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Hokitika Guardian, 10 December 1924, Page 2

Ip it is seriously felt in Japan that events like the American cruise tend to impair peaceful and friendy international relations, the result logically should he to impart an impetus to a movement in favour of a furtehr limitation of naval armaments Only a few

days ago, .however, it was reported that although Japan was willing to send delegates to another 'Washington Conference, the majority of Japanese experts agreed that on account of popular sentiment against America, further concessions in the matter of naval reduction or change in the number of auxiliary craft and aeroplanes were unlikely. Unless this opinion is falsified on being put to the test, reason may appear for suspecting that incidents like the American cruise are being seized upon by some elements in Japan as pretexts on which to stir up ill-feeling against America. An element of faith and trust between nations clearly is essential if additional positive safeguards of peace are to lie erected hv the further mutual limitation of naval and other armaments. Continued progress in this direction is much to he desired. The range and striking power of modern fighting ships were impressively indicated in the recent world cruise of the Hood and 11opul.se. with their attendant light cruisers. The American cruise may he expected to throw additional light on the whole question and incidentally to emphasise the desirability, from the broadest standpoint, of establishing an effective control over the powers of destruction inherent in modern naval armaments. No easy advance will lie made on those lines, however, if feelings of suspicion and mistrust like those now apparently rampant in Japan are allowed to gather head unchecked.

“What you need in this country,” said Mr 11. Bidone. Counsul-Ceneral for the Argentine in New Zealand, who has just returned to Auckland from a tour of the Bay of Plenty and Poverty Bay districts, “is more population. 1 saw a great deal of country not being worked, and a great deal of the alnd under culivation could lie worked more if you bad tin* labour. As the British Colonial Office, in a recent publication says, ‘countries without population are merely expressions of geographical areas and without population all advancement is impossible.’ Hi Argentina a recent project of colonisation law proposes to give the executive power the right to expropriate for colonisation up to 50 per cent, of the land owned by a proprietor, though no land shall lie expropriated if the owner colonises 50 per cent of it. selling it in parcels for agricultural exploitation. The price of the land is to be determined by a tribunal from evidence taken at the sectional courts, and when notice has been served the land may he at nine expropriated. We have the advantage that our soil is rather better than yours, and we go in more lor lucerne w 1 1 ii•]i is the best feed for stock. Me have 23.000.000 acres of it. and it lias proved one of the best aids to colonisation. Feed was plentiful in the Poverty Buy district, of which T formed a very favourahe opinion. The sheep were in first-class condition. There is no doubt that your wool is better than .ours, and your pedigree sheep are far superior. 1 have no hesitation in saving that a much larger trade in stud sheep will be worked up with us. 1 our beef, however, is inferior to ours, partly 1 leva use you have concentrated more on the dairying type, and as regards your exports. because you export too old. We export chilled beef at years old, each carcase weighing cCO lb.; we ship frozen beef at 3) years, each carcase weighing 7.101 b. ; and we ship ‘Continental type' beef at 15 years curb carcase weighing fiOOlh. 1 on think nothing of exporting beef older than 35 years for your English market.”