The Manawatu Herald. Saturday, January 31ST, 1914. NOTES AND COMMENTS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVI, Issue 1202, 31 January 1914, Page 2

The Manawatu Herald. Saturday, January 31ST, 1914. NOTES AND COMMENTS.

This Hen, F. M. B. Fisher, Minister for Marine, has acceded to the request of the Harbour Board and Borough Council, to visit the local port and inspect the river channel and whait. The Minister will arrive on Monday and will be formally welcomed to the town by the Mayor and will then be taken in band by the Harbour Board, who will pilot him over the port, subsequently unfolding to him the disabilities under which the Board is working In an attempt to make the pert, what nature intended it to be, cue of the principal shipping centres on this coast. Tne Board's troubles are not, of course, with the Marine Department, which has done all in its power to assist the Board since being reconstructed. It was, by the way, at the suggestion of a former Minister for Marine that steps were taken to again bring ;hc Board ini/., being which, king accompiishc-o, the Marine Department minded over ali its endowments to the Boara and bus placed no obstacle in the way of the Board’s operations. Had the Railway Department acted in the same fair and generous manner by transferring its rights and privileges to the Board, everything would have been plain sailing. Dual control of the port hampers the Board in its operations and stultifies its finance, while the revenue earned by the port is diverted into the coffers of the working railways account without the return of a penny piece for harbour improvements. The Minister’s visit will enable the Board to place all the facts before the Hon. Mr Fisher, wuiie at the some lima a personal inspection of the port will enable iv get a dearer insight into details which will assist Cabinet in its deliberations in settling matters between the Railway Department and the Board, We believe the Government is anxious to treat with the Board in a fair and honourable spirit and we trust the Minister’s visit will result in further clearing the way to a final and satisfactory settlement as between the Board and Railway Department.

A recent cable message from Adelaide is of interest to Roman Catholics in this country, wherein it is stated that Archbishop O’Reilly has made an official statement regarding the Roman Catholic marriage law. His Church, he said, looked upon divorce, from whatever cause, as absolutely unlawful. Maniage to Catholics was essentially sacred. The civil law had nullified many laws of the Church, and claimed the right to nullify the contract of marriage, but the power over the Sacrament of Marriage the Church held was inalienably her own. The Ne Temere decree was merely an assertion of the right which the Church had always claimed. A Catholic must be married in the presence of a priest, otherwise it was no marriage before God. The Church condemned mixed marriages. If the man was a nonCatholic, the children of the marriage must be brought up as Catholics.