A Humanist.

Feilding Star, Volume I, Issue 11, 13 July 1906, Page 2

A Humanist.

There is frequently a world of meaning in a catch phrase, and no class of men is more ready to seize upon an opportunity of utilising one than those moving in politics, some times much to the mystification of the general public. On the occasion of the completion of his thirteenth year of Premiership, Mr Seddon, referring to tho schemes lie had in his mind for the betterment of the conditions of life of the people, in the direction of national pensions and the protection of child-life, pronounced himself to be a Humanist, and Mr Lyne, one of the Ministers of tho Crown of the Commonwealth, has, in a very inadequate way, without the faintest conception of tho meaning of tho word, adopted the same description of his own political position. As a matter of fact the term is best known by its use in the work called " God and My Neighbor," by Robert Blatchford, where he uses it as a " covering definition " of the clearest and most uncompromising socialism. Not what is known as State socialism/ but socialism as defined by Mr Tregear, the Secretary for Labor, when he says that "so long as the wage system endures, so long as capital holds land, machinery, and other means of production, so long is the bulk of our population only a collection of well-fed, well-clothed slaves." And that brings us to the point of the inadvisability of the recent attack on Mr Tregear as being unfit to hold the the position of Secretary for Labor while he believes in such a creed. Not that we think that it would be the proper thing for a man who endeavors to utilise his public position to promulgate or bring into practice illogical ideas of the sort, to remain in control i>f the -Labo*. Department ; but because we know Mr Tpegear, and we son say that it is not wise to take him too seriously. He is an amiable jentleman, with a very easy billet and rery littlo to do, and wo doubt

whether anything he says or does has the faintest influence on the policy or the administration of the Labor Department. Of course, it is a question whether it is right for a sinecure of the sort to be in existence, but that is another story. The real moving spirit in the Labor Department, the man to whom whatever success it has earned is due, is the chief clerk, Mr James Mackay, ami while he has risen from the ranks of labor to his present position, we doubt very much whether ho <I<utt uoi characterise his chief's^fulnupations against society and all its works as •' adjective rot."