The Oamaru Mail. FRIDAY, DECEMBER 21, 1900.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXV, Issue 8011, 21 December 1900, Page 2

The Oamaru Mail. FRIDAY, DECEMBER 21, 1900.

Great excitement has been caused at Milan (says the Times correspondent) by the decision of the Republican and Socialist Municipal Council to establish at the cost of the municipality a daily refection for all children attending the communal schools. Socialism is gradually eating its way into the heart of individual selfishness. There is scarcely a great modern enterprise or reform that is not based on the principle of mutual aid for the general advantage. It is fortunate that the course adopted in Milan is not necessary in New Zealand. If it had been necessary, and had been suggested, our resplerident Tories—those devout mimics of fixed ideas as dead as the Pharaohs—would have worked themselves into an alarming condition of mind and body. "We are all socialists"—that is, ; those whose opinions are worthy of re- ' pect—is truer now than it was when the Prince of Wales dignified the phrase by Royal utterance. The Marquis of Londonderry addressing the Conservative Association at Wynyard the other day, remarked that "there was a political pendulum which might swing back the Liberal party to power quicker than any of them imagined." But also quicker than any of them imagined," the Marquis of Salisbury is concerting means to keep the pendulum on . his own political side. Notwithstanding the difficulties that will have to be met in creating social and political harmony in South Africa out of the chaos which now Sreva.il s, the noble Marquis indicated to a onservative Union Conference that the most pressing social question of the day was the overcrowded condition of the people at Home in certain centres, which was a "scandal to civilisation," and that "our first duty was to provide adequate healthful habitations for the poor." What puzzles us is that men who advocate such a radical interference with an existing state of things should still persist ia considering themselves Conservatives.