CORRESPONDENCE. A NATIONAL PARK.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 88, 15 April 1911, Page 9

CORRESPONDENCE. A NATIONAL PARK.

TO TH2 EDITOR. Sir, — Football and hockey, and other j outdoor games are now in full swing. The players are many and the grounds are few, and widely scattered. It has been more than once pointed out by men interested in sport that there is plenty of space for a national park or sports grounds within five minutes' run in the cars from C'ourtenay-place and through the tunnel, or at most fifteen minutes by car to Constable-street terminus to that portion of the town belt, whereby the expenditure of a little money in knocking off a few ridges and filling in some small gullies, a park could be made where 100,000 troops, horse, artillery, and infantry, could march past in review order, in the presence of some hundreds of thousands of people assembled on the hill-side overlooking the parade ground. The place may be viewed from the southend of Mount Victoria road. Was it creditable to Wellington that on the visit of Lord Kitchener, a few thousand School Cadets and Boy Scouts had to be trucked out to the Hutt and there marched past the great "K. of Iv.", because there ie no suitable park in the capital city of New Zealand? Has anyone already forgotten tho deplorable jumble in the Basin Reserve last Dominion day celebration? The people were hustled and bustled, the whole thing was a farce, for want of room; to handle less than ICOO men. and boys. Boy Scouts report that Baden-Powell Chief of ths Scouts, will soon be here. He may bo expected to review tho young hopefuls out at the Hutt or at Johnsonville. How a national park could be made, and how financed in the making, with little, or possibly no expense to the city, is another matter. — I am, etc., TOWN BELT. Wellington, 11th April, 1911.