PRESS COMMENT

Hokitika Guardian, 10 January 1929, Page 8

PRESS COMMENT

It will hardly be denied that more rigid restrict ions upon the speed of motor vehicles and more drastic penalties for incompetent or dangerous driving are as much needed bore ns in the older and more closely peopled countri: Tile pedestrian is soiueiiiues careless or reckless, but even the worst intentioned man •.n foot cannot, run over a motor-car. On the one band it •is necessary to protect people on foot from the eh r-present men. ire of. tl o high-speed vehicle on the other, a way must be found to protect rash and ir rospoiisibe drivers ..gainst < :>v,i ethei ; and both of these problems urgently demand solution.—Auckland "Star."

The difih-uhy regarding die suppression of names is to reconcile two rights —the right of t lie publie'to protection, i ll** right of a first offender to recover From a lause without suffering the handicaps of public conviction. Tile two

~;i :i : : 1 1v ee iv.-miciiod u ben l be" se; ond i,- ervsud-elear. when the offender's age recoid. and circumstances, especially (!••.> immediate circumstances of bis lapse niead strongly on bis behalf. It is not only better, ii is necessary, therefore, that discrimination should be severe especially when it is administering a law in its experimental stages rather than that it should be too tolerant and Lake too many chances. A .Magistrate appealed to order a name Hi in- suppiessed iuoil.-, to be as good a psychologist as be is a judge of mater hi i facts if Iu 1 is not to be astray as {.'ken as be is right.—Christchurch ‘‘Sun.” .Mam has learnt the story till the skies, but lie lias yet to learn the habits of the mysterious creatures biding in the black depths of the sea. ; .Professor Johannes Schmidt and bis party are willing to give nearly three years of their lives in order that this may he done. For three weeks they will be working m New Zealand waters and teaching New Zealanders tilings they have not had an oppoi--1 unity to learn. Scientific expeditions should have more than passing interest for the Dominion .because, in an indirect way, we have been linked with great ones before. CapTain Cooonly circumnavigated New Zealand after having come to the Pacific lathe purpose of observing the transit of Venus at Tahiti. The voyage t ; this country was not made until tie commission entrusted to him by th Koval Society bad been lullillod. It was iiroin New Zealand ports that Antarctic explorers, too, set out on their great adventures that men might know what was to be found in thru white desolation. But apart from these tilings. New Zealand lias a welcome for the Danes, ami there will lie no cavil at the expression of 'th? hope that all perils will lie removed from the lonely ocean paths that ihe\ have yet to travel.—'" The Sun,” Auckland.