PUBLIC OPINION

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18088, 23 February 1927, Page 8

PUBLIC OPINION

WHAT OTHER WRITERS ARE SAYING. An Increasing Business. / Credit is rightly taken by the lion William Nosworthy for the Government’s share in the increased tourist business of 1926-27. Coming after the Exhibition year, some people might have expected an ebb in tourist business. That the contarv is the case—notwithstanding the world-wide and local depression —may be taken as an indication that the Exhibition and the Government’s publicity officers have advertised us very well. New Zealand has grown larger on the world’s map, and its own internal communications have improved and are improving rapidly. All this road work pro\ ides new territory for the tourist as well as for commerce, and the Highway Board’s periodical statements of road operations are inducing even the confirmed city-dweller to sit up and take notice. People in New Zealand, as well as out of it. are only just beginning to know the country, and they find it a paradise for the lover of the open air. Roading is the first need, but it must be reinforced with other services (accommodation, etc.) if the best is to be got out of the tourist. Also, the new motoring fraternity might improve its road manners and its picnicking methods. But that will come in time. —“Evening Post,” Wellington. * * * Royalty on Tour. It would not be a very encouraging assurance for the future of the British Empire if the views expressed by Mr Kirkwood and other Labour members in the House of Commons last week, were shared by many. Statements of this kind, from Mr Kirkwood’s point of view, may be useful propagandist material for revolutionary malcontents who regard the Throne as an expensive and purely ornamental relic of the past, and Soviet Government the only possible eystem for the future. Mr Kirkwood’s political history furnishes plenty of evidence of the fact that it is his custom to speak without thinking. His irrelevant reference to the unemployment question when opposing the British Government’s grant-in-aid for the Royal tour is a characteristic example cf confused thinking. He calls the tour a “ joy ride.” If the truth were known, the Duke of York no doubt would much prefer a holiday trip to the prolonged strain of publicity and cere inonial attached to a tour in State of the British Empire To dwell at any length upon the Kirkwood point of view would be to attach too much importance to a trivial matter. But to describe the Royal visit as a “ joy ride ” is too absurd to be taken seriously. The Duke and Duchess will attend endless receptions and listen to whole volumes of speeches, and have a very arduous time. That they will receive, and give, a great deal of pleasure during their experiences goes without saying, but their trip will be no pleasure jaunt in the sense conveyed by Mr Kirkwood, who places the event in an utterlv false perspective.—“ The Dominion,” Wellington. A Battle Ended. By its decision to grant recognition to the Auckland school of engineering as providing the requisite training for the first and second professional examinations for the degree in civil, mechanical and electrical engineering, the new University Council has taken a step that the defunct TJniversitv Senate ought long ago to have taken. There has been a tedious battle for this measure of justice. In part, it was a conflict between districts, and parochial feeling often entered unpleasantly into the Senate’s debating of the issue. There was an open fear, on the part of some southern senators, that to grant Auckland the recognition it sought would] entail some prejudicial deprivation of the prestige and resources of the school at Christchurch, in most respects the sole recognised institution. It was customary for opponents to plead that the sacred principle of special schools was seriously menaced by the proposal. Professional schools, the argument ran. were so expensive to equip that the Dominion could not afford to have more than one of a kind, and the necessary policy was to have such schools exclusively allotted to this or that affiliated college. Whatever virtue there was in that argument presented in vacuo, its application to specified instances was obviously the dominating consideration in the minds of many of its exponents. So Otago jealously guarded the interests of its medical school and Canterbury its school of engineering. It was little to them that the increase and the northward swung of New Zealand’s peculation -were steadily and surely vitiating the argument by a logic of fact. The argument’s premise was practical. It was concerned with figures of population and finance. Every year that passed while the Senate marked time was making the argument more and more vulnerable, and those who strove to shield it with a ietish were being compelled to abandon it eventually. It is well that the new council has proved to be more logical than the old Senate.—“ New Zealand Herald,” Auckland.