FORGETTING THEIR PASTS

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 1, Issue 40, 9 October 1931, Page 2

FORGETTING THEIR PASTS

The Right Hon. G. W. Forbes, in the course of the discussion upon the railways report at present before Parliament, made a statement which should receive the enthusiastic endorsement of every politician past and present. "We have to face the facts of the present" said Mr Forbes. "It is no use talking about the past." A large number of the gentlemen who for so many years have been endeavouxing to correet the ills of the country until, in their enthusiasm, they have brought the patient to its present parlous state, will no doubt appland with their usual eloquence, Mr. Forbes's reluctance to contemplate the past. It is not something which can be regarded with any degree of equanimity even by a politician. We can understand, for instance, the unwillingness of Mr. Forbes and Mr. Coates to dwell at any length upon such spectacles as the Palmerston North deviation, partially constructed at a cost of some scores of thousands, and °now abandoned to be u3ed as a golf course with bunkers which can boast the highest average cost in the world. We can sympathise too, with the natural reluctance of Messrs Forbes and Coates (two august names which can now be joined without apology), to refer at any length to the two imposing Garrett locomotives which their railway department purchased, and which, after they had reeeived eulogistic Press notices all over New Zealand, made their one and only claim to distinction by blowing in the cement construction of tunnels which had not been made to carry engines of such size and powerful draught. These engines, bonght at exhorbitant cost, stood in the Hutt railway sheds for many months, biit they never ran on New Zealand lines. It would be unfair to expect Mr. Forbes, or his friend Mr. Coates, to search their "pasts" and discover what did actu-ally happen to them. Then again, understanding folk will appreciate the unwillingness of Mr. Coates to enlarge at any length upon his construction of the j ustly celebrated Dargaville "balloon" line where approximately eight miles of extra construction were built in making a loop to serve orfe small settlement whose voice, _ crying in the wilderness, was apparently out of all proportion_ to its size. The intriguing point about this piece of construction was that travellers who did not desire to make the full circuit of the loop, could alight and gather mushrooms or indulge in other entertaining amusements until the train returned along .the second line which conveniently ran parallel with the first. Buft it would be bot'h unfair and unsettling to the guardians of our national welfare at a time of crisis like the present, to delye further into the recesses of the political' cupboayd. There are such representative skeletons as Arapuni, and the ship Maui Pomare, to mention but two. Mr. Forbes 'and his new friend, Mr. Coates, are, wisely perhaps determined t?o forget their past and face the facts of the present. These last are certainly unpalatable enoufeh but they can perhaps be confronted with less difficulty than some of those which have already done so much to enhance the reputation of the genns politician. -