The Christchurch Star PUBLISHED BY New Zealand Newspapers Ltd. TUESDAY, DECEMBER 5, 1933. CHRISTMAS TALKIES.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXIV, Issue 936, 5 December 1933, Page 6

The Christchurch Star PUBLISHED BY New Zealand Newspapers Ltd. TUESDAY, DECEMBER 5, 1933. CHRISTMAS TALKIES.

CO FEW valid reasons for the closing of picture theatres on Christmas Day were employed by the city councillors who decided on their closing last night that it is to be hoped a more reasonable view will be taken in the interests of the public when the matter comes up for reconsideration. I.asl year the theatres were opened in Christchurch, as they were in other centres, and nothing occurred to give the slightest ground for the refusal to open them again this year. In fact, it is ditlicult to be patient with some of the arguments used by councillors on this matter. One councillor said it was a pity if people could not enjoy themselves in God’s sunshine for once. But, unfortunately, it has been known to rain heavily on Christmas Day, in addition to which the sun does not shine in the evening, and the 18,000 persons who can be entertained with a roof over their heads are always highly grateful for the diversion, or they would not seek it. Another councillor said that Christmas Day should be the “ one truly holy day of the year,” which is to say that theatres should be open on Good Friday rather than on Christmas Day. The fact of the matter is the council has completely misjudged public opinion in this matter. When we wish one another a Merry Christmas we ought to mean what we say, ,and there is no reason why Christmas Day should not be entirely a season of rejoicing. In fact, the City Council is in a hopelessly untenable position in its efforts to give a false significance to the anniversary. IRELAND’S STATUS. A STATEMENT by Britain setting out the constitutional implications of a Republican declaration by the Irish Free State would probably be of the greatest significance in relation to the status of Northern Ireland if it has not been planned primarily to put an end to Republican and United Ireland propaganda in that part of the Empire, for under it logically Mr de Valera and his fellow Republicans would be declared aliens and would not be eligible either to stand for tlie Northern Parliament or engage in Republican propaganda except at their peril. In Central Ireland it is not likely that a Republic in the present temper of Ireland will be more prosperous than the separationist Free State. Dr Schaclit, the president of the German Reichsbank, says that there are two ways out of the present world crisis, by national separation leading to lower standards of living or by international co-operation in opening new markets. The one way leads to poverty and the other to prosperity. In almost similar terms Mr Maynard Keynes remarked in the piesence of Mr de Valera that if he were an Irishman he would find much to attract him in the Government’s striving after self-sufficiency, but as a practical man who disliked poverty he would see in it the possibilities of a disastrous reduction in the standard of life. Bid it took a University lecturer in Dublin to sum the matter up more neatly. Great Britain, he said, lias given the Free State farmer a black eve by her tariff policy and his own Government has retaliated with a tariff which blackens his other eye, thus restoring the balance. BICYCLES IN TRAFFIC. 'T'HE DECISION of the City Council to tighten up the control of bicycles in traffic and to insist on the observance of traffic signals and regulations is welcome, although it is about half a century overdue, but the City Council still owes one great duty to the cyclist, and that is to revise the by-law which says that the rule of the right is not applicable to cyclists. By this by-law the Council has created confusion, if indeed the bylaw is not ultra vires in so far as it takes away the protection that the cyclist enjoys at common law.