NEWS FROM THE CAPITAL

Taranaki Daily News, 5 January 1927, Page 9

NEWS FROM THE CAPITAL

WELLINGTON TOPICS DRESS AT IMPERIAL OONFERENCB, NEW ZEALAND OVERLOOKED. (From Our Own Correspondent.) Wellington, Dee. 31. The Evening Post, with a ready sense of what interests its readers at this season of the year, devotes an editorial to the dress of the Empire’s representatives at the Imperial Conference, a subjest which has been engaging the attention of several of the trade papers at Home during the last month or two. The Post draws its inspiration from the Tailor and Cutter, an organ of fashion, which prescribes with traditional authority the cut of a man’s coat and the breadth of his trousers, and accepts the Daily Chronicle’s summary of this ex'pert’s pronouncements. “Air. Baldwin,’’ the reader is told, “dresses tactlessly; Air. Bruce is criticised for wearing spats; General Hertzog wears his buttons parochially instead of Imperially; Air. Churchill’s collar and tie are Victorian; Lord Balfour’s are antiquated; and Lord Birkenhead dresses epigrammatically.” It is gratifying to the Post to find that two-thirds of the offenders, in the eyes of the Tailor and Cutter, are British statesmen, and that come of the Dominion delegates “gave Mr. Baldwin and his colleagues a lesson in sartorial deportment.” At the conference of 1923 Mr. Mackenzie King’s coat was said to be “really a poor fit” and his trousers to “sadly need an uplift”; but now the Canadian Prime Minister is at the head of the list of properly attired delegates. MISSING NEW ZEALANDER., The “honours list,” however, is a cruelly brief one, and the Tailor and Cutter evidently is an exacting critic. "We must single out the Canadian representative for special praise,” it says. “Mr. Mackenzie King, the Prime Minister, and Mr. Ernest Lapoint, Minister of Justice, were both correctly attired for such an event. They wore black morning coats and waistcoats and neat trousers.” The Post naturally is surprised that Mr. Coates obtains no mention in this sartorial review, and properly scouts tho suggestion that New Zealand’s Prime Minister ean have failed to look the part he was upholding at the great assembly. “Where did our Mr. Coates come in?” it protests. “If his trousers were not neat, they were not in sad need of an uplift, as Mr. Mackenzie King’s had previously been. He did not imitate the 'thoughtlessness and tactlessness’ of Mr. Baldwin in wearing a lounge suit on the opening day, nor did he wear spats like Mr. Bruce, or wear his buttons ‘parochially’ like General Hertzog. If Mr. Coates was able to escape both the praise and the scorn of the Tailor and Cutter he must have hit the mean very nicely.” The Prime Minister would be a distinguished figure in any assembly, and a quaint tilt he may give his hat and a coy display of his handkerchief would not detract from his manly bearing. NEW YEAR RESOLUTIONS. Under this heading the Dominion this morning very appropriately and very opportunely makes an eloquent appeal for better relations between Capital and Labour. “With the more serious of our international problems in a fair way to permanent settlement, the future integrity of our Empire assured by the very practical understanding which has been reached at the last Conference,” it asks, “is it not possible for all sections of the British community to unite in resolute and concerted measures which will enable them to proceed unhampered with their industries, their domestic progress and their development?” “Why should it be possible,” it asks again, “for an hysterical irreconcilable like Cook, the pro-Russian miners’ secretary in England, to precipitate a prolonged struggle which cost the people of the Old Country huge losses and great suffering, and created throughout tho Empire a period of commercial uncertainty and financial stringency?” But the Reform journal does not appeal to Labour alone for assistance in solving the great problem. "What is said of the responsibilities of the leaders of trades unionism applies.” it emphasises, “equally to the leaders of industry. It is their duty to endeavour to promote a better understanding for the common good.” This is the gospel which should be preached from one end of the country to the other at all seasons of the year and particularly at Christmas time. A WORKER'S VIEW. A veteran worker, who has been closely associated with trades unionism for many years, and who has some authority to speak on behalf of his fellows, in the course of an interview this morning said he was satisfied a majority <f the bona fide unionists would be glad to meet the employers half-way in tire settlement of their grievances, in the spirit suggested by the Dominion. The main difficulty in the way was the narrow selfishness of comparatively small minorities on both sides. Unfortunately these minorities often contained the pushing and noisy men among the workers and among the employers. They were amicus only to extract the best possible terms for their own side from the other side. This was one of the difficulties for which the Conciliation and Arbitration Act could not wholly provide., and as a result the Act had fallen largely into disuse and even into disrepute. It still, however, presented the very best means yet offered for adjusting labour disputes, and if the spirit of the framers of the measure could be revived in the present generation, both Labour and Capital would be much better off than they are to-day, and the production of file country would be enormously increased. Abiding industrial peace, this authority soliloquised, was the great need of the world.