SENSED AT THE CENTRE.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXXVI, Issue 11630, 11 May 1912, Page 1

SENSED AT THE CENTRE.

WELLINGTON AND NEW ZEALAND. NEWS AND VIEWS. (By Moriori.) Wellington, Wednesday. Politics are not so important this week as,petrol, .and one cannot help thinking how lucky it: j s for one party or another that a general election is not due before some good\ship arrives with power for motor cars. However,' even the alleged "petering out" of petrol does not much agitate' the Wellington public, which does not share the alarm of the City of the Plains, bicycles, motor cars, and autumn tints. The local politicians have their hands on their foreheads, .thinking hard, but they do not say much, and the Press does not encourage them to be garrulous. It is so rare to have politicians in this state of peace and quiekness that the city seems eerie, unnatural. A sort of leaden stillness is on the capital, but it is only the pre-'tempest tranquillity. The air is heavy with political possibilities. —Deputations—Like the Old Times. — Though the weather is cold, the Hon. A. M. Myers, Minister of Railways, is easily kept warm. Deputations pursue him daily in companies and halr-e*®-panies. 'He escapes this evening southward, but more deputations lurk for him there. It is like the old times, the days of Seddon, who loved deputations. Ever since Mr Myers, in a generous moment, when his valor outran his discretion, announced that he would make the improvement of suburban services a feature of his administration, his days and nights have been much troubled. Wellington province has turned out in force, and has helped to wear a track to the Ministerial door. Never was a Minister so much in request—never did a Minister have cause to wish that he was Omnipotent. Other Ministers,. too, are the daily quarry of the dcpWcationist. They are having a strenuous recess. —A Town Divided.— In olden times, when Wellington was contemptuously .described as a "fishing village" by Aucklanders, there was a spur, Clay Point (long since converted into bricks), at the present corner of Lambron Quay and Willis street. The boys of Thorndou, northward of Clay Point, waged war on their contemporaries of Tc Aro, to the southward, and fierce battles were fought with sticks, stones, and mild. To-day 'the city is similarly divided for hostilities, but the combatants are adults. One section wants the alleged dangerous Ftreet line between Lambton station and Te Aro ripped up, and the site of the new central station definitely settled in the northern quarter, and the other party claims that the centre of population and business is at Te Aro. Men are having meetings about i)t, and correspondents are busy in the Press. This controversy promises to furnish a little amusement till Parliament opens. City Higgledy-Piggledy.—

The new Labor Mayor, Air D. M'Laren, promises to be a town-planner. No man eager for such work ever had a wider field. It is alleged that the New Zealand Land Company, which brought out its pioneers, had sensible plans for a town and that a Government officer's action caused the narrowing of certain streets. Whatever the cause, the city's growth went on- haphazardly. Many of the streets look as if they had been tipped roughly out of a Gargantuan cart. The Government, the City Council, the Harbor Board, and suburban local bodies have acted independently, and the brains have not been proportionate to the bodies. For a year or two there has been a demand for sane cooperation, and at last somebody is listening. If Mr M'Laren is wise he will go "all out" —and therefore probably stay in—on town-planning. —An Election Comedy.—

Labor is confident that it will place Mr Edward Tregear, ex-Secretary to the Labor Department, in the City Council seat vacated by Air M'Laren. Only one competitor, Mr Thomson, a member of a business firm, is out so far against the Labor nominee, and the chances of Air Tregear's opponent are not much favored. However, even if it is a straight-out contest between these two candidates, it will not be a test case of Labor against nou-Labor, because Air Tregear's connection with the Philosophical Institute, the Early Settlers' Association, and other organisations will bring him the votes of many people not much interested in drains, trams, and footpaths. Besides, he is an amiable philosopher, well liked by all ) clases of citizens, though some of his doctrines are naturally anathema, and maranateha to the Employers' Association. He. is a gentle, good-humored dreamer, who would like, everybody to , have a motor car, and the fullness and fatness of the earth if this could be done without injustice to the workers. Air Tregear writes terse verse about "social 'injustice," and leaves the remedy to other hands, some hands, to come surely while.we wait. ■ However, the man in the street is not so much concerned as to whether Mr Tregear will win or lose as to whdther the "Citizens' League, the offspring of the Chamher of Commerce and the Enir plovers' Association, will have the courage to come into the open again. The League aroused the laughter of friends and'foes hv its muddlemerit in the campaign against Air M'Laren. Perhaps it will"- be" content to work behind the scenes this time. Air M'Laren's supporters say that they are hoping thnlfc the League will come out, but it is understood that the League is not eager just yet for another douche of ridicule* i —"Pictured Horrors." —

Wellington City and suburbs have. e ; ght or nine moving picture halls, of which several seek ignobly to make a profit out of crude sensationalism, coarseness, and vulgarity. The argument which the promoters of such sordid business use is that they "give the public what they want." But the persons who relish that sort of stuff are led into that mood by the individuals who crc;>:e an annetite for the morbid. The most blood-curdling melodrama ever staged hv an ordinary "hero-shero, black villain trouoe," is a Sunday School affair by contrast with some of the hair-raising horrors perpetrated _bv ihe kinematograph. Some of the Wellington managers are scrupulous. They have a sense of the decencies, bit; others have an elastic conscience. A revolt is setting in against these abuses, and unless the gross offenders mend."their ways an irresistible demand for a censorship will reach the authorities. The evil use ' o which 'the kinematograph is beiiv" put all over the world is vexing, and exercising the minds of reformers who wish .to check decreneracv. Eugenics Cor clean race) societies will labor in vain if kinematoiraph managers are allowed a free hand to ooerate on the mass of the public—especially the children. The compeition here makes the nuisance more grievous than it is in a smaller town.