“ALDERMAN CUTE” AND EDUCATION.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 3688, 25 November 1912, Page 5

“ALDERMAN CUTE” AND EDUCATION.

(to the. editoh.j Sir,' —There are none so blind as those who will not see, and when a man is determined to deceive himself it is almost as well to leave him alone, as despite all well-meant efforts he is sure to score heavily. There are, however, others who innocently suffer from his triumph, and my concern is with them, isothwithstanding liis disclaimer, your correspondent Alderman Cute devoted in Saturday’s “Times” by far the major portion of his letter to the subject of education. The pathetic manner in "which he described the efforts of the great English Liberal Premier, Mr. Gladstone, to secure free elementary education for the masses is almost enough to make one burst into tears. There is the clear innuendo that the opposing political party, representing Capital as your correspondent would put it, was and always will be opposed to beneficent measures of this nature os tending to enlighten workmen and decrease their party’s profits. Why it is necessary for the alderman to go to England to prove his case does not seem very clear until it is remembered that the Act providing for free, compulsory, and secular education in this Dominion was placed in 1877 on the Statute Book by the late Sir Harry Atkinson, the last Conservative Premier of X.Z., and practically with no amendment has remained there as a monument to his memory ever since. A typical representative of FAT, he, as he worked his farm, took his turn on the field of battle, in which regard he finished up with the commission of .a Major, was for a number of years Premier of the Dominion, and- died the Speaker of the Legislative Council, at his table in his Parliamentary office. It is a matter of painful history. also, that his share of this world’s gear at his death was meagre. It is to be presumed this is the kind of man our alderinanic friend wishes ■flie workers to be protected from. If this is all our vaunted) educational advantages amount to, they are net an unmixed blessing. “Worth makes the man. The want of it the fellow. All the rest is But leather and prunella.” 1 am, etc., ‘‘FAITHFUL WORKED.’ ’