THE PASSING SHOW.

Waikato Times, Volume 98, Issue 16096, 20 September 1924, Page 11 (Supplement)

THE PASSING SHOW.

COMMENT AND CRITICISM, (By "Free L&ace.") During his career Mr Leonard Isitt, M.P., has waged many a doughty tight. Perhaps this is why some of his acquaintances now wish to use him as the club with which to bludgeon the Government into agreeing to electrify the Lyttelton tunnel. At all events Mr W. Machin, vice-pre-sident of the Canterbury Chamber of Commerce, recently suggested that if the Government did not agree to do .this, Mr Isitt should resign and allow himself to be triumphantly reelected unopposed and free from any promise to the Government. A great idea, forsooth —in the event of there being no slip between cup and lip in the matter of Mr Isitt's triumphant and unopposed re-election. Parish pump politics on a grand scale. Mr Machin would overthrow a Government because of resistance to a demand for local expenditure of public money. A lesser mind could never have hit on such a brilliant scheme, open as it is only to the objections that Mr Isitt might not be wiling, and that the plan mightn't work if he were. Who knows but that some Northern oppositionist, not regarding Christchurch as the only pebble on the beach, might cross the floor on occasion in order to neutralise Mr Isitt's vote, and thereby put a spoke in the Cathedral City's wheel? Really, one thinks, the Canterbury Chamber of Commerce might have put up a better bluff than this. • .'"*.'. .. '* • The metaphors of Mr F, Langstone, M.P. for Waimarino, are a joy for ever. As witness a recent sample: "The moratorium is the child of Toryism. It is like many of the weeds- in the political garden, and naturally their weeds are coming home to roost." "Free Lance" thinks with Mr Langstone that the moratorium should have been lifted long ago, but cannot hold the Government, so culpably unnatural as to produce weeds capaple of returning to roost in the nursery of Toryism. Unless, of course, they were chickweed, as suggested by Mr". Wilford. or fat hen -,'wi'tli which Mr Langstone countered this thrust from the Liberal leader.

One Professor Murphy, lecturing recently in Wellington on "The Present Discontent" defined Socialism as not so much a desire for the betterment of humanity as a licking of one's chops in anticipation. of what was coming to one. The Professor apparently doesn't. cherish .many illusions, and he hits hard. ;'' JJ ..„,. >

Professor John Adams, a visiting educationist of note, in an address a few days ago, touched upon the very prevalent misuse of the term "a working' man." He claimed that if he worked genuinely he was as much entitled as auyone else to be called a working man, even though he did not labour with his hands. Is it not, so? Work with hands or with brain is still only work, though perhaps of rather different nature, but not so much so that the manual labourer should claim a monopoly of the term "working man." Because a man wears a high collar at his job it by no means follows that that job is a "cushy" one, or that a drone could hold it down. The brain workers, as a rule, have to toil as hard as anyone else for a crust, and many of them, in common with Professor Adams, resent any implication that they and their kind are not "working men."

The every day wool bale, or woolpack, is a familiar sight to most New Zcalanders. Yet how many of us could imagine that because these bales are made of fibre damage amounting to £500,000 annually is caused to the wool. This statement was made by a Bradford expert at a recent conference bctwen wool growers and spinners. The use of woollen packs was urged upon growers, it being stated that their cost was less than fibre and that buyers would be prepared to pay half. The trouble seems to be that fibre will not take wool dyes, and consequently every shred lias to be eliminated at great expense, otherwise trouble in the manufactured article follows.

One has frequently read of the difficulty County Councils experience in collecting native rates. Around Hawera many oT the Maoris were under the impression they could not be forced to pay, and one influential native living at Okaiawa recently determined not to, despite an order on judgment summons against him. When a constable with a warrant walked on to the farm the Maori said be was quite ready to go to goal. But this was not the purpose of the man in blue, who. instacd, seized the native's cows, which were subsequently sold to satisfv the judgment. The Maori took it quietly, but the occurrence is said to have had a great moral effect upon his fellow natives, whose views upon the question of paying rates have changed considerably since. The martyr's role is usually less unpleasant than that of the "mug."

The London Times, which at one time was regarded as practically the mouthpiece of the nation upon matters o'.' serious import, lost that distinction to a large extent while under the Northcliffe regime. Slnca that period a controlling interest has been repurchased by Mr John Walter and Major J. J. Astor, and quite recently plans to ensure perpetual independence of the London Times have been completed. It has been announced that a commitEtee consisting of the Lord Chief Justice, the Warden of All Souls College, Oxford, the President of the Royal Society, the President of the Institute of Chartered Accountants, and the Governor of the Bank of England, has been formed "to prevent the ownership of the paper being transferred to the highest bidder or falling into unworthy hands." The committee will act exoffieio, the guiding principle in its selection having been to obtain persons precluded from participatinc; in active politics. Jt will not be concerned with the management or editorial policy of the paper, but will have absolute discretion to approve or disapprove of the transfer of any of the controlling shares now held by Major AsU r and Mr John Walters. The object evidently is to give once again tc the utterances of the "Thunderer" the weight they formerly carried in connection with British national affairs.