What cannot bo questioned' is the awful reality of the story that is to be gathered, as we have already said, from a cursory and perfunctory glance at the columns of the daily Press. Peace on earth and good-will among men, we sav. in bitterness of heart, are no nearer mankind this Christmas than they were when first proclaimed by the choir of angels 1,912 years ago. Happily for the future of the race and for the planet, this is but a part only of the story, and the part, too, which, though the most obvious, is the least permanently assured. If there be armies and individuals who, though not all evil, are working evil, so, also, are there hosts of men and women, who seldom obtrude themselves before the world, whose lifework it is to leave this earth a little better than they found it. Were it not so, then existence wouM cease to be rational, and the better and higher ideals that inspire us would he as the mocking phantoms of the night. Cruel and heartrending as much that we now see around us is, we can yet detect, amid the chaos and confusion, signs that herald the coming of the dawn of a brighter and more glorious future.