NOTES AND COMMENTS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXV, Issue 16491, 5 March 1914, Page 6

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

Christchurch may get its first glimpse of mn aeroplano in flight today, if favourable weather tempts Mr Scotland to como north from Timnru by way of the air. Tho city has been unfortunate in having to wait so long for a sight that has been familiar to tho people of most civilised lands for several years past. The kinematograpli has kept New Zealanders informed of the work of the flying men during the time that has elapsed since if. Bleriot flew across the English Channel, but the pictures are not the real thing and the people of the dominion want to see the vehicle of the twentieth century in actual use. Within the next day or two Christchurch citizens ought to be able to talk aeroplanes with the easy assurance of the blase Londoner.

At last the Government has inclined a worried ear to the people who are urging that the Tongariro reserve requires some Native forest to make’ it n. really national park. It is going

to acquire several hundred acres in. the vicinity of the reservo for the purpose of establishing a prison camp, and carrying cut afforestation with prison labour. Apparently this is expected to satisfy the nature-lovers and tree-worshippers who have been clamouring for the inclusion of woodland tracts in the park, and presently no doubt wo shall see tho Government’s sturdy toilers at work planting pinus insignis and bluegums on the galeswept scoria-strewn slopes of Ruapehu and Tongariro. As for the beautiful forest at Rangataua and elsewhere around Ruapehu’s base its conservation is out of the question. It is required for tho sawmiller who wants his timber cheap! The old Scotch injunction to “ aye bo stickin’ in a tree” is excellent advice, but there is a mixture of comedy and tragedy in the curious policy which sticks in a few bluegums and pines by way of afforestation while, handing over to commercial exploiters magnificent tracts of hush which once gone can never be replaced.

One or two of the speakers at the Medical Congress in Auckland said some hard things about tho “ commercial flapper,” as she was called, the young girl who takes to typing an:d book-keeping as a means of earning her living. They seemed to think that a "young person” had no right to intrude upon the sacrosanct domain of the male clerk. ■ However, the maligned one has found a chivalrous champion in an Australian politician, Sir Alexander Peacock, Minister for Education in Victoria. The Minister was asked for his opinion of the views expressed at the Congress, and he gave them very frankly. "We are doing a good deal to induce the girls to take an interest in domestic economy and in the affairs of the home,” ho said, " but the business girl, it would seem, has come to stay. She has drifted into commercial pursuits, and she has proved herself smart, bright, and nimble,, and while the competition she and her sisters have set up causes some concern to the male sex, I cannot see that much is to be gained by finding fault with her. On consideration I don’t think that she, as a rule, bothers about the criticism that is going on respecting her. The average flapper has a fair amount of common sense, and I do not believe that there is any justification for being doleful about the womanhood of these girls.” The office girl will find many such champions in New Zealand. She is a bright 6pot in the drab world of commercialism and with ordinary care she can avoid all the ills that are predicted for her by the medical men. If she did no more than make the office " boy ” look to his laurels she would be rendering a very useful service to the community.

When the War Office announced its intention of dispensing with the services of private bakers and producing its own bread at Aldershot, objection was made in many quarters on the score of economy. A military bakery, it was claimed, could not possibly be as efficient as a concern controlled by private enterprise. But the War Office insisted and its experience ought to bo encouraging to the New South Wales Government, which proposes to establish State bakeries in Sydney. During December last, according to Board of Trade returns, the price of bread throughout England, Wales and Scotland averaged between 5.39 pence and 6.36 pence for four lbs, the average for the whole of Great Britain being 5.92 pence, or as nearly as possible sixpence per four-lb loaf. The cost price of the Aldershot bread during the first half of 1912 came out at 8s 6d for 1001 b, or as nearly as possible fourpence for the four-lb loaf. “We see great, wise and eminent men straining at tho gnat of a corn duty,” says the “Statesman,” "and swallowing the camel of uneconomic manufacture, and the public at large content to go on with the inefficient and wasteful commercialism which stands between producer and Consumer, stultifying industry and depressing the real remuneration of labour. .We hope that this note will lead a good many eaters of bread to ask themselves why they cannot obtain a loaf at something like the same price as that stupid War Office.” The War Office bought its plant in the open market, gets its flour through ordinary trade channels, and pays wages on a union scale, so that it is taking no unfair advantage of the private bakers.

“It would seem that we poured out our blood and treasure with the ultimate object of incorporating in the Empire the most drastic and successful strike-breakers of the modern world,” says the “Manchester Guardian ” in surveying the South African industrial trouble. “ South Africa has set an example which the extreme partisans of capital everywhere will copy where they can and envy where they cannot imitate. . . . The

logical result is at once to drive trade unionism underground and to make every labour movement a conspiracy against the Government. There must also be a complete alienation between the Labour Party and tho South African Party, with the result, one would expect, of bringing 'the mineowners into power. How General Botha’s supporters will like this effect of liis policy may he easily imagined.” Even the Loudon “Times” appears to have doubted tho wisdom of the methods employed by tho South African Government in breaking the strike.