The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 20, 1911. LOOKING FORWARD.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXII, Issue 8, 20 December 1911, Page 4

The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 20, 1911. LOOK ING FORWARD.

Some of the problems in the future of great cities were touched upon by Mr Hilaire Belloc when responding to the toast of his health at a dinner ,given in his honour at Liverpool by the Philomathic Society. He told his hearers that they lived in a great city which controlled a great deal of wealthy a city which was typical of modern industrial English cities, and that unit of human affairs ought tc be the dominating unit of English political minds. At the present moment all their problems were connected with that kind of political life—even their religious problems, certainly their economic ones—and these problems produced no active discussion, except from a small body of men with whom he did not agree, called Socialists. Tiie end of a State was to be happy and proud, and that was the case with corporate life. Speaking of the transition from agricultural tc urban characteristics, Mr Belloc “said it was a perfectly true, if a startling statement to make, that out of every ten families south of the Grampians in England nine were living under urban conditions. The modern Englishman bore the mark of being urban. He got his water from the tap, his excitement from newspapers. His work was regularised on urban conditions, and ho went to and from his work by rail or tram in urban fashion. In the immediate future they would have to deal with the problem of the great English city in its corporate .capacity, lb was no longer in a state of transition under which the capitalist class could organise its life, lint in a condition in which they would have to deal with the free men of the city, enthuse them with common loyalty, and grasp them with a common bond. No city had ever been great unless free men had possessed the soil and instruments of production, and nr ity, large or small, could continue to be stable in which the soil and instruments of production were not videly held—he did not say equally listributed—by its citizens. They night not be widely distributed among he human families, but they must be widely distributed among free men. Political power in the hands of the .proletariat meant the break-down of lie State. If property was not brought into the bands of the greater part of the citizens in small amounts, perhaps the only alternative was slavery. Ho did not prophesy tliat they would have slavery' ns a solution of the groat urban problem. He did not say that they would arrive it a state under which the dispossessed masses of the present urban civili■•ation would be compelled to work at i certain wage under certain strict conditions, and no longer allowed to sell their labour at their own price. But ho did toll them that if they did not become possessed of property in some degree tliat- was the only alternative. As the industrial problem developed they would attain one of those solutions, and that quite rapidly —either by compulsory arbitration, •State regulations for transport workers, and a hundred pretty names for slavery, or in the wav be had suggested.

DLiX OF THE SCHOCL

Stratford School !i;ts many good regards l.i its credit, of which tho Hcr.duaster (Mr F. Tyrer) and :;11 concern'd may ho justly proud, hut perhaps e.v more remarkable than that mad'

Ids year by Albert Anderson, tho ’cry young sou of Mr Joseph Andor;nn, farmer, of East Hoad. This boy s under ten years of ago, keen and dart, and positively loves learning. So diat he may not shoot too rapidly, he

is relieved of home work, and study hooks are banned out of school hours. .Nevertheless, his progress through tho standards has boon simply meteoric, and to-day lie leads the sixth easily and stands alone as dux of the primarily school. Masters and parents may wall be proud of Albert Anderson.

THE LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL.

There is some anxiety and not a little speculation as to what may happen with regard to appointments to the Legislative Council, until the Ministry has shown conclusively that it still possesses the confidence of tho country. In the year 1890, Sir Harry Atkinson recommended tho appointment of six Councillors when the position of his Government was doubtful, and Lord Onslow, after some hesitation, agreed to it. In a despatch to Lord Knutsford the then Governor explained that he did not care to take the responsibility of refusing the advice of his Ministers, especially in face of the practice in England for defeated Ministers to advise the Crown to create Peers, hut he added that there was a strong feeling that in the colony the practice which obtains in England of making Ministerial appointments before vacating office, is not one which Xew Zealand Ministers should he encouraged to follow, and he thought public opinion would be strong enough to prevent its recurrence. Lord Knutsfovd replied that lie was of opinion that Lord Onslow, in accepting the advice tendered to him by bis responsible advisers under tho circumstances described, acted strictly in accordance with the Constitution of the colony: “but,” added his lordship, “I do not desire to bo understood to offer any opinion upon the action of your Ministers in tendering that advice.”