ROTORUA AND THE EAST COAST.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LI, Issue 15500, 6 January 1914, Page 6

ROTORUA AND THE EAST COAST.

The Herald has always contended that railway connection between the Rotorua line and the East Coast is among the projects deserving of favourable ministerial consideration, and has no hesitation in asserting that it will pay well, while Southern lines now under construction or consideration will not pay at all. This desirable connection is being throttled, however, by the petty and parochial attitude of a small local group who demand that the East Coast line shall be diverted so as to form this connection. They go further, and insist that the connecting railway must be diverted into Rotorua itself, as though Auckland Province were a mere appendage of the thermal township. It will be remembered that Rotoruan influences attempted to prevent the extension of the private line from Putaruru to Taupo, and in the same spirit—aided by those who seek to have a costly port made at "the Mount" instead of developing the port of Te.uranga— an attempt is now being made to kill the legitimate expectations of the country east of Waihi. The claim is put forward that the agricultural population from the Bay of Plenty to the Waikato is enraptured with the Rotorua scheme. This claim is absurd. To haul every ton of goods up a mountain range and down again; to bar out a wide district to favour the selfaggrandisement of a smell district;

to evade the necessity for the Pokeno line by making the route via Morrinaville the rouie to the East Coast, and thus handicapping settlement of the Piako country for a generation, will not appeal to the farmers of the province. It may be momentarily cheaper to take the shortest route for the East Coast connection— thus leave more money to be squandered some day on unprofitable political lines, whether north or south of Cook Strait; but it is surely time that the North ceased to be too humble in claiming its right and that those who seek to gain purely local advantage by humouring the prejudices of Southern Ministers learned bstter.