Lewis Pass.

Press, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20469, 12 February 1932, Page 8

Lewis Pass.

We print a letter to-day by Mr E. P. H. Burburv in which he says that he thinks he has convinced the Minister for Public Works " that the Lewis " Pass is deserving of his consideration." Mr Burbury went to Wellington with the odds in his favour, siuee any work likely to be permanently useful must interest Mr Coates at the jjresent stage. But his real difficulties lie nearer home. Although the Lewis Pass road is no more a rival to the road over Arthur's Pass than Bealcy Avenue is to Moorhousc Avenue, it ift sufficient that it has been so described. It would also be sufficient for Mr Coates if he were the kind of Minister who would sooner find an excuse for doing nothing than be Bpendiag money. As it happens, Mr Coates is Minister in charge of Unemployment as well as Minister in charge of Public Works, and he must be at his wits' end just now to find works of national importance capable of absorbing a substantial body of unemployed. We of course do not knowhow far the Bill goes that he has just had drafted, but if it is based on his Statement to the House before the ■General Election, it will not rule out the construction of useful roads. It can hardly rule out any road likely to be brought into immediate use and to serve a considerable section of! the community. Mr Br.rbury's problem is to convince Mr Coates not only that the road would be useful and relatively cheap, but that the money it would! cost could not be moro profitably spent in Canterbury or Westland. That will not be easy to prove, but it is a pity that in attempting to prove it the advocates of the Lewis Pass route have to fight on two fronts at once. It would be far better to call a conference to consider how far the two projects can be supported simultaneously—if support is available for either—and set limits to the demands that will be made beyond that point. And this at least can be said in the meantime: that it would be better io place a thousand men at once on both projects, or as soon as harvest is over, than to employ a hundred a day longer frittering away their time in the parks and streets.