25 YEARS AGO

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 244, 13 July 1939, Page 8

25 YEARS AGO

Wellington’s Town Belt

(From "The Dominion,” July 16, 1014.)

Wellington is beginning to realize how the city might be transformed _by the planting and adornment of its big Town Belt. It is Utting that the celebration of Arbor Dav (Should coincide with the visit of the British town-planning experts, Messrs. Davidge and Reade, for it is to the town-planning movement that the marked revival of public interest in city improvement work is due. Witji such a spirit as was manifest yesterday it will not be many years before ’Wellington presents a very different, aspect, ami stands embowered in trees. The hills surrounding the city are not without a rugged beauty even in their bare state, but when the trees now being planted over them, and yet to be planted, have reached maturity, few cities in the Dominion should make a better first impression on the traveller from overseas. As Councillor Frost points out, a little of such interest in tree-planting among the citizens as Mr. Crewes has taken m the Zoological Garden would soon beautify the whole of the municipal reserves. There is ample room for such work by individual citizens as Mr. Henry Wright has done in planting a portion of the Town Belt.

The question of whether union funds should be used, if the majority of the union should so decide, for political purposes, was discussed in the New Zealand House of Representatives last night. The subject was raised by Sir Joseph Ward, who urged that the decision of the Supreme Court, forbidding the diversion of union funds from other than industrial union purposes, ought not to be allowed to stand. Against this argument it was urged that under preference. clauses in awards unionism was practically compulsory, and that compulsory unionism ought not to entail compulsory politics.