STATE AS SHIPOWNER

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 61, 15 March 1929, Page 8

STATE AS SHIPOWNER

THE MAUI POM ARE

(To the Editor.)

Sir,; —Mr. J. D. 'Gray, in your issue of yesterday, prefaces his very interesting review of the attempts made to establish shipping facilities between New Zealand and Samoa with a somewhat obscure indictment against the Nineteen Twenty-eight Committee. "The committee," ho says, "have ventured to discuss a subject on which. 1 am fully informed, and, as a consequence, my 'faith ■in them as impartial seekers after the truth has received a'rather severe jolt."

Mr. Gray then referß to a few paragraphs you were good enough to publish for the committee on Wednesday, in which statements made by Mr. E. J. Howard, M.P. and the "New Zealand Herald" concerning the Maui Poniare were quoted. ' The two comments of its own offered by the committee surely should not have estranged the goodwill of your correspondent. "The experiment," one ran, "now has had a fair trial, at the expense of the taxpayers, the producers, and the consumers, and two high authorities have borne witness to the result." "Here," said the other, "is another example of misdirected State enterprise which already has cost tlie country thousands of pounds,,and is threatening to cost it thousands more." .:

It is all very well for Mr. Gray,,as a friend of the present schemej to suggest that the experiment should be allowed to run on for another twelve or eighteen months before any criticism of its kndwn results should be offered. But tho committee, like Mr. Gray, himself, no doubt, is anxious in the interests of tho public to assist in obtaining the best possible results at' the earliest possible moment. —I am, etc., SECRETARY, "Ninetgea Twentjr-eigh* Committee,'*