The Manawatu Herald. Thursday, January 18, 1912, NOTES AND COMMENTS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIII, Issue 1095, 18 January 1912, Page 2

The Manawatu Herald. Thursday, January 18, 1912, NOTES AND COMMENTS.

A large native meeting has been called lor January 29th, at Waahi (Mahuta’s settlement) to consider the position of Dr Pomare, member for the Western Maori electorate, it being alleged that he is not eligible to sit as a Maori representative owing to being a three-quarter caste. Apropos of the above, “J.H.W.” writes as follows to the New Plymouth News: “lam surprised at such steps being taken. I can assure you and your many readers that Dr Pomare is a half-caste without a doubt. His mother was a halfcaste, and his father was also a hall-caste. Had his mother

wedded a Eurepean he would then have been a quarter Maori aud thre-quarters European. But such is not: the case. That being the position, his election cannot be upset through such misrepresentation.”

Foxton is not the only Borough which finds its Town Hall a paying concern. The Oamaru Borough Council according to the Mail, at its last meeting passed a resolution authorising the payment of to the Sinking Fund Commissioners of the Town Hall loan. Including this payment no less a sum than has been paid out of the profits of the venture towards the reduction oi the amount ot borrowed locally. The Government loan of ,£4OOO, upon which the rate of interest is only per cent., wipes itself out automatically in a given number ot years, so that, if the revenues keep up well, in a few years’ time the loan will be extinguished, and the scheme should thereafter yield substantial amounts either for town improvements or towards a reduction of rates.

Speaking to a Wanganui Herald representative recently, an Australian gentleman, who is visiting the Dominion for the first time, expressed himself as both surprised aud delighted at what he termed the “thoroughness” in evidence on this side of the Tasman, where the provincial towns were not being overshadowed by the capital cities to the same extent as in Australia. There, he said, the tendency was to cram everything possible into the centres, with the result that the country districts were being drained of much that was their rightful due. “ New Zealand,” continued the visitor, “ appears to an Australian, at any rate, to be a country of cities: its population is well distributed, and the excellence of its system of borough council controllis something to be wondered at. In my own laud we have become accustomed to thinking that anything is good enough for ‘ the country ’; here it appears that nothing is too good. I was more than surprised to find that Wanganui, with its 15,000 inhabitants, could boast ot an electric tram system and a municipal supply for almost every demand of the community. Had Wanganui been a town in, say, New South Wales, aud the same distance from Sydney as it is from Wellington, I’m afraid there would have been a different story to tell; for, were such a contingency possible, one would see the same state of affairs as now pertains in so many parts of that and other States of the Commonwealth, where I have seen many towns with populations close to the 10,000 mark whose fire-fighting apparatus consisted of a few lines of hose on an obsolete hand reel — an outfit that would be hard put to extinguish a burning rubbishheap —while drainage, lighting, and means of transit are on the same 1 fifty - years - behind ■ thetimes ’ plan.”