PUBLIC OPINION.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXIX, Issue 14610, 18 February 1908, Page 7

PUBLIC OPINION.

—x> ' FROM YESTERDAY'S NEWS- ■ PAPERS. (By Telegraph.) RAILWAY FINANCE. We believe that the general administration of the railways is distinctly successful, even though there may bo mind? respects in which an improvement upon existing conditions may he desirable. The real question is whether it is or is not necessary that tii«> railways accounts shall be correctly stated each year, so that the public may not be led. to assume that a net profit on working has been earned, whereas, in point of fact, there lias been a deficiency, and whether it is or is not necessary that the whole system of railway finance shall be revised, in order that the capital account may be settled at its true value. We do not think there can he any doubt as to the answer which should bo returned to tins question.—" Otago Daily Times." THE NAYY.The whole ideal of Empire, with all that tho word connotes, is bound up with the navy, and no member of the family of nations which go to the making of the Empire, and least of all England herself, can afford to treat the subject as a counter in any game of party politics or as having anything but an absolute value. —"New Zealand Times." THE LEADER OF THE OPPOSITION.

As for the future, Mi" Massey declared that "he wanted this country to become what it was intended to be, one of tho fairest and freest on God's earth, where therts should bo no extreme of wealth or poverty." Yet Mr Massey must know as well as we do that it is only by the paternal State interference which it now suits him to denounce as Socialism that such a result can be secured. The alternatives were to leave the matter to chance, which, as Mr Fowlds says, is " the negation of reason," or to the Opposition policy, which so far is the negation of everything till Mr Massey takes office. He is not called, upon to propound elaborate details of his programme, but we ought to have at once some better index of what b<? intends than the vague negations in which he indulged on- Saturday.— "Evening Post."

AN OPPOSITION SYMPOSIUM. We have very great sympathy for Mr Massey. He is heavily weighted with an impossible task. The magnetism and political acumen of a Beaconsfield could not galvanise into life tne dry bones of New Zealand Toryism, and Mr Massey is not very magnetic. His qualities are of the solid, stubborn sort, admirable in their way but not of the kind that moves people to enthusiasm. Hence we can scarcely be astonished at the tone of depression which characterised the speeches at Paerata on Saturday. Even the bright sunshine and the pleasant association of some thousands of friends and neighbours, who esteem Mr Massey as a settler an the way he deserves to be esteemed, could not inspire the leader of the Opposition or his henchmen, with a spirit of intellectual vivacity.-- \ Auckland " Star."