DAY BY DAY.

Waikato Times, Volume 105, Issue 17752, 2 July 1929, Page 6

DAY BY DAY.

This is the day of the motor bus, of its speed, its flexibiH/lotor Buses litv, and its increasln ing reliability. FifUnlted States, teen years ago the bus was practically unknown. To-day, according to a pamphlet of the Greyhound Lines, there are 6700 motor carrier companies in the United States, operating more than 35,000 buses over 234,000 miles of highway and carrying one billion passengers a year. If the latter figure seems incredible it is worth pointing out that fares paid on steam railroads have decreased from 1,234,862,048 in 1920 to 829,854,522 In 1927, while the railroads themselves admit that the figures for 1928 will show a further alarming drop. They are turning to buses both as feeders and in place of lines which they are abandoning. To operate a small local train in America costs, it is said, 5s a mile; a motor bus costs between Is and Is 3d. Especially noteworthy is the increase in night travel by bus and the rapid development of through service from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

Figures recently published of personal experience on Temperance board H.M.S. Rodney in during the fleet exerThe Navy, cises in the Mediterranean are very interesting as showing the temperance in the navy. Of the 962 petty officers and lower-deck ratings Who are entitled to the daily ration of rum—that is to say, the lower-deck complement less the young seamen under the age of twenty—6l3 preferred to draw their threepence a day “savings” in lieu of the ration. Instead of the time-honoured rum the men are drinking tea in large quantities, while the soda fountains for the supply of fruit drinks at a penny a glass are becoming daily more popular, and, of course, the quality of navy cocoa is proverbial. Five and twenty years ago it would have been difficult to find a ship in the navy in which 10 per cent of the ship’s company who were entitled to draw rum preferred to take u» the allowance.

After the war the warrant officers of the fleet voluntarily gave up their rum ration, which they and the petty officers are allowed to have neat instead of diluted with three parts of water, but rum is still to be obtained on payment In the warrant officers’ messes of most of H.M. ships. On the other hand, it is to be found very seldom indeed on a wardroom list, and any trafficking of the men’s rations is "regarded as a very serious disciplinary offence.