NEWS OF THE DAY

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 21, 25 July 1933, Page 8

NEWS OF THE DAY

Support British Shipping.

Speaking of loyalty and patriotism at the annual meeting of the Wellington branch of the Navy- League last night, the-'secretary, Mr. R. Darroch, made a plea for the support'of Empire trade and. of British shipping, -if the Empire were to survive. When one found representative men and women travelling on non-British ships, he remarked, one could only say that they were helping to --scuttle the British merchant service. The.Navy League felt,very;strongly on'.j that.,,". (Applause.),: . v : . , _■■'■.-.. Wertport Borough Jubilee^ ■ "Oh August 20 of this, year will be the sixtieth anniversary or diamond, jubileo of; the borough of Westport,"1 stated a letter read at. a recent meet r ' ing. of the Borough Council. "It was on; that; date, in .1873, that,: the first' meeting of'the\borough was held, at 10 a.m. in the courthouse, when the following councillors attended:—A. Stitt, Humphries, Dr. Thorpe, B. White. J. Blacklock, J. Suisted, M. Organ, J. Corr, and J., Powell. Mr. Dempsey was the first Town Clerk, and at the meeting Mr. Humphries was elected the first Mayor of AVestport. It was through a requisition signed by. 170 ratepayers that a Municipal Council started in the town of AVestport. In April, Westport was gazetted a municipal town, and' that-clay,-in 1873, was a red-letter day for Westport, because in that month the first shipment of coal left the port.''. It was suggested , that ■ the council should celebrate the occasion, but the council decided to take no action regarding celebrations in tho meantime. Education a Handicap? The difficulty of finding work for matriculated lads was emphasised at yesterday's meeting of the Wellington.Boy Employment Committee. Mr. L. 'j. Groenberg reported that the officer of tho yncnvployment Board who had been loaned to tho committee to endeavour to find employment for the large number of matriculated lads who were out of work had explained that, he had visited fifty of the leading firms in .Wellington without result. The chairman, Mr. R. H. NimmOj'said it would appear that high educational attainnients were not looked-, upon "with favour by employers. Ho knew .that, the position was very .difficult! as many, of these boys who had matriculated were from 17 to 18 years of age, and foremen did not like putting them to do boys' work. The youths, however, were only too willing to do anything, and soon" f omul favour if only given a chance. It was explained that, circulars had beep _pent out to Wellington firms on• tfio"subject, and it was decided that the officer of the Unemployment Board should continue his follow-ujj work.

Work Found Por Boys. To date this year no fewer than G66 boys have been fount! positions by the Wellington Boy Employment Committee. The half-yearly figures, presented by the secretary, Mr. L. J. Greenb/.-g, at a meeting of the committee yesterday, showed that for the six months ended June 30, 335 boys had been found permanent jobs and 14S temporary positions in the city, while 97 had been placed on farms, making a total of 580 placements. The total net registrations during the period was 602. To July 22, 52 permanent and 18 temporary jobs had been found for boys in the city, and 16 had been placed on farms, making the total placements for the present year 666. The net total registrations at July 22 stood at 569. A Mistaken Belief. During the time an auctioneer was in the witness-box in the Supremo Court today, the Crown Prosecutor (Mr. P. S. K. Maeasscy) and Mr. J. Meltzer, counsel for the accused, raised their voices somewhat in asking their questions, believing the witness to be a. little hard of hearing. Towards the end of a long cross-examination Mr. Meltzer suggested to fhe witness that he might not hear everything that was said in. the case of a long-distance telephone call. "You're hard of hearing, are you not?" asked counsel. Witness replied that he did not think so: Counsel: 'Well Mr. Maeasscy told me ,you were," (Laughter). " Those ■ were my instructions said Mr". Macassey; "not every man perhaps likes.to admit he is hard at hearing." Deep-Sea Fishing. ' • The announcement that quite a number'of Americans intend to visit NewZealand again for the coming deep-sea fishing season, was rnado by Mr. Peter Williams, of Russell, who returned from Tahiti by the Makura yesterday. Mr. Williams' has been /associated with Mr. Zane Grey since the latter's first fishing visit to New Zealand in 1926, and he has taken charge of Mr. Grey's launch on all subsequent trips: ' He was in command of the famous fisherman's launch Frangipani . during.the voyage from Auckland to Papeete last March, and stayed to accompany Mr. Grey, on a sword-fishing expedition at Tahiti. Mr. Williams, said that he-expected to be, called away again.in November to go with Mr. Grey on a fishing.trip off the coast of Chile, South America, where it was reported that large fish, includ; ing a 2000-poitnder, had been caught recently. : Island Missions. • ■....' Returning from his annual official visit to the Cook and Society Islands, Pastor A. G. Stewart, vice-president of the Australian Union Congregation of Seventh Day Adventists, arrived yesterday by the Makura. Mr. Stewart had many yearsof mission work in Fiji, the New Hebrides,' the Solomons, and New Guinea before being transferred to the head office of tho movement in Sydney. He said that their greatest achievement in recent years was the establishing of missions in the St: Matthias G^roup, •seventy miles from the Equator. Two. years ago the native population of. about 2000 practised bigamyand polygamy, but the missions quickly established themselves and. all the inhabitants adopted religion, thesurplus wives returning to their homes. Mr. Stewart paid a tribute to General Griffiths, Administrator of New.Guinea, whose work was appreciated by all sections of the community. 'White Heron Shot. An unfortunate act which may have been due to carelessness, or, and this is more likely, to wanton destructiveness, has robbed the Taieri of an interesting visitor and a very rare bird— a white egret, which is more commonly known as the white heron, of, to the Maoris, kotuku, says the "Otago Daily Times." The white heron was first observed in New Zealand by Captain Cook during his second voyage, and subsequently it was noted in various parts, but it was always a rare bird. About 1870 a surveyor named Moellor discovered its, only known breeding-place in New Zealand, on the banks of the Waitangituna stream, near Okarito. The New Zealand sub-species differs from the Australian form in being considerably larger, the wing measurements being about 43 centimetres in the New Zealand form against 38.5 in the Australian. Stray pairs of individual birds havo been- seen in all parts of the North and South, the Chatham, and Stewart Islands, but seldom does the white heron appear in any locality that "rare as the kotuku" has passed into a proverb among the Maoris, and, in the North Island, it is said to occur only once in a lifetime. In this case the bird was found headless on a fence line by Ranger David, of the Otago Acclimatisation Society. It had been seen about AVaihola. for a year, and, as' the head was missing, it had probably been shot. , ', ' •- ■-." Needs in Leadership. "In these days it is not easy, to re-, member that; Vat. the back'of all oursocial, and economic and political schemes, the greatest asset of• a nation is the personality of its citizens,", said the Rev. 11. X.' Arehdall, headmaster of King's College, Auckland, in a sermon at the annual service of the King's College Old Boys' Association, states the "New Zealand Herald." Tho world needed leaders who would match their manhood with the magnitude of man's need, said Mr. Arehdall. ' But people tended to think that any one man was as good as airy pther and democracies were, in danger of degenerating in a sea of sentiment, because people forget the:complementary truth that, although any man was as good as any other in his ultimate worth in God's sight, only the wisest and the best could really load. "Here wo learii what it means to belong somewhere, to be part of a social tradition bigger than ourselves, in tho service of which, we can fincl real freedom," Mr. Arehdall added. "The youngest boy can; learn what loyalty to house and school means in terms of honest endeavour, and each boy as as he, goes out into the world can feel all the time that he is a living part of a," society with great traditions and great responsibilities and he has to, translate that loyalty into-loyalty for Church, for family, for King." Britain's Disarmament. Britain's comparatively excessive disarmament was the subject, of comment by. the Mayor (Mr. T. C. A. Hislop) at the annual meeting of the Wellington branch of the; Navy. League last night. We have realised, he said, that we havo gone as far in gesturo as possiblo in tho interests' .of national safety. Today one .was glad to think that there was a trend in Britain to arrest the drop in armament. He hoped that in the fuTure Britain's greatness, built on security at sea, would again have the same foundation.; The move to continuo reducing the Navy from year to year had been arrested and now, having tested all other nations by a gesture of goodwill, Britain was prepared to stand again on a' basis of national solidarity and reliance on the British people themselves. Air. R. Darroch, secretary of tho league, said that since the Armistice the Navy League had marked time to 'give every chance to the' League of Nations. The Navy League had no quarrel whatever with" the League of Nations, but was in entire sympathy with its ideals. ' The League of Nations had a policy of curtailing armaments, but since the Armistice the great nations of the world, except England, had built up their armies, navies, and air forces. England was the, only great nation to reduce its armaments, but now all political parties had called a halt,' not wishing to disarm a W further until other nations set an example. That was a policy, which the Navjj League supported. _