The Christchurch Star PUBLISHED BY New Zealand Newspapers Ltd. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 27, 1934. ' THE FATES AT WORK. ’

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20447, 27 October 1934, Page 10

The Christchurch Star PUBLISHED BY New Zealand Newspapers Ltd. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 27, 1934. ' THE FATES AT WORK. ’

<< 'll7'E STAND TO-DAY where the Greeks once stood: face to face with Fate. We have power beyond the dreams of power: power that indisputably belongs to the realm of Nature, the proper use of which will hot degrade a single human being. We can see the Fates at work.” Joseph K. Hart, an authority on social science, wrote these words ten years ago, and still the potentialities for more power go on unfolding. In New Zealand we have the most graphic example of this in the completion of the Waitaki hydro-electrical scheme, which, linked with the Coleridge and Waipori power sources, will extend to the town and rural scene through practically the whole of the South Island the technical revolution which urban industries at favoured points have experienced in the earlier production of electrical energy in the Dominion. As distributive factors expand, electricity will bring small town and farm dwellers cheaper light and heat. Their womenfolk will banish drudgery with the washing machine, vacuum cleaner, automatic electric range, refrigerator and other labour lighteners. More and more electricity will invade the farmer’s fowlyard and dairy, and will even operate his ploughing and harvesting machines. But the amenities of the technical revolution of the electrical age do not arise of themselves, or simply with the flowing of the water through the power-house and the turning of the monster turbines. Power to-day has to seek out men to employ it, and it should be remembered that high rates for electrical current have the inevitable result in low usage. Conversely low rates mean high usage. And with the tapping of the Waitaki’s latent energy we are for the first time assured that the supply can keep pace with the demand. Indeed, the potentialities of the scheme are so very substantial that it relieves all anxieties about an unbroken delivery of power. AN ENGINEERING FEAT. 'T'HE COMPLETION of the Waitaki dam and the hydro electrical installation is a monument to the ability and perseverance and fortitude of one man in particular, Mr R. H. Packwood, the engineer in charge of the work, and it is fitting that his name should be permanently linked with the undertaking, possibly by the naming of the new lake that he and his men have created over five miles of country. The Government has shown a proper appreciation of Mr Packwood’s services in the leave of absence that has been granted to him, and the bonus which it is hoped will enable him and Mrs Packwood to take a very wellearned holiday. It is right that the services of the public engineers of the country should be so recognised, for it is to be feared that if money w'ere the only inducement to men of his calibre to stay in New Zealand the Dominion would lose his services in a very short time. ROMANTIC ROLES. ONE WONDERS if, when Scott and Campbell-Black read Mr Mack Sennett’s film offer to star them in a romantic air story, they remembered that the originator of Hollywood's greatest comedian discovered the genius of Charlie Chaplin in “ Mabel’s Strange Predicament.” This is the value of the entrepreneur, whether a son Robertson or a Mack S’ennett, that he is a man who starts something. A week ago, amid the airmen’s doubts and fears, they knew that unexpected adventures were ahead of them, but they would hardly have dreamed of entering the Sennett school of acting under the direction of a man who looks like a muscular and genial bishop. Yet it would be quite in the tradition of the jolly adventurers of public imagination if they do step into a Sennett feature, for the world certainly wants to see them, and the airmen would be foolish not to collect this easy money.