Rangitikei Advocate. FRIDAY, MARCH 15, 1907. SECOND EDITION. EDITORIAL NOTES

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXI, Issue 8764, 15 March 1907, Page 2

Rangitikei Advocate. FRIDAY, MARCH 15, 1907. SECOND EDITION. EDITORIAL NOTES

1. THE Minister of Lands was inter - 0 viewed during his recent visit to ! ' Taihape by a Times "reporter, who .' asked his opinion on tho present sys--3 tern of balloting for land. ? The case <, discussed was that of the recent °; ballot at Pohangina, where, in one q case, there were 420 applicants for 2 one section . Many similar ballots ) have occurred all over the coutry, * but Mmisters'appear hitherto to have j regarded the law as no more alterable ii than those of the Medes and Persians. - Mr MeXab has, however, a thorough ' grasp of the position and of its evils. !? He J remarked that "in the Po--1 haugiua case 420 people were pre- '• pared to give the price fixed by the 1 Government. The market value of ( I the land would perhaps bo 50 per cent • i more. In other words, in the open 1 ■ market 'the "land would have pro- ] \ duced 50 'per cent over and above

the price asked by the Government. The successful balloter lias, therefore, 50 per cent of the value of the laud that ho cau pocket if he is able 1 to get his transfer put through by > the Land Board. Thus there was at once an inducement to got rid' of ' the ■ section rather than to keep and to ■ work it, and lis worried the Board until ho secured a transfer, which he would not havo done had the bribe to transfer not been so attractive." The Minister admitted that something ought to be done, but was too cautious to give any definite opinion as 'to what course should bo taken. The present system has nothing to commend it. It is a source of constant loss to the revenue, fosters a gambling spirit, and fails to secure settlers who wish to reside permanently on the land ;they win at the ballot. It makes the assumption that it is as good for the State to place a man with practically no capital on the land as one who has enough capital to farm the land properly. Further, it presupposes that intending settlers are men who must be protected like children lest they pay too dearly for their land. The sole objection that we can'see in the way of the abolition of' the ballot and the substitution of. sale by auction is that the so-called land hunger would diminish so seriously'' that half the reasons for the introduction' of the Land Bill would vanish. SO much has been said about the - new battleship, the Dreadnought, and so many alarmist statements : have boon made as to the probability «

that la » few years' time other nations 5 "will have more Oreadnoughts than Britain, thflt ft few remarks on the which m&k the:Dreadnought {may-not; be out of place. It is generally Jknown that the Dreadnought is [bigger and faster than any other battleship yet launched, but this is not what places her in a class by herself. • Her displacement is 18,000 tons and her speed 21 knots, but recent ships, like the Lord Nelson and Agamemnon, have had a displacement JJof 16,500 tons' and a Bpeed of 18 knots. The-: novel principle ,in the ne"w battleship is that her armament consists simply of 10 12in guns, the largest calibre mounted in the navy;Her secondary armament is entirely »suppressed, and she has merely special armament of 27 12-pounder quickfiring guns for defence against torpedo craft. She is, in the words of an American naval expert, "an all-big-gun, one-calibre ship." It is not the size nor the speed, but the nature of the armament that makes a Dreadnought. The Admiralty decided that a limitation of the number of guns carried would be an advantage, because when guns were crowded together the blast effect of one gun was likely to seriously hamper the working of one or more of tho" remaining guns. The number of gnus once settled and tho fact that they wero to have large training arcs determined, the displacement of the new vessel was fixed thereby. The designer of tho vessel could employ tho carrying capacity of the given displacement for more armour, coal storage, or for engines ■ sufficient to produce greater speed. Apparently he chose tho last expedient, and thus the evolution of the biggest and fastest battleship in the world followed logically from the determination of the armament. We may note that the French ship Jena, on which the explosion occurred on Tuesday, was launched in 1901. She was of 11,861 tons displacement, and carried 4 12in, 8 G.4iu, 8 3.9 in guns, a mixed armament that would be far more difficult to control than that of the Dreadnought.