DAY BY DAY.

Waikato Times, Volume 108, Issue 18168, 5 November 1930, Page 4

DAY BY DAY.

“ The shouting and the tumult dies.” After six < weeks Watchman, What of charge and of counter - charge, The Night? truth, rumour, ac-

cusation and denial, promises and the blowing of trumpets, the air is still, the election is over. For good or ill the decision is made. It has seemed enormously important.' It still seems so. According to which side we supported we view the future with confidence or anxiety. Will It all have much ultimate effect? It will have its effect to-morrow, next year, next decade, perhaps, but beyond that, if we are living then, how strange will appear the ancient heat and fury of this campaign; as strange as now appears the bitterness of the campaigns fought between parties before the war. If we are not alive —it will not matter at all. It will all have passed like the rest of the dream, passed like the Assyrian Empire and the Punic wars, and the signing of the Great Charter at Runnymede. Within a hundred years the oldest of us, the babe-in-arms today to whom the names of Lang and Bavin mean nothing, will have gone where politics and parties are “ one with Yesterday’s Seven Thousand Years.” Of course, that hardly consoles those of us who take their party politics seriously to-day. These look forward to fresh burdens, fresh troubles. The hated leader is in power, right has, been vinquished, and now vae victisl The future looks dark. It always has, and always will until our restless minds can no longer look into the dread future or the golden past, and the mould stops our anxious eyes. The sun still rises at its appointed time the winds blow, and the flowers in their season smile in the gardens. Mr Bavin and Mr Lang mean nothing to them—the titantic struggle in . which we have been engaged, the high hopes, the deep despairs make not one ripple’s change upon the eternal beach. So let us cool down, let us forget all our heat and fury—till the next election. By that time the hated -Go.yp.Eorrfcht may be unpopular enough for us to turn it out. And still the sun will go on rising.—Sydney paper.

“A man out of work has no standaid of living except the Wage dole.” This plain stateand ment, made in the ArbiStandard. tration Court at Sydney, expresses a fact, which ought to be inescapable from any intelligent person. The basic wage can be justly regarded as the foundation of the standard of living, but the argument that the standard must be adverseJy affected by a reduction in the wage is ill-founded. The basic wage is based upon the purchasing value of money in terms of commodities, not upon the number of notes in the weekly pay envelope. The standard of living no more rises when the basic wage goes up than it falls when the basic wage goes down. When the wage goes up, it is because money has depreciated, and the housewife can buy less with it. When the basic wage goes down, it is because money has appreciated, and the housewife can buy more with it. The people without jobs can buy nothing, and have no standard, except the meagre standard, which the dole permits them.

“ Trust in God and a quick draw ” is rapidly becoming the Menace of motto of Sydney. The the menace of the underUnderworld. world has grown steadily. Unless effective measures are taken at once, it can only be a matter of time until the reputation of this capital parallels that ot Chicago, says the Sydney Daily News. Not yet, have machine guns and armoured cars made their appearance, but doubtless this development to-the highest grade of banditry will follow. The causes of this state, of affairs are well known. The police are too much occupied in non-police work. The department of government concerned has not been concerned. It is understood that new police arrangements are in train. We wish them success in their drive upon the underworld. If the Government cannot dominate the crooks the crooks will dominate the Government, and that will be the end of law and order in New South Wales.

The Chief Justice of South Australia was called upon but repress fused to decide a question and of morality upon evidence Morals of .mode. It is a common argument of the mentally purblind to assume that fashion is an index of morals. The evidence of history is however, largely against the argument. It is becoming increasingly known from the memoirs published of recent years that the Victorian age in England was one of the most immoral,, yet in no age was dress more modest, nor indeed more sombre. The fact is that, as democracy has grown up, the mania for interference and criticism has grown with it. Legislation, alwajs motherly, has become grandmotherly. The savage in his nudity 1 is as moral as any well-dressed person. Clothes have little to do with the question. The test of morals is morality.—Sydney paper. ‘