Notes and Comments.

Feilding Star, Volume IV, Issue 1127, 7 March 1910, Page 2

Notes and Comments.

Those who suffer from land hunger, which is said to be still, unsatisfied m this district, have excellent chance.-* of being satisfied in the immediate- future. The Commissioner of Crown Lands states that 60,906 acres are to be opened for selection in Wellington province during this month. Details of those lands are given on page 4 of to-day's Stak. Intending settlers should peruse the list, and then ask the Department to send particulars..

iouTH is a now argument to use against New Zealand, yet that appears to be the objection raised by two much-travelled Germans who are in Wellington just now. "How do vo-u like New Zealand?"- A Dominion interviewer put the familiar question to Mr C. A. Weber, the travelling companion of Count Bismarck, a nephew of the famous maker of Prussia. "The traveller's did not flash with a new brightness, Jit> (gavo no sign that ho intended to break forth in the accustomed rhapsody of praise. The Germans are a phclgmatic people, but this Gorman wax not phlegmatic." Ho was amused. He shrugged, and smiled—a smile that" was only eloquent of restraint. And then he made this curious reply: "We think we have come too early— about five hundred years too early." Of course, as they are workinig, up from the south, these tourists have not yet seen Rotorua. When they get there and put their heavy feet upon its crust, and the earth trembles, perhaps they will still think they have arrived too soon—that Nature has not yet finished making- New Zealand. Too early!

Whole Facts : of the Knyvett Case" is the title of : a 5-i-page pamwhich has come to us from the 'Knyvett Defence Committee, Auckland. This pink-covered publication gives further evidence of the serious manner in which the Queen City has taken the punishment of a too-smart officer. What good the Committee can do now we fail to see. It and the ex-Captain are shrieking for something more than Justice. They want somebody's blood—Colonel Robin's and Captain Seddon's for preference. Mr Knyvett, who provides a lengthy preface to his pamphlet, puts himself quite out of court in the following opening statement: "I have no doubt that any officer in New Zealand having a knowledge of military law knows quite Avell that 1 have not committed aiiv breach of military discipline in making the charges contained in my .letter against a superior officer." We venture to reply to this that no one doubts that Captain Knyvett wrote- a very indiscreet letter, to put it mildly. That he had some justification for so writing may be admitted also. But the point we have maintained all along is that the punishment was too heaw for the offence*. A good officer should not have been dismissed the service- for writing an angry letter. But you cannot undo an act of tactlessness.