TOPICS OF THE DAY.

Evening Post, Volume LXXIX, Issue 69, 23 March 1910, Page 6

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

Two or three years ago the Premier announced that th? "Worthy of Government could the Dominion 1" not afford to develop Jsew Zealand's waterpower resources, and the geneial financial position of Xe\v Zealand was better at that time than it is at present. Just when New Zealand is nicely recovering from a set-hack, and it is esbencial for the State and individuals to continue for a teim on reasonably cautious lines, it is %ixen out by Sir Joseph Ward that the Government has decided to aek Parliament's authority to expend up to £5u0,000 a year on water-power schemes. Of cours.o such an utterance may mean much or nothing. The Government may get the financial power, and may not use it to any extent for a long time to come. Ihere are which call for very searching and extensive enquiry, here and abroad, and much careful study. "Water-power" has some of the blessedness of "electricity" to the popular ear. The other day a country paper very severely chided tho Government for allowing large volumes of water to run to sea without ever turning a wheel, and possibly that paper j may be claiming some credit for piecipi- j tating the present proposals. It is a \ common notion that water power ne*ce.- ' sarily means cheap power, but the fac- ] tor of prime cost and maintenance fan be very <ormidablo if the water steeds do not take kindly to the harness. Parliament should insist on tlie supply of much information before giving tlie Government a "franchise" up to £500,000 of public money per year.. Of course there may be much more in the Government's min<i than meets the eye in print. There has been much finessing for some j of the more valuable water zones. It was anticipated that the Act of two years ago, which gave the Government power to grant water rights in perpetuity, might lead to grave abuses, but »o far the Government has stood firm with regulations calculated to safeguard the public interest. Some private applicants Jor power hay« bitiurly lailt'ti at the regulations, and before the debate i is properly finished this present scheme ! of the annual half million i.s launched. Any proposals for the exploitation of water resources by the rtpiestnlatives of the public should not ig..oie tl.e desircb of municipalities. The relationship between the general public of Suw Zealand and particular group.-- of the public (a borougli. a toun, a cicy, a county) has puzzled muuy obser. eis at various times, and the Government could eahily intensify the complications by the pieheut project unless adequate precautions were taken to leave scope for local cnteprise by municipalities. The people of Christchurch and 2>orth Cautcrbuty, for instance, say that they desire to get power for themi<elves, and ihe Government's answer practically is : '"lhat is tho biwine.ss of the people of New Zealand." Clearly the Premier has put out a proposition that demands very keen and prolonged fccrutinj. ■ Comedy and tragedy, political geography, and other The Whole rather factors are pecuthan the Part. liarly mixed up in a subject which Mr. Massey quietly mentioned yesterday. He referred to the very controversial topic of the North of Auckland Railway. Thero have been several acts in the interesting drama, which has been on and off the public stage for about thirty years, and the final scenes are still far away. Opinion in the north has been sharply divided on the route, and after much wrangling the Government has agreed to appoint a commission to study the landscape, and Mr. Massey submits that practically all of the pioposed line, instead of a portion, should come within the scope of the enquiry. It is a striking battle of East against West. It has been a notable case of East is East and Went is West, for in this instance East is Opposition and West is Govern ment. Mr. Mander, champion of'Marsden (East) has been matched against Mr. Stallworthy, fighW foi Kaipara (West). Tho two warriors met in more or loss mortal combat on the floor of the House of Representatives eaily in last session, ond tho official annals of the encounter, the reports of Hansard, rather show that. Mr. .Mander (.cored olf his Minihtciial opponent. The Opposition member wanted to know how the Minister ot Public Works had suddenly developed i a fondnesi for tho western deviation

after the other route had been recognised as the better one, during a long period of years. "The route of the railway through the northern peninsula has been established for about twenty-seven years," said Mr. Wander, "having been laid off by Mr. Knorpp about that time, and all the engineers who have since surveyed that line have practically adopted the line laid down by Mr. Knorpp. Mr. Hales, Mr. Holmes, Mr. Vitkermaii, and Mr. Wilson have all exploied that line and laid it out in practically the same position as did Mr. Knorpp." The speaker claimed, too, for the eastern route that it could fairly be regarded as a central one. In reply, Mr. Stallworthy was more rhetorical tnan convincing, and mainly quoted generalities to answer Mr. Mander's specific, authoritative statements. "I was not expecting," he remarked, "that this agitation over the North Auckland Railway route would be brought up sp soon. However, the Lord lakes care of his own, and brought me here in the nick of time." Ihe speech was chiefly remarkable for an exposition of the gospel that it was the function of Ministers, who weie admittedly not engineers, to solve intricate engineering problems, and the duty of the experts to carry out the plans of non-experts. "The engineer does his work when the Minister has decided where the line is to go," said the Government member. The country is curious to know v;hy Mr. M'Kenzie was so eager to run counter to tho departmental experts. If expert engineering opinion does not weigh with a Minister in the selection of a railway route, what does '!

_ Regulations under tho Friendly Societies Act of last session are gazetted. Mr. J. T. Bird,, manager of the Cornstock Company, was a passenger by the Moana from Sydney to-day. At the lequest of the New Zealand Bowling Council, Mr. W. A. Scott has i (telegraphs our Dunedin correspondent) withdrawn his resignation as olikial bowl-tester. Two Germans were included in the Moana's passengers from Sydney this morning. They satisfied tne requirements imposed by the Immigration Restriction Act. By the Hospitals and Charitable Institutions Act of last session the trustees of the Society for the Relief of the Aged Needy go out of office on Tuesday, sth April, which day the Minister has fixed for the first meeting of contributors under the Act, to be held at the Town Hall at 3 p.m., for the purpose of electing nine trustees. Owing to Burns, the American heavyweight ex-champion boxer of the world, having upset his system by too fond an indulgence in cucumbers, and having thus interfered considerably with his training, his match against Lang, the Australian champion "heavy," which was fixed for Easter Monday in Sydney, has been put back to 2Cth April. The match is for the" heavy-weight championship of Australia. Rates amounting to £318 3s, deemed to be irrecoverable, were last evening written off by the City Council. The amount, said the Mayor in reply to Councillor Atkinson, was a little "larger than he would like, but this was due to several causes, two of which were untenanted houses, and also to property being taken over by the council upon which no rates were leviable. He had gone most carefully through the matter, and found that the amount could not be reduced. The Truant Inspector of the Wellington Education Boasd-yesterday reported that milking was responsible for the unsatisfactory attendance of the children of «x Wairarapa families who aro the owners of dairies. Another case of absence from school which was discussed by the board was that of a girl who bad a medical exemption from attendance on account of some defect in her eyes, but who worked the whole day in her mother's boardinghouse from 6.30 a.m. to late at night. It was resolved by the board to warn the parents, and, if necessary, take such >ther steps as the case requited. The truaut officer said he had discovered "some very bad truants at Masterton." The first appointments o# probationers under thb Act of 1908 were made this year. "It is too soon yet to express an oninion," state the- school inspectors, in their annual report to the Wellington Education Board, "on this method of recruiting the teaching profession, but it seems to us that if probationers are to be given the best opportunity, not only of learning their profession, but also of continuing their studies, they ought to be placed in the district high schools. As most of our pupil-teachers had passed either the Civil Service junior or matriculation examination, only a few were required to sit for the first examination, *nd of these one failed. During the year three probationers and one pupil teacher, whose reports were unsatisfactory, weiß given notice of the termination of their engagement." Mr. J. G. W. Aitken, at tho Education Board yesterday, said he had received numerous complaints from parents of cadets who had paraded in connection with Lord Kitchener's visit. There was tM> doubt that there was something very lax in connection with the Hutt display. Boys had left home early in the day, and returned late at night without having lasted food iv the interval. Some of them had fainted. The chairman (Mr. R. Lee) said on the whole the boys fared well, thanks to some people around them. They also conducted themselves well. Mr. Kebbell referred to what he considered were defects in the commissariat at the camp. ' Mr. W. Allan said it was all very well for the military officers to say : "We had a splendid camp," while they had had a good lunch, but the poor boys were neglected. Mr. Kebbell : "It's war, you know." The opening of the trans-Andine railway, which gives direct railway communication from Valparaiso to Buenos Aires, in South America, suggests tho prospect of a hew and shorter route for mails between Australia and the United Kingdom. In a despatch which the Federal Postmaster-General has received from the Colonial Office, and brief mention of which was made in a cable message published in the ±*ost,. Lord Crewe points out that the completion of the great tunnel through the Andes will make an all-train journey now possible from the west to the east of the South American Continent. With a rapid steamer service between England and the River Plate, and between Valparaiso and Sydney, the journey from Australia to England might bo substantially shortened. The despatch estimate's fifteen days from England to Buenos Aires, two days by rail from Buenos Aires to Valparaiso, and ten days from Valparaiso to Sydney, or a total of twenty-seven days. The contract time for the mails between Adelaide and London, via Naples, is twentynine days, or thirty days from Mel- * bourne, and thirty-one days from Sydney. The South American route, on Lord Crewe's calculation, would reduce the time from Sydney by four days, and fiom Melbourne by two, while the Adelaide time would remain as at present. The department admits (says a Melbourne paper) that a Valparaiso service would afford an even greater saving than the Vancouver route, as far as England is concerned, though the Vancouver line, of course, serves other inter-State interests, and affords diiect communication between Australia and the United States. Lord Crewe refers to the final meeting of the two tunnels, on 27th November, through the Andes, as an historic event. The woik, he says, has been carried on steadily, but quietly, by a syndicate chiefly English. The engineers were wholly English. At the point of piercing, a difference of only inches in horizontal and vertical directions was found.