Citizens Say

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 712, 11 July 1929, Page 8

Citizens Say

(To the

Editor.)

OUR GOVERNMENT BUILDINGS Sir, Something: is required to be done — .and done soon—in the various centres to strengthen existing Government buildings against earthquake shocks. Some of the old brick buildings used as Government offices in Auckland would collapse like a pack of cards in the event of a sharp shock, for there are no cement panels or other reinforcements to make them reasonably earthquake-proof, and their surroundings make them death-traps. What is really sadly needed is a new building in an open situation to house all the Government offices now scattered all over the city. It would result in a big saving in rentals at present paid to private persons. The longer the question is delayed the higher will be the cost of acquiring a suitable site. The subject should be brought up in the House. SAFETY FIRST. THE INSULT SirNow that your “Evolution” correspondents seem to be at the “19th hole,” the writer, one of the thousands of ordinary kind of readers, is just about “bunkered” in trying to get a working kind of idea as to what these experts have been trying to tell us. There seems to be something in some of the ideas brought forward, but contradictions have been so rife throughout the argument that it has been difficult to know just w r hat to accept. We have been told for instance by one school that while “man is not descended from apes, yet in its opinion man and apes have a common origin. This infers that somewhere along the line there has been an “accident,” and at this suggestion I rise to a point of order. I have been called many things in the last 50 odd years, but no one has previously had the neck to infer that I was an accident. When it is all boiled down, I shall go on accepting the statements of Genesis as to creation as being just as reliable as any of the others—and certainly more dignified. J. REA.

EARTHQUAKE RELIEF

Sir,— I wish to state my indignation at some of the methods adopted by some in charge of Sunday entertainments in aid of the above. I. like a good many other people, went to an entertainment on Sunday. July 7, thinking of course that donations would be left to the

sympathy and discretion of the public: but to my surprise I found cards at each of the doors, placed where one could not fail to read them, and printed in large lettering: “Donations, front stalls Is; donations, back stalls. 25.” At each door stood an attendant with a plate on a stand watching to see that the correct amount was paid. My friend and I remonstrated about these methods, and were told that it was all for a good cause. We were not objecting to the cause but to the methods adopted. These were specific charges. They could not be called otherwise. That being so, the charge should have been advertised and tickets issued in the usual way. Many a man had to save his face in the eyes of his friends and othefs by putting in what he could not afford. Others had to walk away. I am sure had the people known they would not have begrudged paying the prices asked where they could afford them, while those who could not would have stopped away. INDIGNANT.

THAT TRAMWAY BARN

Sir. — With reference to my letter appealing in your issue of the Ist instant, Mr. J. A. C. Allum has written me stating that the cutting from the Birmingham “Weekly Post” produced by him at the Mount Roskill meeting in October, 1927, illustrates a tram barn at Harborne, in Birmingham. In .that respect I appear to have been in error in asserting that the same cutting: represented a motor-bus garage; but most certainly about the same time pr shortly afterwards there was published in the same newspaper an illustration of a motor-bus garage for the same suburb of Harborne. A copy of the with this latter picture is not available in the Auckland Public Library, but I have sent to Birmingham for a copy. However, I still adhere to the other statements in my previous letter to the effect that the tram tracks leading to this Birmingham suburb are being taken up and that the service is being supplanted by trackless buses. I would refer Mr. Allum to the same newspaper of Saturday, May 11, 1929, in which the leading article states: “We think the departure of the tram rails from those roads will cause no lamentations. . . . They fthe other tram services) are only sustained by the effect of the corporation by-laws. * - . - I am sure that once this experiment has been tried out in the Road and found successful there are many other congested thoroughfares from which the fixed-rail trams should be removed and a more flexible means of transport substituted. . . . Opr tram rails must go in the end—j (Continued in next column.)

whether to make way for trolley-bus or the motor-bus matters Dot greatly so long as the obnoxious and dangc--ous rails are removed: but we should prefer to see the tram standards scrapped also.” E. J. lIAMLET.

CONTAGIOUS DISEASES

Sir The great increase in number or vessels from tropical countries to toe Port of Auckland should surely open the eyes of our Hospital Board to the very great danger of introducing tropical diseases into this favoured corntry. (The recent case of the Aorangt and the quarantining of some passengers when she reached Sydney is A case in point.) Fortunately for Auckland, this position was foreseen many years ago. and the board then realised that it would be impossible to continue to house dangerous cases in a building in the city itself, so it secured a site somewhere in the Manukau district for a building for all ‘contagious” diseases. The present Hospital Board seems to intend to ignore the provision then made, but it is to be hoped that the opposition now being raised to its inn tended “contagious diseases branch (in what is really the centre of the Auckland City area) will compel } l to listen to the voice of the man ux the street, who pays the piper in tn£ hospital levy, in the city rates, and in this way has a financial interest in the board’s doings. „ RATEPAYER.

“SPECIAL CREATIONS"

Sir.— This title does not apply to milling ery samples, but to Mr. Reuben *-• Dowle’s distinctly humorous to reconcile Genesis with modern biology and anthropology. f* asked to believe that when ™ Hebrews wrote “days” in Genesis tne really meant “illimitable periods.” >° T , how does Mr. Dowle know that, ana why was it not thought of ? >€ro ‘- Science made plain the antiquity’ . the earth? Mr. Dowle admits there were intermediate forms & tween animals and men. For » i< S reason these were “introduced. 0 he assures us that we can tell iro**the “type of their skulls” that .JrLe were not, like us, “made in the of God”! On the same reasoning many forms of horse from f° a T aS one-toed, were all separate creauo -• Likewise certain shells varying tk r ?~L hundreds of intermediate stages u a simple form to a highly complw*J v spiral, must each have been sc para - created out of—what? Perhaps * .. Dowle will tell us. That new creations have been made. £ through the ages to recent time*, of course, a much more probable no. than that of descent with If only we could see something DC made! On the question of authorities. continued citation of Prof. Bateso« fe an anti-Evolutionist by Mr. Do distinctly disingenuous. The P r( ? cf *. in his “Darwin and Modern , scl page 99, states: “With faith m e vcr .» tion unshaken—if, indeed, the . faith can be used in application t which is certain —we look on r#>ntianer of causation of adapted diner tions as still wholly mysterious should suffice to dispose of the of his name and the perversion I statements. a J5-C* 1