TIMELY TOPICS

Northern Advocate, 24 June 1932, Page 4

TIMELY TOPICS

ffuT record of a forerunner of the Europa,,and Bremen, fastest of modern German transatlantic liners, has been unearthed in Oldenburg. Dredging of the Wes?r River near the town of Hamclvarden has brought to the surface numerous relics of past periods. One was a bone on which has been cut hieroglyphics and the outline of a ship. Savants fixed th'e writing as of Saxon and Frankish character, dating about the third century A.D. The drawing of the ship is believed to be one of the curliest records of a German sea-going vessel, comparable to the craft of the Phoenicians, • the Vikings and the Romans. Details of rudder and rigging. how r ever, indicate that it. was of typically Germanic design. The fact that it carries sail marks it as a commercial vessel, as wareraft of that period required the greater manoeuvring supplied by oars alone. * * * *

Values —urban,, suburban, rural —in every civilised country are undergoing challenge and test. The overvaluation of farm lands is well known, at any rate in a country like this; but the over-valuation of cities has hot. been so fully explored, and (says the “Post”) the question is forced to the. front when gigantic Chicago goes’ cap-in-hand to the Federal authorities with the expressive appeal: “Lend us or wo sink!” Chicago owns a strategic site worth to commence a scarcely calculated sum; but, when inflation, plus graft, gets to work, • tlfe greater the value the greater the crash. Given its full head, municipal extravagance, apart- altogether from IGovernmental extravagance, seems to be quite capable of driving a very large nail into the coffin of the economic world as we know’‘it today. Coming nearer homo, the City of Wellington has outdone others in its provision for the workless. Its relief work has largely been national work, the city having been a. magnet for unemployed. And the Government can be thankful that Wellington City comes to it only with a petition for help in giving relief, not with a Chicago appeal. Still, the dangers of municipal overhead, visible in other countries, arc by no means absent from Mew Zealand. Before Lausanne has finished with the problem of what proportion of national revenue can be tied up for interest, thq same question will have to be faced in every unit of government and local body working. And it is not a question that can be answered with fresh' loans.