The Christchurch Star PUBLISHED BY New Zealand Newspapers Ltd. MONDAY, DECEMBER 14, 1931. SEVEN-DAY STANDARDS.

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 296, 14 December 1931, Page 6

The Christchurch Star PUBLISHED BY New Zealand Newspapers Ltd. MONDAY, DECEMBER 14, 1931. SEVEN-DAY STANDARDS.

H TF SOMEONE gets service for which he does not pay,” the chairman of the Railways Board reminds us as an elementary truth, “ then someone else has to pay for it.” The remark is particularly applicable to the railways, to which Mr Sterling is determined to apply business practices. If the railways hitherto have not been judged by business standards that is because they have been a monopoly. The object of a monopoly in private business is to secure the largest possible net profits, but where, in a State monopoly, that objective dare not be sought, and, on the contrary, the net profits, at best, aim at covering a low nominal rate of interest, the drift is towards inefficiency, and very often towards over-indulgence to certain classes of employees. The monopolistic stage of the New Zealand railways is now passed, and the demand is for rationalisation. In so far as rationalisation implies the most efficient and economical management it is commendable, but that phase of rationalisation which aims at the elimination of competition must not bring in its train the attendant evils of monopoly from which the system is struggling to disembarrass itself. One of these is the refusal of the railway management to provide Sunday services to termini that are now being served by three or four lines of Sunday motor-buses. When the railways are permitted to expand on the rational lines that have guided their active road competitors, and public good will is solicited on seven days of the week, then, and then only, can it be said that business standards have been adopted in the service. THE HUMAN ELEMENT. 'T'HE FACT that Kingsford Smith has the eyes of the Empire upon him in his progress with the Christmas mails directs attention to the point that it is still the ability of the pilot that is the paramount factor in aviation. Efficient machines and extensive and expensive organisation do not make pilots though they help them. And although Australia has others who could take the air mails out of sodden ricefields and deliver them in England, it does seem as if Kingsford Smith alone is the man upon whom the country can depend with full confidence in this emergency. The crash of the Southern Sun, and the more tragic ending of the Dutch air liner on the same route, emphasise the fact that it is men and not machines that are to be relied on in the last emergency. BRITISH OR AMERICAN? TV/TR BENNETT’S declaration that Imperial ties have shifted from political to material interests might lead one to suppose, in view of the great importance that is being placed at Home on the possible outcome of the Ottawa Conference, that there existed a certain anxiety concerning the new nationalism in Canada. For it is evident that Canada’s changed status within the British Commonwealth is the result of an internal change. But Canada really has no desire to separate or join the United States, for she is well aware that she derives prestige as a nation from her British connection, which enables her to play an increasingly important part in world affairs. There still remains also the strength of British sentiment and a natural instinct to prefer control at Ottawa under a British constitution to confusion at Washington as another American State. Yet Mr Bennett and other Imperialists are acutely aware that the great commercial interests of Canada are not Imperial. They are North American. The economic invasion from the south is a very real one, and a vital question at the Ottawa Conference must be whether the States are to continue the absorption of Canadian wealth, or whether British resources are to be used in the interests of the Empire.