NOTES OF THE DAY

Dominion, Volume 27, Issue 187, 7 May 1934, Page 8

NOTES OF THE DAY

By the death of. Sir Henry Wigram New Zealand loses her Grand Old Man of aviation. Sir Henry was the founder of organised flying in Canterbury, first by the establishment of the Canterbury Aviation Company, and later by generous gifts to the Government aerodrome at Sockburn (now named after him) and warm support of the light aeroplane club movement. The company, as is the way with piqneer enterprises, was not a great success financially, but to Sir Henry Wigram’there was dividend enough in the knowledge that its flying school trained 180 pilots for service in the War. He was a staunch patriot, in peace no less than in war, and his passion for aviation was due as much to his estimate of its importance in commerce as to its known importance in defence. Not many old men —he was 77—have the capacity and the enthusiasm to see the visions of youth and follow them. Sir Henry Wigram did: not content with keeping abreast of the times, he went with the vanguard. And so long as men fly over the City of. Christchurch he will be remembered as one who saw them coining. *** ♦ '

Although Victoria College is only a baby as university institutions go, yet in its 35 years of existence hundreds of students have passed through its halls and class-rooms, and reached maturity, and many have joined the ranks of the -elder generation. Some of those who attended the reunion on Saturday met again pld fellow-students whom they had not seen since, as members of the foundation roll, they went their various ways, after completing their courses. Wellington people in the beginning had to fight very hard for their university college, and it was established in precarious circumstances. For a site, ’it had a limited space on the side of a hill, which became known as the “Clay Patch.” It' has always had to fight for a living. In such a straitened situation the learned gentlemen of the foundation professoriate would have been no more than human had they felt dissatisfied. But they cheerfully accepted the position, and in various ways identified themselves with the life and interests of their community, and it is pleasant to reflect that all but one have livec to see their infant charge survive its early vicissitudes, and become the “bounteous mother” of many distinguished, graduates.

Significant of the economic revolution now in progress throughout the Western world arc some of the phrases being used by responsible spokesmen to describe what formerly was accepted as regular and fixed. “The good old piracy that brought the crash ?n 1929 and Sil that has happened since,” is General Hugh Johnsons choice. The general has a gift for invective: he ought to have been a sergeant-major. • Let us therefore try a more restrained source, the Morning Post, official organ of English last-ditch Conservatism. “While it existed, a ‘smash and grab’ capitalism may well have been the appropriate form of economic organisation. But a new form of capitalism must be evolved to meet the n6w conditions of to-day, And now Mr. Bruce; “Free trade was an excellent thing for Britain when she was the workshop of the world; but those days are finished. Change, change, all change! In most of the Continental countries change implies violent disturbance. Tn British countries we somehow manage to effect changes that are often more striking than any abroad, and yet to do so peaceably.

To enable representatives of two British Dominions to discuss questions affecting their trade with the British Mother Countries, an American steamer delayed its departure from Auckland on Saturday afternoon. Which was a happy instance of the English-speaking fellowship that reaches beyond' the bounds of the present. British Empire. The British loyalty of which we are so proud in New Zealand has not prevented our being good friends, both socially and commercially, with the United States. Naturally we put the Empire first; but if, as seems likely in the near future, we have to seek new markets for, maybe, new products, our commercial relationship with the American Pacific Coast may be closer. In any event we have political interests in common with a people of our own tongue and partly of our own blood who front the same ocean. The better the understanding among the white peoples whose shores the Pacific washes, the longer will it be likely to remain pacific.