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Manawatu Standard, Volume LVI, Issue 121, 23 April 1936, Page 8

An alarming increase in the number of motor accidents- has been recorded in North Taranaki for the first three months of the year when compared with the corresponding period of last year. “It is the intention of then Government to carry out its policy as placed before the electors,” said the Prime Minister (Hon. M. J. Savage) yesterday in replying to a question of Mr H. S. S. Kyle (Opposition, Riccarton) as to whether it was the intention of the Government to put into operation measures which had for their objective the socialisation of the means of production, distribution and exchange. When answering queries regarding child marriage in India at a lecture at Hamilton, Rev. E. L. Guna Sekera made interesting l-eferonee to the origin of the practice. In the early history of India the population, which consisted mainly of Hindus, was seriously menaced by Mohammedan invasion. During the raids all the young unmarried Hindu women were carried off, but influenced by their religion, the marauders did not abduct inarried women. To prevent the serious reduction of the female population, the practice arose of marrying girls during childhood.

The Whangarei Hospital Board is expending between £IO,OOO a.nd £12,000 on additions and alterations to its buildings. The abolition of the tax on gold, which he said was a most dangerous fiscal precedent, was advocated by Mr H. S, S. Kyle in a question asked in the House of Representatives yesterday. During the first nine months of the present financial year Commonwealth receipts exceeded expenditure bv £2,738,000. Revenue was £4,933,000 higher than in the previous corresponding period, and expenditure increased by £1,672,000. At a meeting of the Manawatu Basketball Association last evening the chairman (Miss L. A. Brown) stated that there were now approximated 200 girls playing the game in the Manawatu district all of whom were being catered for by the association. In a lecture at Hamilton, Rev. E. L. Guna Sekera, an Indian lecturer, stated that during the last 140 years the population of India had increased from less than 100,000,000 , to 360,000,000, and the present excess of births over deaths was 1,250,000 per annum. The Wanganui police have advised that the sedan car which was removed from the residence of Mr N. R. Lecher, in Miro Street, Palmerston North, has been found abandoned on the road between Hunterville and Ohingaiti. The vehicle was undamaged.

Two valuable exhibits are on view in the Turnbull Library, Wellington, in connection with Authors’ Week. One is a tiny Catechism printed at Kerikeri in 1830, only two copies of which are known to exist; the other is St. Paul’s “Epistle to the Ephesians and Philippians,” printed in Maori by Dr. Colenso in 1835.

The winner of the first prize of £2OOO in the Happy Days art union is Mr M. Boyle, a young man at present driving a gyro-tiller on contract work on a farm near Ashburton. He formerly lived at Winton (Southland) and bought the winning ticket when working on a farm at Waimate some weeks ago. At seven o’clock this morning, just prior to and during a shower of rain, a beautiful rainbow was to be seen making a perfect arc from south to west acrcss the sky. The colours were vividly delineated and the reflection of the rainbow, describing another arc, was almost as complete. The spectable was one of Nature’s phenomena seen at its best.

The decision of the Union Steam Ship Company to withdraw its liners from the Wellington-San Francisco service toward the end of the year was discussed at a meeting of the Wellington Chamber of Commerce on Tuesday, when it was agreed that a deputation should wait on the company’s board of directors and ascertain in what way the chamber could render assistance so that the vessels could continue running. “Let me say that I have never seen so many well-groomed heads as 1 have in Palmerston North ; people in Auckland cannot compare with you,” remarked Madame Lauri Alwyn in the course of her lecture at the Opera House last evening. The lecturer invited the women in the audience to remove their hats; it allowed them to feel more relaxed, and that permitted a keener attention being given to her, she said.

“The question will be dealt with when the budgetary programme is under consideration,” said the Minister of Finance (Hon. W. Nash) when asked by Mr W. .A. Bodkin (Opposition, Central Otago), in the House of Representatives yesterday, if it were the intention of the Government to provide ’ coronation grants to local bodies and other organisations Phat desired to erect buildings or other structures to commemorate the coronation of theming. The origin of New Zealand fiction and its existing phenomena were surveyed by Mr O. N. Gillespie, LL.B., in an address at the New Zealand Authors’ Week exhibition in Wellington. Holding out high hopes tor the future, Mr Gillespie said the Dominion had all the conditions that had produced the three noblest literatures of time —the Greek, the Latin and the English. “We may be within the early dawn of a Golden Age of literature and life, and it is for us to work to that end,” he said. '

Though the College Street School Committee has received air intimation that a 10 per cent, subsidy will be available from the Government towards the cost of erecting the assembly hall which it contemplates, it is seeking a subsidy of 33 1-3 per cent., the estimated cost of the building being £450. With this object in view. Colonel J. H. Whyte (chairman) and Messrs H. Christmas and H. G. Mills proceeded to Wellington to-day to interview the Minister, the deputation having been arranged by Mr J. Hodgens, M.P.

One hundred years ago, on April 29, 1836, His Holiness Pope Gregory XVI signed the brief of approbation for a new religious order in the Catholic Church—the Society of Mary. Less than two years later missionaries from the new society were in New Zealand and had already begun work in many of the South Sea Islands. The centenary of the society will be celebrated throughout the world at the end of this month. The Most Rev. Francis Redwood, S.M., Archbishop of Wellington, and Metropolitan, who died la.st year, was the first New Zealand Marist.

For a seagull to catch trout regularly in a river is in itself an offence in the eyes of an angler, but when the bird selects the wireless mast of the chairman of the Acclimatisation Society Council lor a perch upon which to sit while consuming the fish, and leaves indications of its visit at his back door, is adding insult to injury. Mr A. E. Dee, chairman of the Nelson Society’s Council, reported that one particular seagull made almost daily excursions to the Matai River where it caught fish and then came back to his wireless pole to-have its meal. It then showed its utter disrespect by leaving the backbones of fish right at his back door.