SOUTH ISLAND MAIN TRUNK

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LVI, 26 June 1924, Page 5

SOUTH ISLAND MAIN TRUNK

MARLBOROtTGFIS AGITATION

ATTITUDE OF CANTERBURY PROGRESS LEAGUE

(By Telegraph.—Special to The Mail.)

CHRLSTCHURCH, June 25. • “The... request of the Marlborough Progress'League that tliis league should support its agitation completion of the South Island main trunk railway is one to which this organisation will be glad to accede if it can be. convinced that there is a sound practical case to be made-out for the immediate prosecution of this . important work,’ said the retiring president, Mr \V. K. McAlpine. at the annual meeting, of the Canterbury Progress League .this .afternoon. “We have set up a .special, committee to sift all the available evidence on' the subject and to advise the rest of us concerning the proposal. The Marlborough people have accepted our method of approaching the question in the very friendliest spirit, but I am not quite sure that they understand that wo are applying to their project exactly the same tests as we should give io any Canterbury proposal and which we have' applied in half a dozen cases before committing the league. to action. It is a case of ‘thrice is he armed who hath his quarrel just.’ So far as wo are concerned, when we start a movement or an agitation we hang on to it until it gets somewhere and wo have not yet backed a loser. To maintain that very good record wo make sure that we are on firm ground before we move —a fact which our Marlborough friends will have no difficulty in appreciating.”