WELLINGTON'S DOCK SITE. As You Were!

Free Lance, Volume VIII, Issue 401, 7 March 1908, Page 6

WELLINGTON'S DOCK SITE. As You Were!

STATESMANSHIP is the genius to see through the mists that shroud the future. Mr. R. Fletcher, therefoie, may be a statesman. The day will declare it. Hedesned and moved to the effect that Wellington's dock, which has been in the air for a number of years, shouldnot occupy the place decided on by people who claimed to know their business. However, the Harbour Board lias decided that it -nill stick to the old site. If the dock is built in the place assigned for it, it may become a white elephant. If it were built at Kaiwarra, cr Evans Bay, or anywhere else, it might also become a pale leviathan. There is no "knowing whether Wellington will want one dock or twelve in the far future. If she can get along with one, the> one that is to be built i" the more or less near future will do. If she wants a dozen, and supposing Evans Bay and the other places are not covered with factories, extension may take place in any direction. f- - • Theie is, perhaps, no immediate cause to worry except over the interest on the sum borrowed for the construction of the dock to be. This is a species of worry that will probably cause many aching heads throughout New Zealand within the rext few years But the Harbrur Board, with their £1,000,000, has got a big lot of work ahead of them. It is work, too, that is indispensable to the growth of Wellington. The pubhe, who revel in the lively reading of the Wellington Harbour Board and its doings, lay, do.wn their papers a+ times with the confirmed idea that the Harbour Beard made the commerce, and the port, and Wellington. But that's only or>r Harbour Board's way of putting ie, after all. It doesn't really work ont that way on paper. Wellington, like Topsy, has "just growed," and the Harbour Board has had to shift things along. ->■ +- * Of course, that £1,000,000 will all be sopped up — all of it. Those who raised Cain about the size of the loan will rise in their places later on to call the promoters of the loan blessed. The next couple of years should see things fairly humming in the workshops of the Board. Whether Mr. "Wilford will preserve the "happy family" element is to be proved. In the j.ast members have wrangled some. They tried to make the publis believe that they were not a happy family because one man in the past had tried to control them. The Harbour Board should have a one-man control. That is to say, the control of a man who can weld the infuriated particles into one harmonious whole. Mr. Wilford has a chance now to try his hand as a pacificator. * * • The existing docks in New Zealand, t return to the subject© of white elephants, have never been used for much except accidents, but this is no reason why men of the great mental calibre like the members of the Wellington Board should not make the Wellington dock a point of interest and envy for the whole of the mercantile world.