OF N.Z. INTEREST

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 67, 19 March 1924, Page 9

OF N.Z. INTEREST

A DOMINION GOVERNOR'S

PRECEDENT

FRENCH RUGBY TEAM

CLOSE SEASON FOR HOT FOOD.

CFROM OUR OWS CORRESPONDENT.)

LONDON, sth February

Mr. R. Scotland Liddell, who is on a special Empire tour on behalf of " The Graphic," has sent to London some of tils impressions of Fiji and New Zealand. Arriving in Auckland after the regulation hour for dinner —but die hour was earlier than the traveller himself had been accustomed to dine —he found the solitary waitress at ths hotel busy laying tables for the next day's breakfast. " You' are too late for dinner," she said. " Later on in the evening you will find cold meats in another room, and you can help yourself."

"1 am a mild-tempered man (writes Mr. Liddell), therefore there was no reason for my friend's remarks, but let me give them as they were £«iid to me.

' Don't make a row,' he whispered. ' The hotel people here would sooner lose a guest than a servant." Servants have their stated hours for work. Outside of these is a close season for hot food. In New Zealand all public-houses close at, 6 p.m. Let me hasten to explain that this is not a laudable attempt to encourage temperance. It is merely a question of working hours. Tho inevitable result, I am sorry to say, is that men get drunk before dinner instead of at a more conventional hour."

Eliminating the volcanic regions where I only scrub redeems the barren land, Mr. Liddell mentions what remains. " Fine pasture land, green, grassy hills and plains, meadows of pleasing softness; another England, sunnier but very homelike to the eye; a land of sheep and dairy farms. Wool and meat, butter and cheese—these are the riches of the land. Alas, there is a •' but.' ' There always is! The price of land is very high. In some of the better farming districts it is as much as £100 an acre. The average price for good dairy land is well over £50. . . . The initial cost of even a small farm may be prohibitive to the average immigrant. The alternative, of course, is for a man to get a job—and work. And, as in Canada^ work really means work, and hard work r.t that. The pay is good—full board and lodging and one or two pounds each week. So if a man will only work and say learn—he can launch out for himself after a year or two. As I write, the wool sales are on throughout the Dominion. The prices, I believe, are almost record ones—something like 4d or |5d per pound more than usual. Farmers ! are delighted, but I wonder if our clothes ' will cost us more. " When I, left Napier at 8.45 one morning for \Vellington there were two drunken men in the first-class carriage in which I travelled. Very shocking, certainly, but ' one has to be drunk \. to travel on this line,' a philosophic voyager said to me. 'These men are the two .lucky ones.' " Well, anyhow, we stopped at almost every station on the way. As dining-cars' were non-existent, we had to gulp down a hurried lunch at a way-t-ide buffet, and we arrived in Wellington at 6 o'clock, very tired and very dusty, and not a little cross. Whereas the ' lucky ' pair had slept most of the way.!" WENSLEYDALE SHEEP.

At the annual meeting of the Wensleydale Longwool Sheepbreeders' Association at Leeds, reference was made to the fact that the Prime Minister of New Zealand, on his recent visit to England, showed great interest in the Wensleydale breed of sheep, and made a special visit to Birtswith Hall, where Mr. J. A. Aykroyd, a member of the association, exhibited his flock. Mr. Aykroyd has undertaken to send out one or two Wensleydalo rams to New Zealand for experimental breeding purposes, and members at the meeting hoped that the association might co-operate with Mr. Aykroyd in sending out a few more of the best specimens of Wensleydale sheep. The statement of accounts showed that the balance of £104 in hand at the beginning of the year had been reduced to £36, and the chairman said that the expenses would have to be drastically tut down. The loss on tho year' was accounted for by deficits on the shows and sales, mainly caused by the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease.

A POLITICAL PRECEDENT. Apropos of the subject of Royalty's relation to a dissolution of. Parliament, the Hon.'J. W. Fortescue, writing to the " Spectator," recalls an incident in New Zealand when he had lately arrived to act in the capacity of private secretary to the Governor, Sir William Jervois. " Early in 1887," he says, "the Prime Minister of New Zealand, Sir Robert Stout, asked the Governor for a dissolution. The request was made in au open telegram (Sir Robert being in Wellington, and Sir William in DunedJD), and was refused at once in an open telegram by Sir William, without a word to anyone but myself, to whom he gave his draft telegram for transcription. The Prime Minister accepted the Governor's decision without a word of protest or the slightest touch of ill-feeling, and, in fact, the whole proceeding might have been a private and social affair for all the importance attached to it by either party. Having myself arrived' in the colony only a few days before, as Sir William's private secretary, I remember that I was a little astonished, but I made a mental note of the fact that the right of granting or withholding a dissolution was evidently a matter that lay wholly in the power of the Governor." DOMINION PORT CHARGES. Something in the nature of a propaganda campaign is going on in tho '"Shipping World" regarding the high charges in the ports of Australia and New Zealand. There is hardly an issue of the journal that does not make reference to the subject. A pamphlet written by Mr. George Mitchell (chairman of the Wellington Harbour Board) is the text for an article in the current number. "In order to collect shipments of New Zealand produce," the writer reiterates, "it was, and is, customary for the samo vessel to go round the coast a.nd call at many different and widely-distant ports to pick up small parcels of cargo. This practice involves the shipping companies in considerable expense, and, of course, the charges have to be proportionately heavy. How great a. burden it is has been shown by Mr. George Mitchell in a pamphlet dealing with the subject." After quoting at length from Mr. Mitchell's pamphlet, the "Shipping World" remarks: "We cannot doubt that if the reforms suggested by Mr. Mitchell are carried out, every shipping company would be ready to dispense with calls a*t minor ports and even to reduce their rates. I3ut the initiative for the charge must come from New Zealand itself That the subject is attracting much attention in the Dominion is evident from the remarks contained in a recent repjjrt

by Mr. N. Emslie, tho British Trade Commissioner in New Zealand, just published by the Department o( 'Overseas Trade."

<- The journal goes on to quote Mr. Emshe very fully.

FRENCH RUGBY TEAM

In view of the matches to be played by tlia New Zealand ,team against the trench during tho coming tour, Dominion players will be interested to hear an opinion expressed by what the "Nottingham Guardian" describes as a very sound judge, who saw France beat Scotland at, Paris. England, he says, will have to take the game against the rrenchmen at Twickenham quite seriously According to this critic, the French fifteen this season is "very hot indeed " tremendously fast on the ball aud the man, and decidedly clever as well. la if act, he went so far as "to say he had not been more impressed by a "Rugger" side since tho all-conquering New°Zealanders woke up our conservative methods before the war.' More emphatically, the race is to the swift in the modern open "Rugger" game and France is this sesson firmly grasping at the international laurels. Sooner or later, with over a thousand "Rugger" clubs going and so many fast sprinters, they are goino- to succeed, only this year they will be up against an exceptionally brilliant English team on its native heath. BRASS MANUFACTURES. , '.' Au? tralia and New Zealand," says the ! Birmingham Post," "remains the most progressive .field for our brass manufactures. Both . countries are ordering building brass foundry fairly freely. An! other good wool season out there lias stimulated expansion, and a vigorous forward movement is in full swing. The effort to establish a big range of metalworkmg industries in Australia is being determinedly pursued. But production costs are high at the Antipodes, and, though industrialists there have declared their readiness to sell at losing prices rather than be beaten in their own market, there are limits to commercial patriotism. Advices from .Melbourne foreshadow a rise in prices. Tho point of prime importance, however, is that there 13 a substantial volume of trade in which quality, no cost, is the deciding factor. Any plumbing and engineering fittings are dear if they are not dependable he Old Country can still teach the new a thing or two in the matter of accuracy and finish when it comes to brass foundry. That is why our manufacturers are able to report an active export trade to Australia in spite of the fact that the protective duty oE the Commonwealth amount to 3S£ per cent., and freight, insurance, and handling charges brine the additions {o the cost up to nearly 60 per cent, by the time the buyer "has the goods in his store. In New Zealand where the duty is 20 per cent., the extra cost, inclusive of transport charges is about 25 per cent." NEW ZEALAND'S SOLUTION OF A PROBLEM. Tho International Woman Suffrage Alliance News Service says the generous amendment to the Advances to Settlers Act, passed last season in New Zealand has justified itself at once in a merry race for sections and home plans. Practically no New Zealander in steady employment need continue living in a rented house, when it is so easy to acquire a home; on long-time payment to the Government. Thus will the housing problem automatically disappear. A "ratifying aspect is the large and increasing number of young women earners making pretty suburban homes for themselves. ELECTORAL REFORM. In an article in "The Challenge," Mr Reginald Berkeley, M.P., w ho was returned again for one of the Nottingham Divisions, asserts that the bulk of the members of all parties are convinced that there is something seriously wrong with the present electoral system. It ou<*ht to be recognised, he says, that, faced as the country is with a three-party system a change m the electoral system is a necessity. He explains the second ballot system, but the most serious objection to this, he maintains, is the practical one that it was tried in New Zealand, and after one election was repealed with the consent of all parties. After dealing with the objections to proportional representation, he puts forth a third possible variation, what is called the alternative vote

_ 'It can be said in favour of this that it is simple, that it does not tend to increase the parties, and that it is at any rate fairer than the existing system. Ihere as no possibility of a candidate being returned in a three-cornered r>ht on a minority vote. It has been suggested in some quarters that proportional representation in city, and the alterna- i tive vote in county, constituencies would ! be a workable compromise. This is perhaps a httle too rough and ready. Probably the ideal solution would be to analyse the country, apply proportional representation in areas where there is a large population closely packed together irrespective of whether that shoufd con' sist of one large city or a number of good-sized towns in close proximity, and divide the rest of the country into onemember constituencies returned on the ' alternative vote." "VERY SWEET OF MR. MASSE Y." The "Birmingham Gazette and Express has the following paragraph in reference to a cablegram 1 from WeUir'- I ™; „, A* the recent, General Election"'■ sajs Mr. Massey, of New Zealand; 'the Bnt«v people got the incorrect impression that food is to be taxed." It is very sweet of Mr. Massey to tell the New Zealanders how simple and stupid we are but, at any rate, one positive result has been achieved-Mr. Baldwin has now got the correct impression that food isnot to be taxed.