MID-SCOTLAND CANAL.

Waikato Times, Volume 108, Issue 18159, 25 October 1930, Page 9

MID-SCOTLAND CANAL.

(To the Editor.) Sir,—l noticed in a recent issue of your valued paper the report of the committee appointed to investigate the Forth to Clyde proposition. On the same subject General Sir lan Hamilton, of Gallipoli fame, in a letter to the London Times, says—“I see that, the project for a MidScotland canal has been turned down by the Government Committee appointed to consider it. This is not the moment to query a verdict which will act as a corpse-rpviver upon the Nationalist movement in Scotland. Only on one point would I beg you to grant me a little bit of space. The committee are quoted as ' saying in their report ‘that the employment of so large a number as 25,000 men on the construction of a canal only 29 land miles in length would present problems of organisation and supervision of the greatest difficulty. ’ All the technical experience of works in any way comparable with this project indicates a curve which would only approach its peak about half-way through the construction period. It does not therefore appear that the canal has any bearing on the immediate problem of unemployment.’ “Now, sir, if- you look hack through your own files to December 1, 1922, you will find that the canal was then 'decried on similar grounds—i.e.,' because (it was held) two years must elapse before any large proportion of the 25,000 diggers would be taken on. Does this then mean that the critics either then or now believed that in two years’ time there would be no more unemployment? Not at all; it means that they think another political party will be in power then and will reap the advantage of the employment of the slowly perishing West of Scotland. “Not often, I should say, has the after-me-the-deluge’ point of view been more strikingly put. Now that 'Dizzy’ is dead no politician seems to have the pluck to say after-me-the-canal.”—l am, etc., DUNT OCHER.