The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND WEDNESDAY, JUNE 19, 1929 EARTHQUAKE RELIEF

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 693, 19 June 1929, Page 8

The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND WEDNESDAY, JUNE 19, 1929 EARTHQUAKE RELIEF

lIAS the Government yet heard of the bad earthquake on ** Monday morning in the South Island? As was pointed out in this column yesterday seismic upheavals are among the few troubles for which politicians cannot be blamed, hut once such disasters have occurred the Government of the country concerned should take the lead in providing relief for sufferers and refugees who are in need of quick comfort, and also in giving or lending material assistance toward effecting repairs to damaged property. This reconstructive aid applies more particularly to such buildings as have been shaken into a dangerous condition, and those partly-destroyed roads and public utilities which, so ruined, prevent an early resumption of normal life and activity in the stricken community. So far, the Government has been strangely silent. It is true, of course, that various State departments lost no time on starting remedial work in the centre of destruction and already have rendered splendid service in restoring communication with other districts and many sources of sympathy and friendly aid. This service, however, may he characterised fairly as routine work, exactly similar in its nature to what would he done at once by the Post and Telegraph Department and the railway authorities after a storm or flood. That it has been done quickly and well on this more serious occasion is all to the credit of departmental administrators, but it has served in performance to emphasise by sharp contrast the silence and apparent slackness of the Government. Not a word of sympathy has been expressed in public statement, and there has not yet been heard even a whisper of assurance that the Government would be willing and ready to help sufferers from one of the most violent earthquakes in New Zealand experience. There may be a perfectly satisfactory explanation of this unusual political muteness, but in the meantime discerning people everywhere will compare it very unfavourably indeed with the loquacity on banqueting occasions and the nimble readiness of Cabinet Ministers to run up and down the whole country, looking at this and that need, and listening with rapt sympathy to all sorts of plausible and preposterous pleas on the merest excuse for making a Ministerial journey at the taxpayers’ expense. As far as is known today no Minister has thought of visiting the area shattered by earthquake and determining on the spot exactly how much the Government should do toward helping afflicted communities in disastrous circumstances beyond human control. Little more need be said about the lack of a Ministerial statement on the plight of many people. It must be noticed, however, how much quicker administrative politicians have been in expressing their sentiments about prize-fighters and other prominent people and epochal events. It has been made clear in the detailed development of the narrative about the earthquake on Monday that the havoc it wrought in the West Coast districts of the South Island was more extensive and destructive than at first anticipated. The death roll is now thirteen, while the sum of material damage is still beyond anything like accurate computation. Even in the extent of destruction, however, the earthquake relatively was not calamitous, though had enough in all conscience for its victims and sufferers. But it would he unpardonably wrong and exceptionally hurtful to the interests of New Zealand at home and abroad, to exaggerate its localised severity. As things have been in the past, and there never was anything to become hysterical about, grotesque exaggeration overseas has saddled the Dominion with the malicious name of the “Shivery Isles,” and created a stupid belief in many countries that New Zealanders manage to live and prosper on the slopes of volcanoes along the edges of boiling lakes and sputtering mudpools, and among shuddering seismic ’quakes. Apart from that sort of exaggerated nonsense, the latest and worst earthquake has been severe enough to call for sympathetic activity by a slack Government that has had no rival for contradictions of policy.

THE SOUTH ISLAND RAILWAY

rIE case for the South Island Main Trunk railway is not strengthened by the reticence of the Prime Minister in the face of the many reasonable demands that he should supply full information as to cost of construction and the possible benefits. The demand for this data springs from no party source. It comes largely from gatherings of business men in both the South and the North Islands. Almost the only communities that have kept silent are those immediately concerned with the railway. In other centres, from Invercargill to Auckland, there is an uneasy feeling that the Government, in its frantic urge to do something positive, is embarking with more enthusiasm than prudence on a very costly undertaking. The position is not clarified by the contributions to the controversy of Mr. J. G. Coates and Sir Joseph Ward. The widely different interpretations placed by these well-meaning statesmen on the Fay-Raven report suggest that commissions of such a type should he avoided in future as an extravagance that leads nowhere. The Fay-Raven report guardedly endorsed the idea of a Picton-Christchurch railway link, but a later commission which went into greater detail adopted the view that present economic circumstances could not justify the work. The circumstances have not changed, except that a new Government is in power. Mr. Coates showed righteous indignation when discussing the topic in Auckland, but he seems to have modified his attitude when talking the problem over with South Island friends. There is no reason at all why the northern part of the South Island should not at some time have a trunk railway. The elimination of the often boisterous sea trip between Lyttelton and Wellington would please a large number of travellers. Mpre traffic would be diverted by way of Pieton and Blenheim, and more New Zealanders would learn to know the loveliness of the enchanting sweep of coast that extends south from the chalky buttresses of Cape Campbell. The question is whether the present is the proper time for a work that, traversing as it will the difficult seaward slope of the Ivaikouras, will cost an immense amount of money without opening any new country or tapping any new resources. Settlement may he stimulated, but not so much as to pay for the line. The Government and its advisers know this, so apparently are satisfied that the line can be justified from other points of view. If so. the Prime Minister should hasten to reassure those anxious business men who fear the addition of another non-paying line to the railway system.