NOTES AND COMMENTS

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXV, Issue 16484, 25 February 1914, Page 8

NOTES AND COMMENTS

In these columns yesterday the “ Dominion ” was credited with referring to the “loquacious member for "VVclling-

ton South” while'its allusion was really to the member for Avon. Probably neither Mr Ilindmarsh nor Mr Russell will bo greatly perturbed by the confusion of names since they both get from the Conservative newspapers many tributes of the same kind. But it is interesting to be reminded that when ready sneakers like these two gentlemen criticise the Government or offer any opposition to a ministerial proposal they are twitted with loquacity. It may be to distinguish them from the half dozen gentlemen on the other side of the House of Representatives who never venture upon anything more than a hesitating and disjointed expression of approval of some Government measure and are invariably applauded by the same critics for their eloquence.

February 25, 1744. was a fateful day for Britain. The French, accompanied by the Young Pretender, had been threatening the invasion of the kingdom and there seemed a real danger of their landing in Essex or Suffolk. “ We have come nearer to a crisis than I expected,” wrote Walpole on February 16. • “There are sixteen French ships-of-the-line off Torbay, in all probability to draw our fleet from Dunkirk, where they have two men-of-war and sixteen large Indiamen to transport eight thousand foot and two thousand horse which are there in the town. There has been some difficulty to persuade the people of the imminence of our danger, but yesterday the King sent a messenger to both Houses to acquaint us that he has certain information of the Young Pretender being in France, and of the designed invasion from thence, in concert with the disaffected here.” Seven days later Walpole wrote that there was “no doubt of the invasion,” and that Sir John Hands had sailed for Dunkirk “to try to burn their transports.” Sir John, with the Channel fleet, came within a league of the French squadron off the coast of Sussex on February 25, and thousands of anxious Britons watched from the shore. But the expected engagement did not take place. The wind changed and the French fleet slipped away. Then a violent storm sprang up and the transports were scattered and wrecked. The danger of invasion disappeared without a shot being fired.

Lent was observed much more strictly in past centuries than it is to-day, and it used to lead to what one historian calls “ a prodigious consumption of fish of all classes.” The exchequer accounts for the thirty-first year of the reign of Edward 111. show, for example, that the royal household consumed during Lent 9000 red herrings, 3600 white herrings, two barrels of 6turgeon, 1300 stockfish, 89 congers and 320 mulwells. Herring pies were regarded as dainties in those days, and the town of Yarmouth was bound by ancient charter to send the monaroh annually a hundred herringe baked in tw'onty-four pasties. The fourteenth century cooks used to send to table portions of the whale, the porpoise and the grampus in the Lenten season. “These animals,” says one writer quaintly, “ being considered then as fish, were held as allowable food in Lent, and it is lamentable to think how much sin they thus occasioned among our forefathers, before they were discovered to be mammalian.” “ Puddynge of porpoise ” w r as served at the royal tables as late as the reign of Henry VIII.

Fifty years hence the tree-corering of New Zealand will he vastly different from the native forest vegetation of today, which will be preserved only in park and State reserves. The woodlands of the future will not occupy the places of the present forests, which will be given up to the farmers’ crops and grass paddocks and to orchards which will supply many of the great markets in the Northern Hemisphere with fruit. The kauri, the totara, the rimu and the kahikatea will be commercial timbers of the past. The plains and hills which are not suitable for close faming will be covered with exotic conifers and with and our New Forest will give the old-time land of the kauri a dress which will be a curious mixture of the pine woods of the North American seaboard and the gum trees of Australia and Tasmania, The ‘‘ragged penury of. shade” of the eucalyptus will be vastly unlike the thick dark roof of the Maori forest, and even the heavy pines of Oregon or Maine will be but poor compensation for the original trees of this country. But they will be quick-growing and soon convertible into timber, and in this fact will lie their advantage over the indigenous trees.

This is the picture suggested by Mr Hay’s paper on reafforestation, read at tho Nurserymen’s Conference in Auckland on Monday. Mr Hay’s opinion is that tho New Zealand forests of the future will chiefly consist of the quickest-growing conifers, with an admixture of eucalyptus, which will succeed on almost any soil. Even the oak 'and the elm and the ash of the Old Country will not bo so profitable as the Australian gums and the American pines. A start has already been made to plant these new forests in the dominion ; in fact the Waiotapu and Kaingaroa plantations in the pumice country of the north are nearly twenty years old, and many miles of bare fern hills and of scrub-grown valleys have been clothed with a garment of foliage. The larch has been extensively planted at Waiotapu, hut it has now been condemned in favour of tho gum and the Oregon pine and the Californian redwood. The chango from tho old forests to the “new chum” trees is not likely to make the Now Zealand bush-lover happy, but it seems to be an inevitable process in the recasting of the country’s timber scheme. And all the time the native forest, which no imported trees can approach in point of beauty or in usefulness, is being hacked down and burned as if it were best removed from the face of ■ the earth.

From its pedestal of “ independence ” tho Wellington “Post” scolds with delightful impartiality all the political parties, but it reserves its unkindesb cuts of all for the Reformers, the superior peoplo who have appointed themselves the special custodians of “ law and order ” and undertaken the regeneration of the whole public life of tho dominion. Just now it is reproving the Prime Minister 1 and his friends for joining forces with the “ Red Feds.” “ While Mr Semple,

organiser of the Red Federation, i® absent in Australia,” it says, “his] ordinary work in New Zealand is be- J ing done, to some extent, by member# j of the Government and their journals.’ 1 1 Of course Mr Massey will strongly resent the suggestion that he,is giving' assistance to the forces of “ revolution 1 and anarchy.” But the “Post” is insistent and makes out its case for everyone to see. “The Reds,” it continues, “ had cause to see greyness and blackness in the pictures "of success which they had luridly painted, but to-day the Government is giving themj some comfort. The Reds worked for 1 Reform,’ and now ‘ Reform ’ is working for the Reds. Is it on the principle of noblesse oblige, or merely the com- j mon reciprocity— ‘ one good turn do j serves another ’ P The method by which the Ministerialists, including Mr Massey, are resuscitating the sorely smitten Red body is with political patent medicine. It is alleged that the public generally is, or will be, divided into two sections—‘ Reform ’ Liberals and ‘ R-ed Fed.’ Liberals. The Government’s object is to suggest, hint, or insinuate that streaks, patches, or blotches of ‘ Red-Fedness ’ can be suspected in all persons who oppose the present Administration.” The “ Lyttelton Times” pointed out to Mr Massey weeks ago that his anxiety to associate the Liberals with the “ Red Feds ” was likely to get his own party into trouble.! Now the “Post” has found him out he probably will' be sorry he did not take this friendly warning.

The “Post” with infinite patience and forbearance fitting attributes of an “ independent ” journal—offers a similar service to the Prime Minister. “The Government can rightly charge against certain Parliamentary Liberals and their journalistic backers an attempt to draw the Reds into, some kind of working alliance with the present Oppositionists,” it explains to Mr Massey, “but it is ludicrous to deduce that a man or woman who is not, or will not be, a ‘ Reform ’ Liberal, is, or will be, a ‘ Red Fed.’ Liberal. There are many thousands .of Liberals throughout the country whose label is neither ‘ Reform ’ nor * Red Fed.’ Those thousands are against raw Redness in political or social life, but this fact certainly does not lead them t<? accept the ‘ Reform ’ policy holus boluif including the land section, which may help to send tho party into exile at the next election after this year’s battle.” As everyone knows, the Reformers are much more concerned about the disposition of the “Red Fed.” votes than the Liberals are. The Reformer* have always been ready to make terms with the revolutionary Socialists at election time, and if their old allies should fail them at the polls next De« cember they will have little chance of retaining their present majority in Parliament.