ANGLO-COLONIAL NOTES

Auckland Star, Volume XLII, Issue 299, 16 December 1911, Page 9

ANGLO-COLONIAL NOTES

(From Our Special Correspondent) LONDON, November 18, "BEWARE OF NEW ZEALAND." The emigrant-scaring anti-compulsory service campaign to which reference wad made by your .London correspondent la*t week, is apparently being carried on oa a much bigger scale than one imagined. Diining the past few days my attention baa been drawn by people .living in. different parts of the country to a letter which lias appeared in local, papers purporting to be written by a Mr. G. Dee, of Tiaakora-road, Wellington, New Zealand. This effusion has apparently been sent to scores oi English provincial papers, and has certainly fou.id wide publicity, borne extracts theroiiom may interest your readers. Mr. Dee opens by stating that:— "New Zealand has had the law of compulsory conscription placed upon their shoulders, despite the fact tnat three parts of the population are opposed to the same." He proceeds to tell English people that: "Sew Zealanders, despite the persecution of a tyrant Government, have relused to enrol—from 20,000 to 21,000 refuse to bow down before military law, despite the fact that our boys have been tnrown into gaol like common criminals. Our lands, through persecution, fled the land, with many more to follow em many months are over. "Parents have been, dragged through our courts •because they cannot drdvo their sons to enter upon a military life against their will. The same cause has wrecked the happiness of hundreds of homes throughout the land. Military barracks have been wrecked and officers have nearly lost their lives owing' to public resentment against cruel military

"Before many months hundreds are preparing to depart from New Zealand to lands where freedom and vonecienee are respected. I write to warn all parents with families, especially youths, to beware of" coming out to New Zealand. If you. seek freedom and happiness, then beware, of New Zealand! "Let England remember that New Zealand; once a land of freedom, now suffers under a reign of brutal military persecution. Thousands cry for justico in. tlie name of conscience and liberty." The publication of this sort of thing in dozens of provincial papers is, of course, calculated to materially interfere with the flow of desirable emigrants, for people are naturally ready to accept statements concerning New Zealand emanating from people on the spot, and Mr. Dee's picture of a land groaning under the iron 'heel of military despotism is the reverse- to aljuring. The High Commissioner, I understand, tts preparing for publication a ccranterblaat to Mr. Dee's yapourings, which will place the real facte clearly before the British people. At present people here have very tangled and hazy ideas of what the "brutal military persecution" in Jfew Zealand really consists, and it is time the High Oommnssioner marshalled his battalions of fact and instituted a "sweeping movement" to clear the Old Country of the forces, of ignorance, misconception, and wilful misrepresentation. PATENTS IN NEW ZEALAND -Commenting on 'New' 'Zealand's ""proposal to adopt a Patent Act on the line of the British Act of 1907, the | '"Financial News" remarks that though the latter Act has, on the whole,! worked for good, it is questionable I whether all its provisions can be safely! copied by a sparsely-populated country I like the Dominion, which does not- atj present afford a big market for goods that are suitable subjects for' patents, i The "Financial Times" instances section 27 of the Act, under which application may be made to revoke a patent when the patentee is. not manufacturing the article he has patented within the United Kingdom. "This," says the "Financial Times," "is a wholesome provision in a country like ours, which affords a big home market for almost any class, of goods. Yet the same pro- j vision may, as it seems to us, be the i means of doing grave injustice to Bri- ' tish patentees in a land where the population does not exceed 1,000,000. We can conceive many .articles for which it might be worth the while to secure a patent in New Zealand; yet to start a factory and to put down a plant to make the article in that country might, under present conditions, be altogether too large an order. Let us suppose that a British manufacturer, tbe owner of patented goods, has taken out patents in New Zealand, but has not seen his way to become an actual manufacturer in that Dominion. Under the proposed law, it would be open to" German or American competitors to apply and to get his patent revoked, for the sole purpose of clearing the field for the importation of their own goods. The revoked patent would have been some protection to its owner while it remained good, and under such conditions the proposed revocation appears a purposeless hampering of British trade. It would seem that, under section 33 of the proposed New Zealand Bill, unnecessary restrictions would be imposed on the conduct of business in regard to both licensors and licensees. Such restrictions are not imposed by the. Australian Patents Act, which is largely modelled on the English Act of 1907, and the Australian Act has, we believe, been found to work very welL"