FRIDAY, MAY 17, 1912. THE WEEK.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXII, Issue LXII, 17 May 1912, Page 4

FRIDAY, MAY 17, 1912. THE WEEK.

A remark made the other evening by Lord Charles Beresford, at a pubac dinner in London, has a special significance for dwellers iii young countries. Lord Charles was expressizig his gratification at the state or efficiency to which the Navy had recently been brought by the Admiralty. 'JL'ms was, indeed, the proverbial praise from Sir Hubert Stanley—praise indeed, for Lord Charles has until lately been an uncompromising critic of the Admiralty's sins of commission and omission. Recently, however, under Mr Churchill, the Admiralty has created a war staff, and has matured plans, which, Lord Charles himself aumits,' will enable the Navy to meet any emergency. It is good to know this on the strength of such evidence; and, taken in conjunction with similar assurances recently given in connection with the Army, it»will inspire, confidence in all parts of the Empire, and have an excellent effect on the public oirinion of foreign countries.

This, however, is not the point which we specially wished to dwell upon in connection with Lord Charles Bores-. ford's speech. It is gratifying, aud I every .Briton must be delighteu | with it; but the observation which we- ! had and have* specially in view, is of a ' still deeper draught. It Was not tta. i building of more warships even of the-; right kind which Lord Charles had chiefly in mind, but the comprehensive thinking out of schemes of administration^ and the completion of plans; j "organisation," said he "is more valuable than the expenditure of tan or

fifteen millions on battleships." This is a very old reflection, with a new aspect suited to the moment; but it is so frequently overlooked, with evil results, that Lord Charles did well to revive it. In the colonies people of all vocations are somewhat inclined to decide first and plan afterwards, and hence the comparatively large number of tangled-up businesses and handicapped lives. The evil is especially noticeable in connection with colonial politics, and were there less actual law-making and more reflexion and study antecedently to legislation, ii would be more creditable to politicians and a thousand times better for the country.

Grief is a sacred, and sentiment a beautiful thing, but had eicner an> part in the action of that American millionaire's widow who recently crossed the Atlantic "to pay a tribute to I her husband's memory, by scattering flowers in the ocean near the spot where he was drowned in the Titanic ?" Was it not rather sloppy sentimentalism, or mere hysteria, * which lay at the root of the action? Flowers in the weltering, insensate, ice-strewn sea as a tribute to a drowned husband's memory, whilst thousands went dinnerless, and slums reeked, in the city where he had made his money! Surely a more beautiful and righteous and appealing tribute to his memory could have been paid by devoting some of that wealth to the cause of human betterment amongst the living; but then there would have been no hysteria in that —only religion and human nature at its best; but, perhaps, t neither of these prevails amongst millionaires, or their kith and kin.

And yet, happily for the credit of mankind, there are millionaires and millionaires; and it is, indeed, pleasing to know that Mr Bruce Ismay (owe of the directors of the White Star Line), who was aboard the Titanic when she perished, is, in conjunction with his wife, endowing a fund for pensions for disabled seamen and the widows of the victims of the late disaster, as a memorial to the heroism of the Titan ic's crew. This is to a tune very different from that of the action of the widow of the American millionaire. It is^ in fact, one of those things which make the whole world kin; for it testifies to true feeling in the actors, and touches chords of kindred feeling in every heart that hears of it.

Mr Beeby, the Minister of Education in New South W rales, is evidently a -strong; man, with a clear, vigorous sense of

moral justice. AVhile speaking at Lithgow, a veritable hotbed of industrial unrest, he reminded trades unionists of the existence of the law against strikes, and declared that, p,s tSe State had provided machinery for the settlement of disputes, breaches of the law must carry the penalties imposed by Parliament. Ivlr Beeby, who is a proved friend the workers, is also a friend to com-mon-sense, the common interest, and to fairness all round; otherwise he would not have spoken with this clearness and decision. He certainly is not the man to talk of penalties unless he telt in his own conscience that the means provided by the State to secure justice to the workers were humane and reasonable. Much of the calamity in colonial public life is due to the circumstance that too many public men are deficient in their sense of the duty which they owe to the people as a collective whole, and too ready to palter with principle for the sake of momentary.applause or some fleeting personal or party advantage. Mr Beeby is not of this class, and so he resolutely warns would-be strikers that the Government will enforce the law against them, because the State has provided machinery for securing justice to the workers without their having to resort to strikes. Under such circumstances, to leave the law unenforced would be for the Executive to make itself a party to the infliction of injustice on the community as a whole.

It is true that the complex subject cf the relations between employers and employees has many aspects, especially in the Old Country, where the law has not yet supplied the machinery which Mr Beeby says is possessed by the workers of New South Wales. "The letter which Mr James Kowin (still well remembered in Taranaki) recently wrote from London to Mr James Livingstone (one of the best-known men in this part of New Zealand, and one of the worthiest in the whole dominion) gives, in one of its paragraphs, a vivid glimpse into the state of things in England. The substance of it is that Mr Kowin is strongly in favor of the nationalisation of the coal industry, so strongly and urgently advocated by Mr Arthur Chamberlain, ""'hose question to the mine-owners, When did the nation agree that this national asset should be put in your hands, to enable you to control 'and govern the life and death of the poor?" struck him as one that would be difficult to answer. And with the complete abolition of that state of things every honest man with a head and a heart must be in the very fullest sympathy.

Some so-called institutions or organisations are mobbish in all their instincts and desires, and would fain leave no one with liberty to differ from them in any respect. Women err as much as men in this matter; at least, they do so sometimes. The Women's Political Organisation in Melbourne certainly did so the other day, when it asked Mr Andrew Fisher, the Federal Premier, to protest by cable message against Mr Lewis Harcourt (Secretary of State for tke Colonies) publicly opposing the women's franchise. It is said that they urged that as a representative of the colonies in tho Imperial Cabinet, Mr Harcourt ought not to express hostility to a law which was accepted in Australia. * (

If the women really said this, they must havtf been singularly ill-advised beforehand, or have taken counsel with each other to little purpose. Mr Harcourt is most certainly not the representative of the colonies in the British Cabinet, in which the colonies have no representative ; but he. is the British Minister appointed to look after Britain's interests in connection with the colonies, founded by her or in consequence of her assistance and protection ; and his duties also still include the exercise of a sympathetic interest in all colonial affairs. But he is the officer of the people and of the King of Great Britain; and it is altogether out of place in colonists to try to interfere with him through the existing constitutional political channels. It would be uncalled-for to do so, even if those channels were different from what they now are, and, in another respect, an interference with the rightful liberty of a public man. From fbis point of view Mr Fisher put it vsrv concisely when he told the lnis-

r:iided meddlers that "politicians were free to determine their attitude upon r^blie questions." Of course they are; : id though they may be criticised by individuals ever so severely, they must 1 subjected to nothing in the nature o!! coercion. Do this, and freedom of thought, and speech is destroyed, and constitutional government subordinated !;o mob rule, or the dictation of the caucus. Mr Fisher is profoundly and comprehensively. right: politicians must be free to determine their attitude upon public questions.