NOTES AND COMMENTS.

West Coast Times, 24 June 1912, Page 2

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

Thu Ministerialists aro boa ton says Friday’s “Dominion,”, beaten bytheir own excessive mis-doing, and the public’s belated’ awakening to an understanding of the methods which they have been practising for so long; and they arc unable to save their faces excepting by imputing, in vague and general terms, base behaviour to their opponents. Wo aro, speaking quite sincerely, much surprised that Mr T. Mackenzie, whose .record in a pasl) time was a most creditable one, should have been so ready to resort to methods that in Mr Russell or Mr Laureuson surprise nobody. Evil company, wo can suppose, corrupts good moaners more swiftly and completely in politics than anywhere else. A good many people, perhaps, will wonder why the Parliamentary members of the Reform Party did not long ago set themselves to do systematically what Mr Harris did for the Prime Minister on Wednesday, as mentioned in another column. There is no, denying it: they should have sharply and promptly cornered their slanderers. It is all very well to treat them with contempt, relying upon the the certainty that this sort of bluff could not have any permanent success with the public ; it is all very well to be content with the knowledge that the libel that shrinks from a challenger must react against the party whose members are responsive for it. But it is a real fault in the lirliamentnry members of the Reform Party that they did not, in the cvi« of decency, regularly and systematic;: Ih expose, in Mr Harris’s crushing fashion, the deperate vilifications —w ii ;b are bad politics as well as bad torn—selected by the Ministerialists ; n their last struggle before dying in the odour of discredit. It is undevst.ai dabie that even a keen Reform' politician might well sympathise with the appeal of the Lyttelton Times for generosity to a beaten foe, but there

should bo no confusion as to the situation as wo have known it. Punctilio and g.merosity are duo in a clean combat to a beaten competitor; but union) nrtoly tho fighting on tbo Minis’.eiial side has too often been conducted in a manner little likely to comni) rd either sympathy or respect.

It was reported a day or two ago that a Californian farmer named Thomas had found attached to a wild goose tin's legend; “North Pole, 24th June, 1896.—Major Andrec.” Tho story so far is unconfirmed. It is interesting to note that Salomon August Andrec, a Swedish engineer, who studied aeronautics, in 1895 elaborated a plan for crossing the North Polar region by a balloon which should be in some degree dirigible by sails and (trailing

ropes. After an abortive effort in 189G, the winds being 'contrary, ho started with two companions from Danes Island, Spitsbergen, on 11th July, 1897. Tbo party was never seen again, nor is tho maimer of its fate known. Of several expeditions sent in search of it, the first started in November, 1897, on tho strength of a report of cries of distress heard by shipwrecked sailors at Spitsbergen; in 1893 and 1899 parties searched the north Asiatic Coast and tho Now Siberia Islands; and in May, 1899, Dr Nathorst headed an expedition to eastern Greenland. None was successful, and only scanty information was obtained or inferred from tho discovery of a few buoys (on tho west of Spitsbergen, northern Norway, Iceland, etc.) which the balloonists had arranged to drop, and a message taken from a carrier pigeon despatched from the balloon two days after its ascent. There were also messages in two of the buoys, but they dated only from the day of ascent. The others were empty.

Ax ultimatum has come from London suffragettes, members of the weird sisterhood, whoso exploits with hammers on the windows of unoffending shopkeepers have induced a wag to dub thorn “Htunmerzons.” They have resolved to have a hunger .strike in tr.o gaols unless all stiffrage{ to prisoners are transfered to the first division. 'this is virtually a determination for suicide, by a painfully slow process', unless the Government agrees to make imprisonment more pleasant, and respectable for women who behaved so wildly in public, streets. They behaved like the Bacchantes.—“the rout tha c made the hideous roar”—who killed the melodious Orpheus. They went out to dare hnrrW man to do his utmost agatust them. They curled the lip at law, they snapped the fingers at order. They cared not for organised society nor all its works and pomps. “Mo votes .for women, then claw-ham-mers and stones for men,” was the working rule of the stupid persons who destroyed property ruthlessly, in a conspiracy winch proved that their lack of self-control was not a good

argument for the suffrage. When the reckless breakers of the law, deliberately courting imprisonment, were put in gaol their joy in this “martyrdom,’ should have been proportionate to the rigour and ordinary discomfort of the hie. But they are. “martyrs” who like to suffer in comfort. They do not mind f.hc change of address, but they do dislike any serious change in ways of living. They yearn for a nice, genteel retirement—with never a nerve to he jangled by contact with a less respectable non-suffragette. They must bo able to pick and choose the conditions under which they will cat in His Majesty’s prison. Varliatnont and the Ministry must not worry so much abouf tho two-rower standard for the. Navy till the all-important question of the prison status for certain window-smashers has been satislactoriiy settled. Otherwise the incensed prisoners will throw themselves into contusion by starving themselves to death. The Government would probably please tho British public heartily by allowing the fastidious prisoners to practise self-denial as tttncli and as long' as they wish.