TOPICS OF THE DAY

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 122, 28 May 1929, Page 8

TOPICS OF THE DAY

"In the past six weeks eight hundred workers had received money for the building of homes." In making this statement at Nelson last Friday the Prime Minister provided the most striking glimpse yet offered to the public of a re-invigorated State Advances Office, from whose flowing coffers will come the credit that will re-vitalise house-building and associated industries. An article published elsewhere in this issue shows that the pace of home-building in the Hutt Governmental subdivision—in which over 1000 sections have now been sold—is well maintained and will probably quicken, partly as a result of the increase in State Advances loans, but mainly because there is a genuine demand for sections and homes laid out on one great harmonious plan, and so conveniently placed in relation to the city. The success of the big subdivisional scheme—which in comprehensiveness is unique in New Zealand, and which has been handled by the Lands Department without numerical increase in staff has all along been assured, but sec-tion-buyers can now capitalise their opportunity more quickly through the State Advances Office credits. Eight hundred workers' loans in six weeks will set money flowing throughout the arteries and veins of commerce to a far greater extent than is visible at first sight. Lloyd Georgian circles in Britain talk of a big loan lo thaw the frozen credit of the banks. Without defining the position, the- New Zealand Government seems to be using the State Advances Office to do something similar.

_ Human wreckage of the war continues to engage the attention of thu Dominion Patriotic Associations, and the regrettable fact is that the end of their activities is not in sight. Nearly eleven years have passed since peace was declared, and from remarks made at the Otago Association's meeting yesterday it is only too true that the bitter aftermath of war service remains to be dealt with. Mr. J. J. Clark, addressing the association, described as tragic to find that after a long lapse of years men who rendered valiant service to the Empire were suffering more to-day than perhaps they ever did. This is no exaggeration, as associations similar to that in Otago well know; and the Pensions Board and the Returned Soldiers' Associations know that Mr. Clark was stating the bald unpainted fact when he said that "men who left the army apparently quite fit are breaking down and proving unfit for their ordinary occupations." But do the general public know the truth, as Mr. Clark presented it? Do they realise that so many of these men, who went to the war as much in defence of New Zealand as of the Empire as a whole, will never be the men they were before they volunteered for active service? It was the late Sir Charles Skerrett, addressing assembled representative patriotic societies in Wellington shortly after the war began, who, with a prescience of which he himself may not have been aware, warned the societies that they must expect a long continuance of the work they were just beginning. Time proved him to have been right. The general public, for all their experience of undeserving cases, should not forget that the returned soldier problem is with us yet, calling for the utmost patience and sympathy in every practical attempt made to solve it.

If anyone had taken up the map of Wellington's west coast fifty or seventy years ago, with a desire to deduce economic history from geography, lie would probably have made a mistake concerning the bridging of the Porirua harbour north of Paremata. He might not have been willing to believe that

the year of grace 1929 would find this narrow neck of water still unbridged so far as road traffic is concerned, and still monopolised by the railway, from which the parallel main road diverges at the water's edge, and the twain meet not again until near the sacred precincts of the Paekakariki hotel. Meanwhile the road has described a long halfcircle round the Pahautanui arm of Porirua harbour—where it threw off a spur road, badly graded and blind, to Plimmerton—and has climbed 900 feet to enjoy the magnificent seascape that opens up from the crest of Paekakariki hill. It would be interesting to know how far the money spent on ihe Pahautanui-Horokiwi-hill route would have gone towards providing not only a road-bridge but a low level road right through to Plimmerton, and ultimately via Pukerua to Paekakariki and the Manawatu plains. Last Saturday's deputation found the Minister of Public Works non-committal. No question of railway opposition was raised, but there is a local betterment issue. From the national point of view the bridge appeals as one step towards a simplified and improved highway for the west coast. * « *

We talk of booms and depression, but all the time there is evidence of solid progress. The slump years have been the years of greatest building progress in Wellington, and they have not prevented Palmerston North from more than doubling, in eight years, the figure of its capital value. By increasing that figure from £3,305,490 to £7,234,195—that is, by adding nearly four millions to its capital value as compared with the top year of post-war boom—Palmerston North has put up a performance that cannot be explained away by the change in the purchasing power of money. It is true that the progress of cities and centrally-situated towns has been to some extent at the cost of farms and small towns, because motor vehicles have taken trade past the small towns, and because farmers' credit—again partly owing to motor vehicles—has been impaired. But two good seasons in rural production, plus better farming . and restoration of confidence in rural values, promise to re-establish relations between the farm and the money market—provided, of course, that State advances do not tend to monopolise the field, instead of merely breaking the ice.