FROM THE WATCH TOWER

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 260, 24 January 1928, Page 8

FROM THE WATCH TOWER

By “THE LOOK-OUT MAN"

MORE POWER FOR AUCKLAND Electric-power boards throughout the Auckland Province do well to quicken the efforts of the laggard Government in providing an auxiliary generating plant at Penrose to make up for the unconscionable delay at Arapuni. If the local authorities have jany lingering doubt as to the wisdom of their policy in driving the Administration into progressive action, they need only turn to Wellington for inspiration and impressive backing. There, the consumers of electric power are suffering the irritating experience of water consumers in Auckland. Restrictions are in force, because of the inability* of the Mangahao hydro-electric scheme to meet the demand for electricity. Mangahao is not in any sense a failure (though its cost, like that of Arapuni, is sky-high), but its present capacity is hopelessly, even pathetically, inadequate. The demand for power has exceeded all the estimates of all sorts of experts and calculators. Then, the drought has affected the dams. Thus, three city stations in Wellington have been pressed into service again for the generation of electric power. It is said that the Wellington City Council, instead of paying £12,000 a. year to the State for power, is being paid that sum for supplying power to the State. Electricity has not yet been one of the outstanding successes of State enterprise, and In view of that fact, power boards should be wary. A WASTE OF LIFE Despite the fact that Auckland possesses one of the finest harbours in the worjd, it lags far behind the other less fortunate centres of New Zealand as regards instruction in swimming and life-saving. To explain away the fact that, in the latest report of the New Zealand Life-Saving Society, it is recorded that Auckland was granted seven awards against 665 secured by Wellington, the argument would doubtless be forthcoming that Auckland beaches, being so safe, the practice of life-saving finds comparatively little scope. This may he so, but what the L.O.M. wants to know is why deprive the rising generation of the opportunity of learning how to save life simply because of the fact that very few people are drowned at Milford or Takapuna. Hardly a day has passed during the past few weeks without several drowning accidents being reported. In most Instances the circumstances have been unusually tragic by reason of the fact that the fatalities have occurred in comparatively sate water where even a primary knowledge of swimming or life-savl-ig on the part of those present would have been the means of saving lives. Good work in this connection is being done by the recently resuscitated Auckland branch of the New Zealand Life-Saving Association, despite the indifference of the educational authorities, who seem to think that where sea coasts or rivers are available swimming facilities in the schools are not only unnecessary, but a waste of money. * * * s AN AUCKLANDER “MAKES GOOD’’ Hector Bolitho, of Auckland, whose first novel was recently published in England, and who assisted the Dean of Windsor to edit a volume of letters of Lady Augusta Stanley, seems to have comfortably established himself in London. We notice in one of the new additions to The Travellers’ Library, “The World’s Back Doors,” by Max Murray, that “an introduction has been supplied by Mr. Hector Bolitho,” and in the Christmas number of Jonathan Cape’s house magazine, “Now and Then,” appears an article from his pen on “The Women Novelists of the South,” i»i which surprise is expressed that the five outstanding prose writers of Australia, New Zealand and South Africa are all women—Katherine Mansfield,

Olive Sclireiner, Sarah Gertrude Millln, Pauline Smith and Ethelreda Lewis. "Some of Katherine Mansfield’s stories,” says Mr. Bolitho, “are the representation of New Zealand life; they drive the wayward thought to the very end of the road; they have no word that falters or falls to give you New Zealand; not only New Zealand the new country, but New Zealand as being different from any other place. No other streets, no other hills, no other people but those she knew in New Zealand could have made her write ‘The Wind Blows," and ‘The Crossing’—the impressions and adventures of her childhood, remembered over a stretch of years, treasured, thought about, analysed, refined and set down when her technique had placed her among the aristocracy of living prose .writers,’! __,