PRAISE OF DOMINION.

Waikato Times, Volume 118, Issue 19765, 21 December 1935, Page 26 (Supplement)

PRAISE OF DOMINION.

| A VISITOR’S IMPRESSIONS. | i | PREJUDICE AGAINST RAILWAYS. i ! “I cannot understand why there is | a prejudice against travelling by train | in this country,” said Mr 11. B. Knapp, of Bournemouth, England, who is in Christchurch in the course of a holiday tour of the Dominion. Mr Knapp was told on the boat to travel as much as he could by service car, and after two months in the country his impression is that, on the average, the service cars are not, so wonderful as he was led to believe. “They were not so bad on the West Coast,” he said, “where they let the hood down and one had a good chance to see the country through which one is travelling; but in the North Island, with the fixed tops, it is impossible to get the view of the country that one gets by train. It is hard to understand why anyone should deprecate the railways. They are your own, and presumably it would pay the public to use them.” That, however, was the one criticism advanced by the visitor, who, after two months in New Zealand, is delighted with the country, and speaks highly of the kindness of the people and their eagerness to make a visitor feel at home. A Fine Country. “You have a fine country,” he said, “and the whole place has a definitely English atmosphere. You would appreciate my meaning if you compared this country with South Africa. The language and the-system of Government there is English, but such a large proportion of the people are not.” Emigration, Mr Knapp continued, had been advocated in England, but it was a problem to know where to send the eihigrants. He had heard it said that New Zealand should have a larger population, but there was the question of getting suitable types for the Dominion conditions, and what to do with any influx of people that came. It was essential to consider the marketing of ' increased produc-1 tion if immigrants were put on to ■ the land. j

The burning of forests, both in the North Island and in the South, was another thing which Mr Knapp lamented. One big stretch between Blenheim and Nelson, he said, had been burnt about fifteen years ago, and to-day was only covered with undergrowth.