In the News

Southland Times, Issue 24859, 26 September 1942, Page 4

In the News

Dominion Day Monday will be Dominion Day, marking the thirty-fifth anniversary of the proclamation of New Zealand as a Dominion. At one time the day was observed as a general holiday. Then it became a bank holiday. This year the banks will not observe the holiday, but the offices of the City Council and the Southland County Council will be closed. The reason for this is that Dominion Day is one of the holidays provided for in the award of workers in these offices. City Schools Closed City schools were closed at midday yesterday. A report received by the Southland Education Board about 11.30 o’clock stated that 175 pupils were absent at the Waihopai school, 200 at the North, 300 at the South and 200 at St. George. The children had wet feet and no gumboots were available. The board approved of the closing of the schools. The chairman (Mr S. Rice) said country school teachers were permitted to close schools at any time if the weather justified it. He said the school bus contractor at Mimihau had been unable to negotiate a difficult hill because of the snow yesterday morning and had to abandon the trip. £2OOO The Aim “I am hopeful that between £l5OO and £2OOO will be obtained as a result of the effort to be made next month for the prisoners of war fund on the occasion of the visit of the Royal New Zealand Air Force Band to Invercargill,” said Mr D. W. Stalker at the meeting of the Metropolitan Patriotic Committee last night. “I hope that the people of Invercargill will come along and spend their nimble shillings on that day,” he added. He said that women connected with the church of England, the Roman Catholic Church, the Salvation Army and the Y.M.C.A. had readily agreed to conduct shops for the sale of produce on Wednesday, October 14, which was to be the main day of the effort. Wairoa Murders The police are still busily engaged in Wairoa in carrying out investigations into the deaths of Miss Rosamund Smyth and her sister, Brigadier Annie Smyth, officer in charge of the Salvation Army, in Wairoa, whose bodies were discovered on August 21 by Constable King. All the officers who arrived shortly after the discovery of the murders are still in Wairoa and also. Inspector Cameron, officer in charge of the Napier district. Two Jobs at Once It is said to be very difficult to do two jobs at once, at least properly. However, a woman member of _ the Metropolitan Patriotic Committee achieved this at a meeting of the committee last night. Knitting is one of her patriotic activities, and while she was presenting a report on a branch of the committee’s work she was also busily engaged winding a ball of wool, while a male member of the committee held the skein in the manner known to all married men. Theft of Petrol “Petrol thieving is in the present circumstances a form of sabotage, and the Court would not be. doing its duty if it did not impose imprisonment,’ said the Magistrate, Mr J. H. Luxford, when sentencing Charles Alfred Berry, aged 38, a motor driver, to three months imprisonment at Auckland on one of two charges of stealing petrol belonging to his employer. Berry pleaded guilty. Defending counsel said Berry was married with two children. He had worked 10 hours a day on essential work and had also done Home Guard service. The only possible explanation was that he had a small car and was anxious to drive his family out.—P.A. 500 Appeals By yesterday the number of appeals received at the office of the Southland Armed Forces Appeal Board from or on behalf of men in the last ballot had risen to 501. The number of appeals received by registered post yesterday was 122, and in addition a number ot appeal forms were handed in at the office. There was one bundle of 25 from one firm. Yesterday was the final day of the statutory period for lodging appeals, but appeals posted yesterday will be reckoned as conforming with the regulations. Woman at Court-Martial Further evidence of the use which the Army can make of women was provided at a court-martial in Christchurch, when a member of the Women s Army Auxiliary Corps was engaged to type the evidence. Formerly the notes were taken by the Judge Advocate, who was required to keep the notes, and at the same time watch the proceedings from a legal point of view. The presence of a woman at the court-martial proved embarrassing to some of the witnesses, because the evidence consisted of a repetition of insulting words said to have been used to an officer. Parliamentary Guardsmen Two platoons of the Home Guard have been formed from members of the Pqblic Service employed at Parliament Buildings, the personnel having been drawn from the staff of the Legislative Department, the secretarial corps and messenger service. The Parliamentary company has a strength of more than 70 in its ranks, and training has begun. Cyclist in Blackout Reports on the last blackout in Christchurch showed that some cyclists did not understand the lighting requirements yet, said the chairman of the Emergency Precautions Service’s organizing committee, Mr W. Machin. During the blackout a girl on a bicycle without a light rode into a rope used to cordon off an “incident,” fortunately without suffering serious injury. She said she had been told that she could not ride her machine with a light in a blackout, and other reports showed that a number of persons had the same impression. Mr Machin said the girl was not an Emergency Precautions Services worker, and should not have been riding her bicycle at all. In any case, a bicycle should have a front light, masked with the equivalent of two sheets of paper, and a tail-light, and then could only be ridden by an authorized person. / Building Industry

“Co-ordination of effort is the real problem to be tackled in the building industry if the fullest use of available labour and other resources is to be secured,” said Mr W. McAra, secretary of the New Zealand Building Trades Federation, after a meeting of building job and production committee representatives. “Nearly 1000 hours were lost on one urgent building job due to wet weather,” he added. “Within a mile of this job other urgent work could not proceed for lack of tradesmen.” Figures submitted to the building trades representatives indicated that the wastage over a three months’ period amounted to the staggering total of 1,080,000 man hours on defence works alone, because of inability to use labour in wet weather, said Mr McAra. The matter, which had already been the subject of representations by a number of men on the job and their respective unions, was being taken up by the Building Trades Federation with the local and national defence committees.