The Christchurch Star PUBLISHED BY New Zealand Newspapers Ltd. SATURDAY, JUNE 28, 1930. SERVING THE PUBLIC.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 19108, 28 June 1930, Page 8

The Christchurch Star PUBLISHED BY New Zealand Newspapers Ltd.

SATURDAY, JUNE 28, 1930. SERVING THE PUBLIC.

Gloucester Street and Cathedral Square CHRISTCHURCH NEW ZEALANDk

THE PRESS of this country has frequently been the subject of praise from judges, politicians, men in commerce, and particularly from visitors from abroad, and this week Lord Bledisloe has paid it another very striking tribute. In his travels in almost every country he has found, he says, “no more wellinformed, no purer nor more enlightened Press than is to be found in New Zealand In showing the way to progress it is pointing upwards, rather than downwards.” These and similar comments, which we hear with convincing frequency, justify a certain pride in the journalistic standards .of this country, but, indeed, it might be said 8 as truthfully that the whole trend of modern journalism is upward. The Press of to-day has dropped the pomposity of forty years ago and adopted a more friendly tone. This tends to brighter reading. A wealth of variety and achievement is poured out in the production of the daily newspaper, and if it may have suffered in dignity, it has certainly shed a lengthy dullness that would not be tolerated by the busy reader of to-day. NO BEAR GARDEN. TT IS TRUE ENOUGH that a man is judged by the company he keeps, but it is doubtful whether the members of the Citizens’ Association can be assumed to have subscribed to all that Mr H. D. Acland said to them the other night simply because they did not raise' a protest about it. On these cold nights people would suffer in silence and go home as soon as possible rather than precipitate a political debate that could lead nowhere. Nevertheless, there is a warning to be found in the letter of Mr J. M’Combs, M.P., on the subject to-day. The Citizens’ Association should avoid general politics and men who have a political axe to grind. If it becomes the stamping ground for Conservative propagandists its influence as a, force in civic affairs is at an end. HELP AND HARMONY. NOBODY is blind enough to believe that the attempt of the Reform Party to elect its own nominee as chairman of committees was not an attempt to embarrass the Government, for both the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Labour Party expressed the very clear opinion that the matter was one of no-confidence. It was a party move, contrasting strangely with Mr Coates’s well-sounding phrase about working in harmony with the Government during the stress of economic conditions. As the Labour Leader said, if a change of Government is to be brought about, it ought to be done on some fundamental principle. It would have been much straighter for the Reform Party, in any case, to nominate one of its own members, rather than a Liberal member, against whom the whole weight of Reform organisation has been cast on several occasions at elections and by-elections. MORE RED HERRINGS. T> ED HERRINGS are constantly being drawn across the trail of politics in New Zealand. The latest is an attempt by the National Defence League to discount the Prime Minister’s telling comment that military authorities, during the war, conveyed the impression that raw material was the best material to turn into soldiers. The league has shifted its ground. It admits that what the Prime Minister said may be correct, but it would like the public to believe that at every stage of his training a recruit was told to forget what he had already learned because of some psychological reason not easily disclosed. This sort of thing will deceive nobody. There is ample evidence that whether we are train- | ing men for home or overseas service, the highest efficiency would be achieved by a volunteer system, or at the least by a very drastic modification of the desperately wasteful land defence system we have in New Zealand. No amount of special pleading will persuade the public that compulsory military training is worth retaining.