The Manawatu Herald. Tuesday, August 19th., 1913. NOTES AND COMMENTS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXV, Issue 1135, 19 August 1913, Page 2

The Manawatu Herald. Tuesday, August 19th., 1913. NOTES AND COMMENTS.

Referring to the proposed transfer of the Horowhenua County from Wellington to the Palmerston Hospital district, our Palmerston evening contemporary, in last night’s issue, takes a similar view to that expressed by this journal. It points out that the Otaki Sanatorium is the cause of the deadlock, and adds that “any board would naturally hesitate long before it accepted the liability for so heavy a drain upon its finances, and unless some other proposal is made it is difficult to see how the Horowhenua and Levin people can gain their objective and become attached to the Palmerston district. Consumptive sanatoria should undoubtedly be under the control of the State, and if the Government could be induced to take over the institution at Otaki the present ■ deadlock would be removed. The fight against consumption should be a national one, and hospital boards should not be expected to provide more than temporary -.accommodation for sufferers on their way to the central sanatoria. Unless some arrangement of this sort is made, the proposed secession of the Horowhenua County is unlikely to be brought about, for the Palmerston Board cannot in justice to the: bodies already contributing to the maintenance of local institutions take over the financial burden that is inseparable from the Otaki sanatorium,” We do not think the Government will take over the control ot the Otaki sanatorium. On the contrary, there is a disposition on the part of the Government to transfer the control of such institutions to Hospital Boards. In any case, it would not be a wise step on the part of the Palmerston district Board to be saddled with the administration and upkeep ot the Otaki Hospital. With these two institutions eliminated, the inclusion of the Horowhenua County in the Palmerston district would be plain sailing.

Mr Stead, writing in the August Review of Reviews upon the war

in the Balkans, points out that the races in conflict have not got anything like so far along the road of civilisation as the Western Europeans. He says : “ What appears murderous and horrible to us is legitimate, warfare in their eyes. I saw the blood stains on the wooden bridge at Constantinople a few weeks after cartloads of slaughtered Armenians had been taken across it to be. flung into a common grave outside the city, where for years they had dwelt secure. I spoke to newspaper correspondents fresh from the scene of the brutal murder of King Alexander and Queen Draga. In the Balkans, story after story of the atrocities of the Bulgarian guerilla bands was told me, some at any rate well authenticated. It is not surprising, therefore, that, in the furious clash of war which makes men act as elemental brutes, the Turks, Bulgars, Serbs and Greeks have perpetrated deeds of ghastly horror on one another, and also upon ,the defenceless villagers in their path. Little reliance can be placed on information on this—or, indeed, any—subject sent officially from Sofia, Athens or Belgrade, but European correspondents will soon tell us what has taken place.”