NEWS OF THE DAY

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 181, 2 August 1941, Page 6

NEWS OF THE DAY

Record Mileage A mileage record was established last month by the St. John Ambulance Association in Auckland. The aggregate of miles was 11,700, which is about 2000 miles higher than the previous best, and it was compiled in conjunction with a record number of calls—l29B. The ambulances were employed on a large number of journeys to cases in distant country areas. An increase in the number of serious accident cases handled during July was also recorded. Major Heaphy To-day is the 60th anniversary of the death of Major Charles Heaphy, V.C., a well-known personality in the early history of this Dominion. As a young man he studied at the Royal Academy of London, and in 1840 was appointed draughtsman to the New Zealand Company. During his first ten years in this country he surveyed many districts, and was subsequently appointed Goldfields Commissioner. Major Heaphy was awarded the V.C. during the Waikato War for rescuing a wounded comrade under fire. From 1867 to 1870 he Was M.P. for Parnell, and later was appointed judge of the Native Land Court. In 1881 he visited Australia for health reasons, but died in Brisbane on August 2 of that year. / Army Training Needed Addressing a gathering of American students recently, the Hon. Robert P. Patterson urged on them the necessity for doing military training. He said: "it is not a pleasant thing to have one's college course interrupted; it is not a pleasant, thing to have any agreeable, normal, beneiicial human activity interrupted; but certainly it is better to endure such an orderly interruption as a year of military training than to have a classroom ripped apart by high explosives or a library laid in ruins by incendiary bombs. ... I think you will agree with me that even such a hiatus in vour careers is preferable to the sort of interruptedness you would be enjoying if you were students at the Sorbonne, or Ley"*", or Copenhagen, or Oslo, or Prague. In each of those institutions, I believe, the physical structure of the university is reasonablv lniact. But is anything else?"

The Fifth Fire A fire on the Waipukurau racecourse, the fifth in that area since December, 1939, destroyed a stack of about 10 tons of baled hay on Thursday night. Previous fires at this racecourse destroyed the totalisator house, grandstand and another haystack, and the women's cloakroom was the scene of an outbreak which was stopped in time in March this year. The secretary of the club, Mr. F. A. G. Dunn, has offered a reward of £50 to any person giving information that would lead to a conviction for arson. Last of the Mokoia Thousands of New Zealanders will learn with a pang of regret that the vessel Mokoia is about to be broken up for scrap metal. From 1898 onward the .s.s. Mokoia was one of the Union Steam Ship Company's coastal and intercolonial fleet, and in the 1914-18 period this boat of 3502 tons did service as a transport ship to England. Though but a tiny troopship in comparison with the palatial transport craft of to-day, she had fine sea-going qualities and was popular with the troops. After 1918 the Mokoia resumed runs to Sydney, and also went South Sea Island pleasure cruises. In 1930 she was handed over to the Otago Harbour Board and then became a hulk, being sunk at Port Chalmers for use as a mooring ship. The work of raising her- and towing to the knacking yards will be started next week. For Prisoners of War The Joint Council of the Order of St. John and the New Zealand Red Cross Society has arranged for a supply of pai/cels for New Zealanders known to be prisoners of war. ButI ter, tinned meat, jam. coffee and niilk have been purchased to the extent of ten tons each, together with one ton of plain chocolate. This will be sufficient, it is estimated, to cover a period of seven weeks, and arrangements are being made to forward the goods as expeditiously as possible. In this work the Joint Councils-has had the full co-opera-tion of the National Patriotic Fund Board. Between May 1 and 15, 121,479 parcels were dispatched from International Red Cross. Geneva, which were approximately 30,000 parcels in excess of what was required to provide one parcel per man I during that period.