The Otago Witness. WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE SOUTHERN MERCURY. (WEDNESDAY, JUNE 23, 1909.) THE WEEK.

Otago Witness, Issue 2883, 23 June 1909, Page 59

The Otago Witness. WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE SOUTHERN MERCURY. (WEDNESDAY, JUNE 23, 1909.)

THE WEEK.

" Kur>quam thud naiura, aliud sapicntia dirit."-* " Good nature and good «ente must ever join."--* POPE. The Prime Minister has sailed for Lon» don, and the Teal necesi The XnTnl sity for and nature of hitf Situation, mission is still unexplained. The cables for, some time have been silent on the whole matter. In no British dependency, save New Zealand, has apparently any n-eed •been recognised- for th« despatch of a leads, ing Minister to England in such mortal! haste; still leas, "of course, for bringing, the entire legislative machinery to a< stop until his return. For ihe latte'p steii there °eori^^^^ fad,- .to^^^^^^a^M

Hied Ministerial newspapers and the .ranks of the " dumb dogs.'' However, Sir Joseph Ward, having secured bis object, will care very little for that ; and similarly, now that it is done, it is useless to spend time in empty regrets. The hope must Tathei be encouraged that somehow or other the presence of the New Zealand Prime Minister in London may aid in bringing about a clearer situation as between the mother country and the colonies, and more definite ideals on which to work for the common object of all — the invincibility of England on the sea. Is such invincibility really attainable ? And here 'it may be as well to express a doubt — heretical and even disloyal as such doubts are sometimes held to be — whether it is a practical possibility to maintain indefinitely, even by the extremest limit of "sacrifice on the part of the British people, the coveted immunity from attack which is supposed to be conferred by an adhesion to the. two-Power standard. The twoPower Standard has been in its time an invaluable working formula, and it is still the best that is available;- but there are not wanting indications both that it may at any time become an ideal beyond our attainment, and that, even if attained

tor rather, maintained, for we have not lost it yet), it may itself become as inadequate for the real protection of the Empire as the , present naval position would soon become were the Imoei-ial Government to persist in resting satisfied with it. No graver consideration than this is before the British Empire to-day ; but nothing is gained by refusing to contemplate the possibility that, with Dreadnoughts on the stocks of Germany, France. Russia, Austria, Italy, Japan, and the United States (to say nothing ol such countries as Brazil), it may become not merely impossible for any one country to exceed in naval power any possible combination of two others, but an inadequate sea protection even if that one country can. This would be so even were the looming possibilities of aerial warfare to be totally ignored; and they cannot be ignored. It is becoming increasingly the view of thoughtful men that in those firm alliances, offensive and defensive, which Briti-ila Imperial policy has so long and so rightly avoided in the Old World must be found the definite successor to our present ideal of invincible sea nower.

The elimination of Mr Hogg, about whose performances we Exit had something to say iast Hr Ho§T£. week, is a diverting incident in its way, principally on account of the oleaginous lamentation^ of Sir Jcsapii Ward over the fats of his erring suboidinat-e. <- Believe me," says the Prime Minister, in broken accents, holding ready tha aveng--ing stockwhip, " this is going to hurt me more than it hurts you." Tha impenitent, but meek and marlyred Mr Hogg also received his punishment in a method meant to be deeply edifying': but it is to be feared that the country's inclination is ratiier to sniegcrr than to sob.Probably the greatest "sufferer, after all, is the Opposition- party. Ths presence in the Ministry of Sir Hogg was an asset of ,great value in a party sense, and its early disappearance from the books leaves the ledger distinctly kss well balanced than before. The late Minister, however, notwithstanding the hopeless mess he has made of "things, will not have really suffered in reputation in the view of serious politicians, for his disastrous speech was in no way inconsistent with his pre-Ministerial record of some years back. Apart from this, there will be a general feelir.a that Mr Hqc-o- after all has shocked his leader ar.d his colleagues far more by his failure to conceal, when iv office, his perfectly well-known views than by the mere fact that he holds them. The latter fact they, in common wit.h '•tv«-"vbcd'v e]i~e, knew perf?ctly well already; but this appears to be a 'Ministry in which, whatever yon do, | you must not say what you really mean for fear of clashing with a colleague who is known to mean the exact opposite. We shall doubtless, for instance, hear j no more from the Hon. Thomas Mackenzie about the freehold, because in repeating what he has said out of office i lie will be making statements which, as j the Prime Minister said of Mr Hogg's, "do not represent -the views of either my colleagues or myself." A judicious and personally advantageous silence has J in like manner hitherto secured the Hon. j Mr Fowlds against any risk of divorce from the comforts of office : and so in other notorious instances in the "Ministry of All Sorts." Mr Hogg has never. in office or out of it, really commended himself to the country at large, but he may take the comfort to himself that "on 'the whole the country will r.ot be disposed to regard too harshly the fact thai he has said his say — poor, though it was, — and. taken the. confequpnc;s while it has before it the spectacle oi ] more than one of his colleagues who are where they aye by virtue of a selirestraint which is not very far removed from political hypocrisy.

We are now governed by the Hon. Mr Carroll, the most fortunate Th« and probably the least efnMarioiietteK. cient Minister who ever held office in New Zealand. He ha* continued, to survive politically, so many years of Ministerial permutations and combinations that he is now " Senior Sinister," and takes precedence of the ' Hon. Mt Millar, whose possibly too immediate success as Acting Prime Minister .would, it seems, have unduly disturbed Sir Joseph Ward's digestion under the supreme demands -which are about to be I made upon its powers. We may say at ■ once that there is no harm in Mr Car- ' .Toll (when dealing with what there j may be in Mr Carroll it is on the whole safest to express it in the negative way), 1 jJ3^^J^^~2fi m ' e the fact. that he now re- j

a circumjtance eminently typical of the deplorable position occupied by the whole .Ministry since Sir Joseph Ward announced his total want ot confidence in their powers of conducting the affairs of the country. These unfortunate puppets, strutting their little stage under the batonof the Eon. JVl'r Carroll, with the brand of '"third cla^s " publicly affixed to their loreheads by Sir Josaph Ward himself, seem to be quite gratifi-ed with themselves for having begun bj supporting the Premier in casting out Mr Hogg. They are busy thanking Providence tliat they are not as hs is ; but the country, vainly endeavouring to commit their very names and olho&& to memory new that they are (?s far as they have been allowed to be)

"on their own/ is not so very sure even ot that. As _vfr Massey, with pointed carcasm, ha; politely put it. theie L- no leason to doubt, thai Mr Carroll viill conduct the' office of Prime Minister "with the energy and industry which have characterised his administration of {he JS T ative Department " — and at that we are disposed to leave it. But when we have Mv iSuddo as Minuter of Lauds, and Mr Fowlds with important departments to administer, and Mr R. M'Kenzie with a huge spending department dependent on what was called in the House" th-3 other day, his " good behaviour," we may be inclined to wonder whether it might not have been as -.veil for the country had Sir Joseph treated the whole of his illassorted team before he left the country as he treated Mr Hogg, or as, in effect, he ?i-= treated that, .singular Lpectacla of a round peg in a square hole— the Hon Mr >,gat.a.

The views expressed in England on proposals which zr-e innova-

The uons there, but have kn ? Xew Riitisii been routine matters in Taxation. the colonies, are some-

times curious and amusing to observers in the latter dominions. This is the case, for instance, with such projects as disestablishment of the Church, and the secularising of the education system. It would perhaps not be an exaggerated description if one should declare that to be anywhsre near the top socially in England you must be either a good Anglican or a very rich Catholic; and as \-ery rich Catholics are rare, it may be said without serious error that orthodox Anglicanism is a necessity for social success. The bewilderment expressed in fashionable circles over disestablishment schemes is probably natural under such circumstances ; but to the visitor from countries where a Stats religion is unknown, it has its amusing side. Similarly with proposals for secular schools, which aie received with amaz2-T;ent and incredulity, as though t)i9y were some monstrous visions of the unregenerate, by a vast proportion of Er.giish-thinking people. One instance of the kind is supplied by Mr Lloyd-George's L'udget proposals for the institution of a land tax. What one would deduce , from the commotion and opposition these ha\ r e excited, ev^n within the ranks cf the Liberal paity itselt, would be that an enormous and crushing 'import has suddenly b".n lad ca th? should-c-rs of the English landowner, by which the whole great syitsm of propi ietcrship is ominously threatened. Lord Onslow, for instance, has announced that his income from land has totally disappeared in the capacious net of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and that he is going to sell all he has forthwith and begin earning his living on other lines. English "papers are seriously speculating whether dissensions on Mr LloydGeorge's own side of the House may not altogether prevent this part of his Budget from successfully passing the House of Commons. Yet when v.-c come to look into what the Chancellor expects to get out of his land tax, we find, instead of the exDected millions, that only £400.000 is expected from it at first, with a probable substantial increase in future years. The notion of a £400,000 land tax, distributed over the huge estates of the British Isles, being received as a revolutionary and paralysing demand cannot be otherwise than diverting to Xew Zealanders, who subscribe about the same amount yearly out ot their little farms merely to help keep going the ordinary machinery of civil government. Of course the Income Tax at Home is in many cases practically itself a land tax, and the present additional tax is, so far. to be laid on unearned increment, -unimproved land, and " ungotten " minerals only. But the point lies in the disconcerting smallness of the total when compared with the terms in which the effect of the tax has been co far represented by the unaccustomed British mind. The first item alone of Mr Lloyd-George's new list of revenues (the "robbing" of the Sinking Fund, a plan familiar to New Zcalandeis from as long ago as Sir Julius Vogel's time) exceeds it six times over.

The London Spcclatoi- .mmmames a most dramatic description by a The Last of Daily Telegraph corresponAbdnl Hainid. dent of the last scenes at

Yildiz Kiosk when the Sultan Abdul Ham id was formally acquainted by an embassy of four Pashas with the decision of Parliament to depose him from the throne. The interview was begun in significant fashion by the four emissaries- looking carefully to their revolvers as they entered the palace, " for they remembered that Abdul Hamid is always armed, and does not hesitate when he is seized by fear to draw his revolver — thus he has killed various innocent persons whose bearing had terrified him, and he is notoriously a very good shot." The reception by the terrible Sultan of his sentence of deposition is described as neither dignified nor fierce — it was " abject. '' "And my life?" he asked in a weak voice. Such assurances as could be given were offered, but '" they always talk like this," was the moaning response.

addressed himself to begging weakly that he might be conducted urseen by a secret . passage ("You know it?" he said appealing to one of the Pas-has) through the palace gardens to another residence beyond the walls. The silence with which the suggestion was received seems to have further "broken down the wretched Sultan's nerve, and a series of unavailing supplit cations followed, only to meet the same ircii reserve on the part of the fateful iu-.crv'ewers. The Sultan's son. wht was present, begsn to sob, and his father — possibly even ths damned have emotions — turned towards Jiim "with tears in his cruel ejv-es, perhaps the only tears of b:j whole life "' {a touch of journalese intrudes hsre). and ercled the interview by j humbly prostrating himself before the mes- > sengers of his dramatic dismissal. The I last seene — so far — was a special train at 2 in thp morn-ins:, a huiripcl selection from a few of the harem ladies, a silent guard, and a .secret embarkation, and the , lading of the walls of ths Yildiz Kiosk, probably for ever, from the vision of the j ablest, most powerful, and met infamous j d-espot known to modern history.

Tha Governor left Auckland on the 17th instant for Cook I^ar.ds on a three tve-ek*' tour in 11. M.5. Challenger. Rarctonga. . Mangaia, and Aitutaki w.ll (sa;<3 a Prws Association telegram) Oo visited. Auckland will be reached again on tho return journey about July 7. His Excellency is accompanied to the Is-ands by Captains Hardy and Shannon, A.D.C.'s., and Mr H. C. Wale* Sold, private secretary. On tho return of the Governor to New Zealand h-s proposes to make Government House, Auckland, Ins headquaiters for a couple of months. Government House- is at present b?.ng prepared for occupation, and it is expected that Lady Piunket will a.rrive at. Auckland by July 1, and may remain for some tiir.o after the Governor has left Auckland to attend tiio n?xt session of Parliament.

At the meeting of the Education Board on Ihs 17th the Rev. P.- B. Frassr reported that Mr Scott and himself ha-cl visited tho High Street School and the Mornington School for the purpo-o of inspecting- the operation of fne drill practice. At the • firstnamed place the whole school had to~n cleared in a minute and a-haif, and tha latter within a. minute. In the caee. cf tho High Street School it was recomni<?n.dcd thar an easily acce^ibl-e bei! be pi-o-.ided for giving the a'aim. The diiil pro\ided excellent Oisc.phnp for ;hc chiidren, and its effect would bo to pr-e/.ont the calamities that often resulted from panic m public building?.