ESTABLISHED 1866. THE Marlborough Express. PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING. SATURDAY, JUNE 21, 1913. AN ERROR IN TASTE.

Marlborough Express, Volume XLVII, Issue 145, 21 June 1913, Page 4

ESTABLISHED 1866. THE Marlborough Express. PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING. SATURDAY, JUNE 21, 1913. AN ERROR IN TASTE.

The Prime. Minister has to make so many speeches that he may well be pardoned an occasional errorof judgment and mistake in expression. But we sincerely wish he would drop his too frequent allusions to titles. The "Bart." business was done to death at the time of the last general election, and it should never be resurrected. And yet Mr Massey will persist in making sarcastic side hits-— "throwing off," as a colloquialism puts it—at Sir Joseph Ward. At Milton the other evening, speaking at a banquet given to the Minister for Finance (in the way of banquets the Massey Ministry is, by the way, rapidly overhauling, if it has not aliready beaten, the Sedaonian record) Mr Massey, we read, "condemned as untrue the statement that Ma- Allen had been desirous of a. titular honor." Where and when such a statement was ever made we.are at a loss to imagine. Mr Masisey's allusion to such an idea is the first we have ever heard of such a thing. Perhaps, indeed, we should not be very far away from the truth if we suspected Mr Massey of having evolved this precious "statement" from his own inner consciousnessl. But let that pass. Mr Massey continued: "Had Mr Allen desired a title it would have .been his duty as Prime Minister to recommend hint for it, and he believed it,, would have been forthcoming ; but Mr Allen had not desired it, because he believed that the title of Mr Allen was1 good oiiough for him, as it was for, Mr Asquithy Mr Bonar Law, and Mr Borden." Loud applause, of course, from an audience of faithful "Reformers" and loyal supporters of the highly modest Mr Allen. Surely Mr Massey should be above such wretched claptrap as this! Of course, the Prime Minister's real object was tosneor at "the Bart.," as the then Opposition.; papers at the time of the general election were wont to allude to the then Prime Minister, whom i<fc had pleased his Majesty to honor specially for his long andi distinguished services to the Dominion and the Empire. In duo course, when Mr Allen has had a longer experience of office and has added to the excellent work which, so we cordially recognise, ho has already done for the Dominion, he too will merit, and we trust will be offered and will accept a titular honor. Then, perhaps, Mr Massey may be sorry that he ever ■expressed himself as he did at Milton the other night. Meanwhile the Prime Minister might well be reminded that although Mr Allen has not been "recommended" for a titular honor, Mr (now Sir Walter) Buchanan was, and by the same gentleman who has now thought fit to sneer at titular honors. JMr. Massey has been guilty of a grave lack of taste and of respect to the Sovereign of whom he is the sworn se.rv.ant. We trust he will not be foolish enough to make any similar remarks in Parliament. If he does they will certainly provoke some very unpleasant retaliation.