OUR POLITICIANS.

Northland Age, Volume 1, Issue 12, 1 November 1904, Page 3

OUR POLITICIANS.

WESTLAND AND NORTH OF AUCKLAND LAND. Mr. Witheford (Auckland City) asked the Government, Whether a speech of the Premier’s is correctly reported when he states that one acre in his electoral district is worth fifty acres in the North of Auckland, and does this erroneous impression account for fifty times the amount of public money having been expended on the West coast of the South Island compared to that expended in the North of Auckland P ORGANISED DEFENCE NEEDED. Sir W. R. Russell (Hawke’s Bay): It would appear that we possessed some of the finest material for the making of soldiers, but in the present condition of our organisation it would be impossible for the New Zealand forces to take the field with any chance of success against any foe that attacked us. Some people professed to think that we would never be attacked, but he believed that all the colonies of Australasia would have, after the Russian-Japanese war, to face the question of a very possible incursion of the yellow race within a reasonable time. If so, were we going to submit to it? He hoped not. Surely the experience of the war now proceeding pointed to the absolute necessity for organised defence. CITY v. COUNTRY. Mr. Major (Hawera): There was, however, a feeling abroad throughout the rural districts that too much money was S’ ' expended in Wellington on public ngs. Country people realised there was a dearth of money for roads, bridges, and tracks; also many country districts wanted further school accommodation, and postal and railway accommodation, including sheds for their produce. Local bodies were being starved for money to carry out urgent works and would resent a proposal to expend £40,000 on a new building. The farmers and graziers and dairy-fanners did not ask for luxuries—they asked only for necessities and reasonable conveniences to carry on their most important of all work, namely, the build-ing-up and maintenance of the true m ealtn and prosperity of the country. PHYSICAL DRILL IN SCHOOLS. Mr. Ell (Christchurch City): He wished to refer to tbe question put by his colleague Mr. Taylor to the Minister for Education in regard to the physical drill in schools. He had put a question on the same subject to the Minister some weeks ago, and had received a very unsatisfactory reply. The Minister evidently regarded the matter as one of small moment. He wanted to draw the Minister’s attention to this: that in the Act passed in 1901 this House gave an emphatic instruction to the Education Boaids to impart physical drill in their schools, and to report to the Minister. That clause of the Act was specially put in in order that there should be no escape from that duty, which the House considered of very great importance. But, notwithstanding that, several Education Boards had made no reports regarding physical drill. The question was regarded as one of great importance in the American educational system, and it was (specially regarded so in Sweden. He saw from tbe reports of the proceedings of the third International Congress for the Protection and Welfare of Children, held in London in 1902 under the patronage of King Edward VII., and presided over by Earl Beauchamp, a number of the leading medical men and leading men on education made special reference to it. In the paper read by Sir James Crichton Brown there was tins on page 9: —

“ Mr. Arnold White has told us that of 11,000 men who volunteered at Manchester for service in South Africa only 3,000 were accepted as physically fit, and of these only 1,200 came up to the standard of what a soldier ought to be; and Colonel Borrett, the Inspector-General of Recruiting, in his recently published report, intimates that of 75,750 men medically examined last year as many as 22,286, or 29*04 per cent., were rejected for various ailments or want of physical development. ... Of 3,600 recruits medically examined at York, Leeds, and Sheffield (large towns) in four years prior to 1901, as many as 1,710, or 47| per cent., were classed as not up to the army standard, which has, it is to be borne in mind, been repeatedly lowered, and no# stands at sft. 3in. for infantry of the line, and oft. sin. for dragoons, a fact which reveals widespread physical unfitness amongst our young working-men.”