PRESS COMMENTS.

Hokitika Guardian, 6 June 1927, Page 4

PRESS COMMENTS.

Tbe fluctuation of Jand values must be an influential factor while people can buy and sell land and those dear people who think that the Government can prevent anyone offering more for land than it is worth or selling it at less than it should bring should let us know the details of their schemes, because they are asking us to believe that they do something which even the Bolsheviks have failed to do. If they can show bow the Government can stnmilse land values in a practical way they should do so instead of talking in generalities that suggest muddle more than anything else. Air Stevenson had courage enough to give the public the Young Xew Zealand Party’s scheme and to argue for it; his successors should lie just as brave. Their fate can be no worse.—“ Southland Times.’’

Thanks to unsurpassed natural advantages and the work of the Plunket Society and like agencies, there is no country in the world which keeps more of its babies alive, after they are horn than Xew Zealand does, and the general death rate of this country, which has had a falling tendency (though the figure for last year showing a slight increase as compared with the two last preceding years), is also about the lowest in the world. Our rate of

natural increase (excess of births over deaths), therefore, compares well with the figures for other countries. Tts tendency, however, has been to fall. The increase of our population is kept high by immigration, but a larger proportion of it should bo made by the loeallv born.—Dunedin “Star.”