CONDENSED CORRESPONDENCE.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 17402, 24 August 1918, Page 10

CONDENSED CORRESPONDENCE.

" Fairplay," writing from Pembroke, saya he would give tho prohibitionists more credit for doing good if they would attempt to raise tho £40,000 that is desired for the Red Cross than by engaging iu their present campaign. Ho claims that the way in which the people are ablo to dress themselves disproves tho assertion that drink is causing poverty in Now Zealand, and, as a visitor* to tho Winter Show in Dunedin, he declares that he never saw a man in town under the influence of drink. He believes that if tho hotels are closed worso places will bo opened into which young people will bo enticed, and he asks how the requirements of tho travelling public aro to be met. " Only Country Davy" criticises tho administration of the church endowments in Otago, saying that nearly all the land between Wingatui and Mosgiel is held by a church board, and continues to be let at rentals (based on 5 per cent, of capital value), which aro from one-half to onefourth of what the value of the land represents. Surely it would be better business to turn it- into capital a.nd invest in war bonds, thereby doubling the income. He argues that no sensible person would havo so neglected the administration of his personal estate. The land is mostly the pick of tho plain; it is intersected by two railways (neither of them -used); and tho city. has spent a considerable sum putting an electric system around it. Yet it is proposed to promote settlement in No Man's Land up among the tussocks, where the men who have returned from fighting our battles would run a bier chance of losing any money they had before the first caso of apples could 'bo got to market.