COLLIERY DISASTERS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20039, 4 March 1927, Page 8

COLLIERY DISASTERS.

The cabled reports of the disasters at the Cwm colliery, in Monmouthshire, and at Bilsthorpe, in Nottinghamshire, will have been everywhere read with the deepest regret Unfortunately a universal feeling of sympathy with those who have been bereaved by the tragic removal of no fewer than seventyone miners will not for the time being mitigate the poignancy of the grief of the mourning wives and mothers. Their sense of loss and desolation must be so overwhelming as to exclude all other emotions. And it is entirely natural that the residents in the districts in which the disasters have occurred should bo profoundly affected by the gravity of the tragedies that have visited them. But that does not make the less excusable the uncalled for demonstration of anger and bitterness with which the Prime Minister and Mrs Baldwin were confronted at Cwm. Even Mr Jack Jones, M.P., will hardly pretend that the Government was in even the remotest degree responsible for the explosion in the Cwm mine. Occurrences of this nature are, it is to be recognised, incidental to coal-mining, which is acknowledged to be one of the most dangerous of callings. The reorganisation of the coal-mining industry in Great Britain would not certainly have prevented the tragedy at Cwm. That all precautions should ho observed to reduce the risk of accident in mines is imperatively necessary in al! countries, and it is reasonably claimed that the standard of safety in British mines com pares most favourably with that in mines in other countries, while the nationalisation of mines elsewhere lias not lessened the number of accidents. The explanation of the tragedy at Cwm

has yet to be ascertained. A cable message this morning states that although there are many theories on the point, it will not be until the thousands of tons of debris covering the seat of the explosion are cleared that it will be possible to form any conclusion as to the cause of the explosion. An event of the kind always provides evidence of the possession by survivors of the highest qualities of courage and heroism, and it is to be deplored that these qualities, nobly displayed at Cwm, were accompanied by an exhibition of malevolence and hatred, even though it may have been only, as Mr Baldwin has said, a few irresponsible young men who forgot themselves.