HERE AND THERE

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 16475, 20 October 1927, Page 8

HERE AND THERE

(P.A. Messages.) A Press Association telegram from Nelson on October 12 reported Mr. ,L Pagan, president of the Nqlson provincial executive of llie Farmers’ Union as saying that 97 soldier settlers had abandoned their farms in Waimea County since January last. This statement was subsequently referred to in the House of Representatives, and characterised by the Minister of Lands, Hon. A. D. McLeod, as a gross exaggeration. Mr. Pagan, who is at present in Wellington, said to-day that the statement as printed was a gross exaggeration, but it was not what he said. He stated that 97 soldier settlers in Waimea had abandoned their farms up to January last. Realising that be was under the inlluence of liquor, Walter Frederick Marns parked Ins car in Wellington last evening, but, remained in it. He was tound by the police and this morning was lined £lO, with three months’ suspension of Ins driving license. A fireman, William O'Keefe, with a criminal record, was sentenced in Wellington to three months’ gaol for the theft from a motor car of a suitcase and its contents, valued at £4B, the proper t.» of l)r. R. C. llegg. ” I have very little doubt myself as, to what the decision should be,” said the magistrate, Mr. K. D. Mosley, in Christchurch to-day, in stating that lie would reserve decision in cases in which prosecutions were brought by tho police for alleged breaches of the* law in respect to competitions known as “ wordskil puzzles.” Charles John Brown was charged with having commenced tho scheme, and the publisher of the Star was charged with having published an advertisement concerning it. The police alleged that it was a game of chance. Commenting on the charge of publishing tho advertisement, the magistrate said; “If I were publishing a newspaper. and the advertisement were submitted to me, I would have published it. 1 venture to say that 90 per cent, of leading counsel,'if they had been editors, would have published it.”