LIFTS LITTLE WANTS.

Wairarapa Daily Times, 7 December 1926, Page 4

LIFTS LITTLE WANTS.

Good Roads. The value of good roads in both city and country is beyond estimation. The wonderful quickening of life in cities and towns where passable roads take the place of the elementary tracks which were at one time considered all that were neees’sary to provide highways for residents and business people of the locality, comes under notice every week. The, provision of roads which will £arry traffic in all weathers renders communication easy, and sends the value of property and business up to a marked degree. Masterton has fairly good roads for the most part, but the main highway northwards nearly to AYoodville leaves much to be desired in places. From a point a mile or two this side of AYoodville to Danncvirke, there are long stretches of tar-sealed roads which make for easy motor riding. AA'here upkeep on these roads was formerly heavy, tho expenditure has been reduced to a minimum as the result of the use of tar or bitumen. AVhat ■should be aimed at in Alasterton is to tar-seal every road in the borough, and thus eliminate the expensive and therefore stupid policy of chipping the streets. The more populated thoroughfares should be completed first, gradually extending to the outskirts of the borough. Year by year the rates must go up in ALutseiTon, and something in the nature of less expenditure on road maintenance is necessary in order to counter-balance this in Some small measure. * * * * The Pioneering Spirit. The pioneering spirit still remains to a large extent in the Dominion. It is not foreign even to the AA'airarapa today. AVhat is it that tho pioneer possesses that hires him further.and further afield. Is it a primeval spirit that lifts John Jones from the city and dumps him down in the heart of the wilderness? A traveller from the city looks out of the train window or from a motor car to sec a lonely house, miles from anywhere, set on a rise, with a small garden plot at the side of it, more or less dilapidated outbuildings, and a waving handkerchief showing in the doorway, held in the hand of a woman or a child. Nine out of every ten who s'ee this will ask: “AVhat do tlrey sce in living here?” or “Why do they stop ” It is the “pioneering spirit.” There must be sonic ingredient in the lonely settler’s make-up that fits him for this kind of life. Away from everybody, far from any town, and perhaps not within sight of a railway! If is enough to cause a fiat dweller to shudder. Y'et there arc Scores of such settlers in the AA'airarapa alone. * * * * The Valuable Tropics. It must be half a century since an American humorist asked in plaintive numbers whether tha Caucasian was played out. The same question arises from the address of a German chemist, which emphasised the fact that the world’s resources of oil and coal were slowly nearing exhaustion. Unless the white races were to suceamb to the coloured races’, the whites must solve the problem of tapping the heat of the tropics in order to provide light, heat and power. Recent inventions, sucli as synthetic nitrogen, liquid coal and helium from oxygen, seemed to warrant optimism regarding the further domination of the whites, but it would be better if the nations, instead of fighting each other, were united in the struggle to bring tropical warmth, from the Amllcy of the Nile to Europe. AA'e learn from an American source that the supplies of oil in the United States will not be more than enough to meet the demands! of six or seven years. AA'e are promised within the life of a generation a world famine in timber, and the coal resources of the world, while they will last for a considerable time, are yearly growing more difficult of exploitation. There are undoubtedly great reserves of energy in the universe if the right means of tapping them can be found. And it is probably the same with regard to the food supply. A closer Study of agricultural methods will enable the farmer to increase the productivity of his land considerably. But it looks as if. in the end, the value of the tropics as a source of food and of power will become greater than in the past. The native of those regions can satisfy his needs with ease, and he will have no reason to envy the inhabitants of the temperate regions, who are at present his masters.