Shannon News TUESDAY, MAY 1, 1928.

Shannon News, 1 May 1928, Page 2

Shannon News TUESDAY, MAY 1, 1928.

The amount of rates outstanding in the Borough of Featherston at March 31st amounted to £l4O.

The totalisator tax paid by the Wairarapa Racing Club for the autunn meeting was £B6l 14s 6d, and the amusement tax £lls 17s 3d.

Acres of cabbage, cauliflower, and lottuee plants have been destroyed in O&ki owing to disease, and in consequence the Chinese are heavy losers on their crops.

The public are warned that forged £1 notes of the National Bank of New Zealand, Ltd., are in circulation. The note is apparently a photographic reproduction and the printing is so indistinct that the forgery should be readily detected.

The retirement at the end of the term of Mr. J. Tamblyn as headmaster of the'Hutt Central School was referred to at a meeting of the Wellington Education Board on Thursday. The chairman (Mr. T. Forsyth, M.P.) said that Mr. Tairiblyn had 40} years' service, of which 22 had been under the Wellington Board.

A theory that the Southern Alps and the ranges on the east were at one time buried deep in the sea has been strengthened from time to time by the discovery of sea shells on the high ranges (states the Ashburton Guardian). Further evidence was forthcoming the other day, when a resident of Mount Somers dug a fossilised oyster out of a block of limestone rock. The oyster was as clean and fresh as one freshly taken out of the sea.

The rate collector reported at last .week's Manawatu County Council .meeting that the rates paid to March 31st totalled £12,052 8s 2d, while there ,was outstanding £IOO9 4s 4d. The amount of arrears outstanding at March 31st, 1927, was £IBO6 15s 3d of which £1255 6s lid had been paid, leaving outstanding to date £605 8s 4d. Of the £IOO9 4s 4d outstanding on ac count of the past year's rates the sum of £155 5s 4d represented rates duo by native owners. The position was considered satisfactory.

u Organisation,' ' declared Sir Apirana Ngata in his address to the Anglican Synod, "is not the need of the Maori to-day, but a man who can go round and quicken a cold Church. We admit the doubt in the mind of the pakeha as to whether we are equal to the occasion," said Sir Apirana Ngata, 'but I ask if any pakeha could touch chords which a Maori bishop could, through that magic force called race. The need of the Church to-day is for a man who will go past the ten per cent, of educated Maoris, and ge right under the skins of the ninety per cent of the race who, despite one hundred years of civilisation, are almost as primitive as they were a hundred years ago."

The chairman of the Victorian Kailways Commission, Mr Clapp, estimates the total loss annually to the railways through the competition of tramways, motor-buses, touring-buses, and commercial vehicles at £946,000, and the total loss through motor transport competition alone at £821,000.

Edward Charles Townsend, aged 33, who is serving a sentence of three years at Mt. Eden gaol, wajs brought down to the Court in Auckland to-day (says a Press message), to plead guilty to bigamy. He was married at Adelaide in February, 1925, and again at Auckland in August, 1927. Prisoner was committed for sentence.

Notices to trespassers on the properties of Mr W. Coley and the Mukapai Flaxdressing Co. appear in this issue.

The Shannon Choral Society's dance, arranged for Thursday evening, .has been postponed to a later date.

Twenty-one territorials left Shannon yesterday for Wanganui, where they will go into camp for a week's training.

In order to raise funds the Shannon Football Club intend holding a street stall on the day of the Maori-Pakeha match, which has been allotted to Shan uon by the Union.

A slip on Friday night in the Toko-' mam Valley section of the Mangahao road caused a blockage. The work of clearing the debris away was commenced immediately and the road is again open for traffic.

Owing to unforeseen circumstances, the concert party from Shannon will not be providing the programme at the Palmerston North Wireless Broadcasting Station on Wednesday evening. The date for their programme has been postponed indefinitely.

Mr W. Murdoch has. donated a medal to the Shannon Football Club to be awarded to the most improved player in the senior team. Medals have also been donated by Mr C. Young, and a firm of wine and spirit merchants. The former's is to be awarded to the juniors, and the latter to the third grade.

A meeting of Rangitikei farmers addressed by Mr Faire, District Public Trustee, unanimously decided to form a Co-operative Rural Intermediate Credits Association.

Two young men, Ernest George Dryden and William John Cook, on charges of bicycle stealing, were sentenced at Palmerston North to-day to fourteen days' gaol, the police stating that thefts of bicycles were becoming rather prevalent.

Lionel Arthur Smith (25) married, was convicted of indecent exposure and sentenced by Justices to twelve months' hard labour. This was the second offence within a year and involved little children.

The unusual spectacle, of of a berough council personally filling in pot holes in the road was witnessed at Port Chalmers on Saturday afternoon. The Bayor and councillors had met a civil engineer on the ground to arrange for the improvements of the south end of George street. While in front of an adjacent building during a heavy shower, the party noticed that ears proceeding' to and from the city were greatly inconvenienced by several deep pot-holes at the end of the street. An occasional splash from a passing car brought home to the councillors the necessity for' some action being taken,, and, borrowing shovels from the gasworks, they formed themselves into a working bee, with the result that, after half an hour's energetic "navvying," the holes were temporarily filled and levelled off, leaving the surface in a greatly improved condition.

The latest and what will probably prove the final phase of" the strange case of George Thomas McQuay, the unknown soldier inmate of Callan Park Hospital, Sydney (the establishment of whose identity is reported) was announced by the Attorney-General and Minister of Defence (Hon. F. J. Rolleston) in Wellington yesterday. "The Government," said the Minister, "has considered the case of McQuay, and, as there appears to be no doubt as to the identification, the Government has agreed to accept him for treatment as a war service patient. Accordingly, it was arranged with the Commonwealth authorities for his return to New Zealand at an early date." McQuay,'who is a son of Mrs Robert McQuay, of Orlando Street, Stratford, was a member of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force, and for eleven years has been a patient in Callan Park Hospital under the 1 name of "George Brown."

! In the course of ins address at the Levin Lunch Club's gathering yesterday, on the subject of his visit to the Pacific Islands a year ago, Mr J. Link"later, M.P., said that during the whole of his stay in Samoa, no sign of any trouble existed His party travelled unattended thiough many parts of Samoa night and day and were welcomed cheerfully everywhere they went. He had said, when he returned from-. Samoa, that the chief cause of the trouble there had been through the Administrator endeavouring to get a. better price for copra for the natives. All through the Pacific where copra was grown, the natives had been getting a better, price although the quality of Samoan copra was higher. Mr Nelson and other traders had establishments set up all over Samoa, and they resented the Administrator's action. The other matter was the question of prohibition. The Administrator had been very strict in this connection, and rightly so. The speaker could not understand the attitude of Mr H. E. Holland in this matter. The Leader of the Opposition was usually on the side of the small battalions;, but how he could reasonably justify his upholding of those who carried to the extreme vested interests in Samoa Mr Linklater could not imagine. What he was very sure about, however, was the fact that if the Opposition had helped as much a 8 it had obstructed the Government in Samoa, the trouble would never have reached the proportion it had, and would have been settled long ago.