The Sun 42 Wyndham Street, Auckland, N.Z. MONDAY, JULY 11, 1927. TARADIDDLES AT GENEVA

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 93, 11 July 1927, Page 8

The Sun 42 Wyndham Street, Auckland, N.Z. MONDAY, JULY 11, 1927. TARADIDDLES AT GENEVA

NOW and again an untrimmed fact escapes from the whirl of gossip and prediction at Geneva about the work of the Naval Disarmament Conference. Co-day, for example, a journalistic observer on the spot, frankly reports that Geneva is so notorious for taradiddles that it would be foolish yet to prophesy an absolute breakdown of the conference. He might well have added fairly that the plenipotentiary delegates, so far, have been more successful in dealing with diplomatic taradiddles than in the preparation .of a disarmament treaty. Optimists, however, still hope for something good from the pretentious assembly. This hope is fortified by an official statement as to the actual progress made by the conference after a week’s exhaustive discussion. A partial agreement has been reached—in respect of limiting the size, gun-power and age of destroyers, large submarines and auxiliary craft. The limitation is so meagre that it is not worth the recapitulation of details. As a measure of disarmament in relation to the ideal of keeping the peace of the world, the limitation agreed upon may be described as technical taradiddles. A great maritime nation may find pleasure in securing a reduction in the size of cruising submarines, but the joy will be offset, by the fact that coastal waters everywhere can still be infested with small submarines. Thus the conference shapes well for France, which is not represented at it. From the French point of view, a limitation of large ships and large submarines is the perfect form of naval disarmament. She only wants a strong defensive flotilla of small craft for the protection of her shores. Great Britain has to police the Seven Seas, and America and Japan equally desire to keep as near as possible to the British standard of requirements. It appears certain that the Three-Power Conference at Geneva will fail to effect an all-round scheme of naval disarmament. No one there seems to be hopeful about an agreement to revert to the smaller type of cruiser. It is admitted that the new large cruisers are exceptionally expensive and probably unnecessary. However, it seems inevitable that something must be big in naval construction, and the fashion at the moment among experts is all for large cruisers. There is a crying need for disarmament in order to enable the world to repair the havoc of war .and get on with the peaceful activities of Christendom. If the great naval Powers, whose representatives are taradiddling at Geneva to-day, were to pledge themselves in an honest pact, to keep the peace on all the seas, the combination would be so powerful that the rest of the world could not prevail against it. Moreover, the problem of competition in naval armaments would be solved on the instant. But human nature has not yet reached the standard of perfection which gives an endurable peace. So the three great Powers continue to talk disarmament, while spending £150,000,000 a year om maintaining their navies.

THE HAND OF THE SPOILER

NOT content with having made hideous the waterfront from Freeman’s Bay to Campbell Point, the utilitarians who mishandle the front doors of the city are casting covetous eyes on Hobson’s Bay. Town-planners may plan to make a city beautiful, but the vandals of the waterfront will nullify their efforts, if such be possible. They have no eye for beauty; their concern is revenue; their gods are ugly freighters, towering cranes, the iron roofs of sheds upon concrete wharves, and piles of factory buildings with tall smoke-stacks. These are the sights at which their souls expand. At the foot of lovely Kemuera, the suburb sloping from a noble eminence to the harbour shore, is Hobson’s Bay, cut across by the embankment the Railway Department is now building for the new deviation. It is a pretty view, looking down from the heights of Remuera to the Waifemata. But the powers that be are red-hot for “improvement.” They propose to embellish the scenery with acres of warehouses and factories. They may call it reclamation; the average citizen, proud Of the natural beauty of Auckland, calls it desecration. Briefly, this outrageous proposal is to “reclaim” 350 acres of the shallows of the bay. Nearly 150 acres of this is to be allotted the Railway Department for shunting yards and engine sheds. Sixty acres are to be reserved for a park, apparently to propitiate public opinion—and 147 acres are to be utilised for the erection of factories and warehouses, so that the Harbour Board may obtain hugely-increased revenues whereby further to ravish the beauty to which it is callous. The despoilment of this city has gone far enough. They have filled in the shallow waters and raised masses of ugliness; they have blasted down the headlands and torn asunder the hill's; they have run a railway through the streets; they have seized and shattered everything of beauty that has lain in the way of their progress,” without a single qualm; they hold nothing sacred but the grinding cogs of commerce. The Railway Department, the City Council and the Harbour Board are alike guilty in this latest conspiracy to blot out the beauty of the little" foreshore which has so far escaped defilement. It is fortunate that public resentment has at last become articulate. A public meeting of the residents of Remuera, Victoria Avenue and Parnell has been called for Wednesday evening to consider this threat against their property, and it is to be hoped their indignation will be so expressive that those who propose the Hobson’s Bay barbarity will be forced to realise that there are other things to be considered than the utilitarianism of which they have made a fetish.