NOTES AND COMMENTS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXV, Issue 16493, 7 March 1914, Page 10

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

Tho patient few who waited to seo Mr Scotland alight on the Addington Show Grounds late yesterday afternoon after his flight from Timaru had their reward in being able to welcome the first person to arrive in Christchurch by aeroplane. But they found, as laymen in other parts of the world have .found under similar circumstances, that they were hampered in discussing the event of tha day by their ignorance of the

language of tho air. The science of flight, developed with extraordinary rapidity, during the last few years, has its own technical terms and methods of expression. Tire London schoolboy of to-day, accustomed to wander out Hendon way on his holidays, knows them all by this time, and can talk learnedly of aerodromes, vortices, lateral poise, side slips, volplanes, ailerons and the rest. New Zealanders have still to become acquainted with the terms of the aeroplane.

• “Flying is not difficult,” writes Mr Grahams White, the most successful of British airmen. “If a pupil is carefully taught and ascends at first only in calm weather, he finds the piloting of an aeroplane a matter of surprising ease. All a man needs, should lie wish to fly, are ordinary activity and generally sound nerves; but it will facilitate his progress if, in addition, he has sound judgment, a certain amount of patience, and an eye foj distance and speed. That glamour and mystery which, in the early days, clung to the piloting of an aeroplane, have now been completely dispelled, and it is recognised that, under fair weather conditions, a well-built machine requires little control.” ■ Tho men who turn somersaults in tho air and ascend to enormous altitudes have special qualities, such as an abnormal delicacy of movement and touch, but ordinary flying is within the reach of ordinary people to-day. Yet New Zealand’s aeroplane intended by its donors to encourage the young men to fly, is still lying in store under the jealous eye of the Minister of Defence. Happily there are New Zealanders willing and able to find their own machines and fly without State assistance. ■

A veteran gold-seeker and settler, Mr J. E. Skilton, of Rockville, Collingwood, sends an interesting little letter by way of explaining the origin of a picturesque Westlaud place-name to which reference was made in these columns recently. "In your remarks on the West Coast celebrations,” he writes, “you mention Pretty Woman’s Creek, and ask who was the ‘ Pretty Woman.’ She was Mrs Bulstrode. When I first knew her she and her husband kept a shanty at Mahakipawa, near Brownlee’s Mill, soon after the Wakamarina rush, and I believe the bullock-puncher at The Grove gave her the name. She was a nice-looking woman. Soon after the Hokitika rush they went to the Waimea Creek and kept a shanty at the junction of the two creeks, about half-way to the SixMile township. That is all I know about her.” Mr Skilton’s foot-note to pioneering history is worthy of record in remembrance of the adventurous women whose presence brightened the rough diggings in the old bush days, and also as an example of the curious and sometimes , romantic fashion in which newly-broken places were christened.

- A member of the Wanganui Museum Board of Trustees, discussing. the reported appearance of a pair of huias in the up-river district, remarked that the Maoris ruthlessly destroyed the huia. Another member declared that “ if tho Maoris became extinct the rare birds would survive.*” Fortunately the Maori is not in immediate danger ,of extinction, but the huia has practically gone.. It. is,- however, hardly just to blame the Maori alone for the destruction of this beautiful bird. The white man has been an even greater enemy of these and other vanishing forms of native bird life- It would be difficult to estimate tlie number of huias and kiwis and saddle-backs and native crows and other birds which have been slaughtered and sold to European museums and private collections by white men. Two men in particular, both famous naturalists, one a New Zealander and the other an Austrian, probably were the greatest offenders in this way that the country has known. And it was all done in the sacred name of science.

The reading of the funeral service over the sunken submarine A 7, off Plymouth, was an incident which must touch the heart of the nation deeply. The time seems to have arrived when the submarines of the A class should be “scrapped” in the interests of tho brave men who daily risk their lives in the under-water service. These boats, originally thirteen in number, were the first submarines built by the Admiralty and they are now obsolete in typo. Four have suffered disaster, taking their crews to the bottom with them, and there is a general instruction that they shall not venture into deep water or move far from their bases. . After the loss of A 7 a pathetic letter appeared in the London “ Times ” from Lieutenant-Colonel R. H. Morrison, the father of a young officer who had gone down, with her. His son had told him, he said, that the old boats were hard to manage and capricious in their ways. “It is almost beyond my comprehension,” wrote Colonel Morrison, “ that a great nation like ours should permit some of her pluckiest and best men in all ranks to be sacrificed for the sake of" retaining for a while longer a collection of unserviceable and worn-out boats, merely to satisfy Parliament with a paper strength.” A protest like that should have the nation’s attention.

Tlie disinterested people who offer friendly advice to tho workers through the columns of the Reform newspapers manage to talk a great deal of nonsense about “tho laws of economics” and “the fundamental principles of industry.” Tho so-called laws of economics arc not elemental, unalterable forces. They can-be .guided and directed by man, just as water can be induced to run uphill by means of a pipo and a forco pump. A pound cannot be made to yield more than twenty shillings by anything the State can do, but its buying capacity reckoned in loaves or groceries can be varied materially by State action. The statement that “ increased wages mean increased prices ” has a pleasant sound in the oars of people who think tho worker should be satisfied with the station allotted to him, but obviously it has no general application. Tlie State has power to insist that increased wages shall mean reduced profits or improved methods of production and shall not affect selling prices at all. Increased cost of production, as a matter of fact, is by no means tlie most important factor in raising tho c<sst of living. .....

Mr Edward Trcgear’s prediction that New Zealand was destined to become the great manufacturing country of the Pacific by virtue of its unequalled supplies of cheap power has been published

widely in Great Britain, and seems to have impressed the experts. Tim value of water power, in the estimation of the men competent to judge, has not been depreciated by recent discoveries in connection with the production of power cheaply from coal and othef fuels. " The long, snow-clad chains of the Southern Alps will yield an in* exhaustible supply of power,” said Mr Tregear. “ The millions of tons of falling water now running to Waste, night and day, replaced by every winter's snows, will before long be utilised. Transmitted by wire to factory towns, built on the lower slopes of , the hills, or on level land, our cheap production of energy will enable this dominion to outpace any competitor dependent on coal as a .producer of power. Our geographically huge neighbour Australia will never be able to manufacture goods at a price which these small mountainous islands will be able to do. Australia will be New Zealand’s granary; New Zealand will be Australia’s factory." “The first installation is now in pro* gress,” says one of tlio engineering journals, “and its results will be watched by investors as well as engineers.” Christchurch must “make good” in justice to New Zealand as a whole.

The idea that preferential voting would do away with all the evils of the vicious electoral system which Mr Massey has foisted upon New Zealand ns scouted by the New South Wales Premier. Mr Holman has to put up with the second ballot system in his own State and he frankly admits that it is cumbersome and unscientific j but h« would not change it for a system that offered no material improvement upon its essential principles. “While I believe in proportional representation,” he told a representative of the Sydney “Daily Telegraph” sometime ago, “I am not in favour of preferential voting. Preferential voting leads to the combination of old and recognised interests against the spirit of advancement. In a ballot with three candidates, for instance, the candidate with progressive ideas may be in the lead in the first count, but if the supporters of the other two are true to their conservative principles, as the count goes on they will gradually overhaul the third man until he is hopelessly last. Preferential voting is no better than the second ballot. In fact, it does by one operation what the second ballot achieves by two. ... My view is that there should he proportional representation, not preferential- votingI admit there are difficulties, bub I believe they could be successfully surmounted.” The Liberal Party in New Zealand should carefully consider Mr Holman’s words before it includes preferential voting in its fighting platform. Preferential voting is an improvement upon the second ballot, 6ince it does away with the necessity of tho second appeal to the electors under circumstances that may be extremely unedifying; but the Liberal Party ought to be looking for something better than a mere palliative at this stage of its existence and should be looking for it in the direction of proportional repre< sentation.