NOTES OF THE DAY

Dominion, Volume 14, Issue 94, 14 January 1921, Page 4

NOTES OF THE DAY

It is a sorry state to which the disorganisation of shipping has reduced the overseas mail services. In our news columns will be found a list of the dispatches from London during the past three months with the time occupied in transit in each case- To appreciate *these figures it is necessary io recall the conditions existing before the war. According to the Departmental report in 1914 the average time on the various routes from London to Wellington ranged from 34 Vo 38 days, the best dispatch by any route was 31 days and the worst 40 days. What is the position today? We find that in the three months 43 mails were scut from London. Of these, only five arrived in less than 40 days, the average was from 45 io 50 days, and no fewer than six mails were from 55 to 60 days on the way. This is a plunge back into conditions of many years ago with a vengeance. So far as we can discover from an examination of the dates of arrival and departure the complaints of an inefficient dispatch from London are not borne out. Delayed mails have come by all routes— Vancouver, San Francisco, Panama, and Suez. The most that can bo said is that whereas we gained by eight dispatches by Suez we lost by four. The present figures, unsatisfactory as they are, make a good prima facie case for the Post Office having done the best with the existing services.

During last year permits were issued for Che erection of 387 dwellings in the city area. How many of these buildings have been completed is not disclosed by the returns, but tho figure foreshadows a considerable relief in the housing shortage before long. It is, roughly, equal io the total number of dwellings in the old Karori borough. A feature worth noting is that of the 387 dwellings 263 are in Melrose, and provide evidence of the increasing concentration of population in the areas to the south and east of the city proper. In the city itself only 41 permits were applied for. In 1914 the total value of the new buildings and alterations for which permits were granted was slightly over a quarter of a million pounds. Lust year's figure mounted up to nearly the million mark. Even allowing for rhe increased cost of building materials and labour this shows a most substantial and satisfactory move forward on which citizens have every reason to congratulate themselves.

What happened to Montenegro is one of the mysteries of the war. . A few years ago it was plainly visible on the map; it had a king who was quite a picturesque figure in his way, a capital of which some people could remember the name, and a few knew how to pronounce. Then it strayed and got lost. In the war it began by being one of the Allies. Then some said it had been "conquered” against its will by Serbia and forced to become part of the new kingdom of Jugo-Sla«ia. Others asserted

that it had voted away its independence in November, 1918, just after the waxclosed, and thereby became part of Jugo-Slavia. The ex-King, residing in Paris, declares, whenever ho gets a chance, that he is still King, and is kept from his throne by Serbia. Serbia avers he was too friendly with Austria while the war was on. and does not deserve ever to return to his native land. After heroically maintaining her independence against the Turks for centuries, Montenegro seems in some mysterious way to have yielded' without a struggle to the Austrians under Mackensen in 1915. When Austria collapsed, the Jugo-Slavs came in, and the Montenegrin population has since looked upon them as conquerors and has been in a state, of unrest, with frequent ebullitions of which the latest is recorded in this morning’s news. In some quarters Italy is alleged to be the villain of the piece, and it is asserted that the Jugo-Slavs only occupied the country to prevent the Italian Government from grabbing it. In the meantime Montenegro remains one of those numerous problems of Eastern Europe at which everybody is concerned and for which nobody lias a remedy.

With the president of the Nurserymen’s Conference telling them that their Botanical Gardens contain some of rhe finest collections of plants he has ever seen, Wellingtonians may scon awake to a realisation of the splendid work that has been done of recent years in the improvement of the city reserves. The old days of untidy grass, relieved only bj’ gloomy belts of pines and macrocarpa, have gone for good, and in the Town Belt and the new parks and gardens laid out of recent years a fine variety of young tx-ees and shrubs is making excellent headway. A complete transformation is not to be effected in a day, text from what has already been achievc-d it is possible to see what an extension of the work in the Allure may bring about. With intelligent development the city can bo made one of the most beautiful places in the Dominion. A necessary preliminary to that end, as we have frequently pointed out, is some general working plan of future improvements so far as they can be foreseen.

In the address he delivered at the Nurserymen’s Conference yesterday, the Director of Forestry (Captain M'lntosh Ellis) was able to show that the policy he is retained to formulate and administer is already taking clear shape and giving a clear promise of results highly profitable to the Dominion and its people. 'At this early stage the Director of Forestry and his Department are faced by an uphill task in putting an end to the wasteful destruction of forests and securing the most economical use of all timber resources, the more so since three or four years must be spent in training a staff of forest technicians. Now that the work has been well begun, however, it need not be doubted that its useful results will steadily expand. It is very clearly established that systematic forestry offers this country its only method of averting conditions of timber scarcity which in the comparatively neax - future would seriously prejudice our most important industries, add heavily to the cost of dwellings, and in other ways penalise the community and add to the cost of living. As Captain Ellis mentioned yesterday, there are questions still unsettled in regard to the growth of native and imported trees, but so far as the public is concerned such questions only affect the measure of profit to be derived from provident management of the forests. The profit in any case will be great. With such prospects raised there can be no question about the wisdom of giving the Forestry Department all the working scope it needs to enable it to secure maximum results—results which will appear as time goes on not only in the provision of timber supplies at reasonable prices, but in the establishment on a permanent basis of a great primary industry on lands which hitherto have been falling rapidly into the condition of idle wastes. The excellent understanding Captain Ellis seems to have reached with the nurserymen of the Dominion is an indication, not by any means the first of its kind, that his policy and proposals are best appreciated by those who are in a position to considex- them from a standpoint of technical knowledge.