The Wanganui Herald. [PUBLISHED DAILY.] FRIDAY, MARCH 31, 1911. LOST OPPORTUNITIES.

Wanganui Herald, Volume XXXXVI, Issue 13340, 31 March 1911, Page 4

The Wanganui Herald. [PUBLISHED DAILY.] FRIDAY, MARCH 31, 1911. LOST OPPORTUNITIES.

There is a wealth of wisdom in the concluding sentences of the letter published in another column over the signature of. a “Wanganui Boy.”

“Let us live for the future aswell as the present. They are wisest who look most ahead.” Thinkers are always warning ns to keep our eyes not only upon near and obvious, but upon remote and obscure consequences and workings. That which wc only notice with effort is often more important than that which hits us, on the head. Unfortunately, however, there seems to he a weakness in human nature and a tendency to live up to the present and let the future take care of itself; This applies equally to the State as to the individual, and history teems with the mistakes of men who failed to look ahead. There have been notable exceptions. The late John Ballance was one of these, for it was for posterity that he advocated land nationalisation amongst other tilings. With prophetic eye he looked ahead and said;

“The colony will be roused from its slumbers when it has come to realise the small quantity of arable land, as public estate, which is left; and politicians may then begin to feel that they have duties which transcend the mere exigencies of the hour.” That time is fast approaching, and the pity* of it is that the successors of the sweat Liberal statesman who broke up. land monopoly have meandered from the path ho so plainly laid out. in the public interests, and now seem ashamed of the

system which mlide the Liberals all-power-ful twenty years ago and gave a comfortable livelihood to thousands who would otherwise have been landless. A splendid opportunity has just been lost—it would almost seem deliberately and of set purpose —of perpetuating the policy introduced by Mr Ballance into New Zealand after so many years’ strenuous advocacy against almost overwhelming odds. We refer to the “Mokau Jones Estate,” which, has just been purchased by a syndicate of Manawatu and Hawke’s Day settlers. A valuable estate, with all its wealth of minerals and shipping interests, which in the course of years would prove one of the greatest national assets in the Dominion, has been lost to posterity. The irony of it is that Mr Robert McNab should be chairman of directors of the syndicate—the McNab who was Minister for Lands, succeeding such land nationalisms as John Ballance and John McKenzie. It is is enough to make the deceased statesmen turn in their graves, and cause the angels to weep. By and bye the Government wi!) no doubt be asked to assist in reading, if not railing, the valuable Mokau estate, with its almost unlimited supplies of coal; and public money—money which will be subscribed by the workers of the and others, who to-day. are absolutely blind to their own interests—will he allocated to increase the value of private holdings, as it has been in the past. The Government was urged to buy the land which it has “made” along the Main Trunk Line, through the construction of roads and the railway. It was offered the whole of the land in the Te Kniti township some years ago for £3 per acre—land that has since been sold at JUG to .£l2 per foot. But it failed—faile dmiserably—to retain the advantage won by the late Mr Ballance. Tim Government was urged ten years or more ago to purchase lands in the vicinity of the South Island Main Trunk railway; but the railway was put in hand without any attempt being made to scc.nve. a part of the unearned increment for the State. Similar opportunities are daily occurring and are daily allowed to slip hy. The Gis-bovnc-Eotorua railway is in progress, so is the South Island Midland, and land today can be purchased for a fiac'ion of what it will bo sold for when the lines arc through. Is the State to lose all? It looks like it. Well may “Wanganui Boy” say “Let us live for the future as well as the present. They arc wisest who look most ahead.” Oh for the rise ot another statesman upon whom John Ballance’s mantle might fall! We bold firmly to the conviction that the words he uttered nearly thirty years ago arc as true to-day as they were then: “If the Liberal Party desire a national policy on which it might with confidence stake its future prosperity and position, wc know of none which affords the same scope, or which would yield such splendid results as the nationalisation of the land.”