Readers Write

Northern Advocate, 21 February 1939, Page 4

Readers Write

[Readers are invited to send letters' for publication in this Column. A letter should be written in ink on one side of the paper, and must bear the name of the writer, not necessarily for publication, but as a guarantee of good faith.l , For some months the fowl wheat I have been buying has been inferior, much of it being 20 per cent other seeds. TTnon male-

COST OF FOWL WHEAT.

bueus. upuu mcuvj inquiries from my dealer, I was in-

formed that it was Government-imported wheat.

I sent a sample to the Minister of I Industries and Commerce, the Hon. | D. G. Sullivan, who informed me that] the Government only imported mill- ] ing wheat, and that it was passed first by an Australian gr'ader, then a New Zealand grader, and he could not understand such a sample getting through. He offered to make good, ; but I did not think this fair, as others 1 had got the same quality. I then sent three samples to my son, who grows thousands of bushels of wheat on the Darling Downs, in Queensland. He said the samples were all fowl wheat, which is being, sold at 9d per bushel. Milling wheat' is lid first pay, but more to come. | He said that the black seeds in the wheat ' (are black oats (wild), the greatest curse the Queensland grower has to contend with. The Government is therefore apparently paying 2/ for wheat which can be got for 9d, and selling it to us for 7/9, at the same, time introducing another weed, as if we had not enough. There is no excuse. A private importer would not take delivery, even if the weed passed the port inspectors, but our all-powerful Government dan do no wrong.—F. M. COMMINS, Parua Bay Road.

Various suggestions have been put forward for the marking of our Centennial celebrations by the provision of facilities for the

CENTENNIAL MEMORIAL.

physical and mental development of the r>nnr\ln mil* IqhH ■

people 'Ot our land. Among the proposals placed before the Centennial Committee is a suggestion by the Physical and Mental Welfare Society that & board of scientists (doctors, biologists, chemists, physiologists, psychologists, etc.) be appointed for the purpose of constantly issuing authoritative scientific truths bearing on vital current proplems, in a phraseology suitable to the understanding of the ordinary man and woman.

One has only to refer to the fact that our scientists have known for many years pa T st that our health and prosperity, our fertility and sanity are slowly being destroyed by wasteful deforestation, soil erosion, soil exhaustion, waste of natural manuring, ignorance of sensible nutrition, etc.; that these men of science have been willing and anxious to convey their warnings and their constructive advice to the mass of the people, but have been able to do so in isolated units only; and that had there been an organisation in existence of the nature proposed by the P.M.W, Society, the strong public opinion thus aroused would have forced the authorities to take both preventive and remedial action.

In the opinion of many of the Dominion’s leading thinkers, the P.M.W. scheme for marking our Centennial celebration would be the most lasting and the most far-reaching that it is in the power of man to conceive in the interests of health, fertility, sanity, prosperity and peace. After all, the real force of evolution and of progress lies in the common man’s common development, and not in the forcible leading by some outstanding group of individuals of a race of physically fit morons. —A. L. GRENFELL SPENCER.