BY AERIAL POST.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXV, Issue 16569, 5 June 1914, Page 11

BY AERIAL POST.

A NATIONAL NEWSPAPER. TO COAIE WITHIN TEN YEAfyS. JOURNALIST’S CONVICTION. “It is permitted for practical journalists to dream dreams and see visions,” said Air Robert Bell at tho presentation to Air Saunders, the retiring editor of the “ Lyttelton Times,” yesterday. “I liavo been seeing the vision of something that I hope will come to pass in the near future, and i may tell you what it is, although you may think 1 have lost any sanity that 1 used to possess. It is nothmg more nor less than the establishment of another newspaper. You will tell me that 6Urely wo are over-papered already, blit the newspaper I wish to see established, and I hope to seo it in the next ten years, is a national newspaper for New Zealand.”

“ At the present time,” continued MiBell, “wo have district newspapers and provincial newspapers, but we have never had what you would call a national newspaper. The great bar to the establishment of such a paper has been and is the topography of the country. Acw Zealand is cut in two by Cook Strait, and fast as the steamship service may be, the loss of time ‘ there would be fatal. Our great lines of communication are not yet completed, but even if they were, the time taken in the delivery of a newspaper could never give it the widespread circulation that would enable it to be called national. But a new transport sendee lias come into existence—aerial transport. Ten years ago aerial transport was in its infancy. To-day in different parts of the world they are carrying mail • matter and even passengers' by aeroplane, and the time must come when all our postal and mail matter will be carried by aeroplane. Supposing a national newspaper were established in Christchurch, it is quito within reason to think that within a few hours it could be delivered to the gumdiggera of tho north and the grain-growers of Southland. “It will be asked, what do I mean by a national newspaper? A national newspaper must be above faking part in party politics, and the sooner many publio questions are removed from party politics the better. Amongst these questions I might mention the naval policy, the settlement of the land, finance, education and immigration. All of them should bo taken from the ! scope of party politics and be placed upon a permanent footing, away from tho caprice of any Ministry. A na- j tional newspaper should bo neither j parochial nor provincial in its charac- j ter. It should, in fact, deal only with 1 thoso things that affect the general / welfare of the whole of the people, without favouring persons, parties or | classes. “ I trust that here to-day there may be some voinig and budding Northclift’e i who will' take up this idea and push j it to its issue, and no doubt in the course of time' he will have his reward and become one of the lords of the fourth esiato in Now Zealand.