NOTES OF THE DAY

Dominion, Volume 14, Issue 246, 12 July 1921, Page 4

NOTES OF THE DAY

Few users of tho Hutt Road from Wellington to Petone realise that it is costing about 41500 per mile per annum to keep it in its present condition. A. few months ago it was stated in an engineer’s report that Taranaki was paying the extravagant sum of £220 per mile per annum for the maintenance of its tarred roads, the beat in the North Island. For a vastly inferior article Wellington pays more than double the money. It is a bad bargain and a wasteful system. The Hutt Road is far too wide to begin with, and it is the wrong class of road to meet the traffic it has to bear. Mr. Morton, at yesterday’s meeting of the Road Board, stated that a 20-foot track in tar macadam would be better than the present wide stretch of mud nnd bumps. Last year the Wairarapa South County Council obtained an estimate from Mr. Laing Meason for the construction of six and three-quarter miles of main Toad, 20 feet wide, in macadam, bitumen bound and sealed. The cost worked out at £23,440. If a reconstruction of six miles of the Hutt Road could be made for anything like this sum it would, pay handsomely. For instance, if the bill came to 4:25,000 for a 20-foot tar macadam track, the in. terest at 61 per cent, would lx? 411625 per annum. Compared wijh the present maintenance estimate of 413500 a year, this would leave £1875 for sinking fund and maintenance. Mr. Laing Meason said such roads as he proposed had. borne heavy traffic for five years without any expenditure for maintenance and had proved then to be in perfect condition. Tf these figures are at all applicable to the Hutt Road they indicate that it is not more money that is required for its improvement, but only an intelligent expenditure of the board’s existing revenue.

France has withdrawn in disgust from the trials of the German war criminals by German Judges, but-ehe has not disclosed her next step. Under the Peace Treaty it was provided that the criminals were to be surrendered for trial by the military tribunals of the Powers accusing them. The German Government made representations to the effect that no Ministry which attempted to arrest and hand over the hundreds of accused persons could remain in office for a day. It undertook to conduct the trials itself and to mete out exemplary punishment to the guilty. In February of last year the Allies agreed to this course without prejudice to their treaty rights. They reserved the right to decide whether the proposed procedure did not in effect bring about the escape of the guilty from the just punishment of their crimes. "In this event,” stated the Supremo Council’s Note, "the Allies would exercise their rights to the full extent by submitting the cases to their own tribunals.” Seven cases havo been reported in the cable messages. Three of the accused parsons have been acquitted, two have been sentenced to six months’ imprisonment, ono to ten months’, aud one to 29 months’. The "London Times” declared one sentence a scandalous failure of justice, the Belgian Governme.nt protested emphatically against another, and the Freuch Government has definitely withdrawn in disgust from the proceedings. The Court hearing the charges is stated to be the German equivalent of the British Privy Council. But no German Judge is likely to deal out justice in such cases without the prod of an Allied bayonet in the small of his back. The French withdrawal is an intimation that something of the sort may now be expected.

Another rebuff has fallen to tho lot of Captain Amundsen in his polar exploration, and he is back in civilisation again to repair the damaged propeller of his ship. Captain Amundsen is one of the few polar explorers who havo never failed in what they have set out to accomplish. His present ambition is to drift right across the North Role, and to do it ho is prepared to spend five vears in tho ice. He first set out on this task in 1911, but suddenly turned the nose of his ship southward, and ran right down to the Antarctic, whero ho stole a march on Captain Scott by arriving at the South Pole before him. Besides this honour he has that of being the first man to accomplish the NorthWest Passage from Greenland to Behring Strait. This feat he performed in 1906 —in fact, since his first expedition in 1897 he has probably spent as much of his time in the Arctio and Antarctic Circles as out of them. In 1918 Captain Amundsen set out anew on his drift to the North Pole. Leaving Spitsbergen he proceeded across the Arctic Ocean to a. point well to the east of the Ntpv Siberia Island, where he attempted to force his ship into the pack ice. Contrary to his expectation, after five months in the ice tho drift was found to be to 'the southward. This mischance caused him to abandon his project for the time being, and to come down through Behring Strait to Nome, in Alaska, where he arrived about a year ago. His voyage was a feat in itself, for only one other explorer—Baron Nordenskiold, in the Vega, in 1878-80—has traversed the North-East Passage from Spitsbergen to Behring Strait. In July, Amundsen steered north once more, only apparently to ba baffled again. Now he talks of taking a year’s rest before departing on his five years’ drift in the ice. Beside this polar explorer the others in the field are the greenest of amateurs.