The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET AUCKLAND THURSDAY. JANUARY 9, 1930 OLD RAILWAYS AND NEW

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 866, 9 January 1930, Page 8

The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET AUCKLAND THURSDAY. JANUARY 9, 1930 OLD RAILWAYS AND NEW

K PUBLISHED statement that “New Zealand is preparing to invest another £15,000,000 in new railways” has drawn from the Prime Minister a reiteration of the Government’s railway construction policy. Sir Joseph contends with some emphasis that it is incorrect to class the Government’s present programme as new works. He prefers that it should be called a policy of completing existing trunk lines, and of linking up detached ends of the present system. This appears, however, to he a distinction without a ditference. Any classification which would term the Napier-Gisborne line, for instance, a trunk line in the sense that the main North Island railway is one implies a very liberal interpretation of the term. If the Napier-Gisborne line is a trunk line, then any railway between almost any two points of the country could as well be dignified by that title. In the whole of the 150 miles between Napier and Gisborne there is only one township of any consequence. The country is mountainous and rugged, and devoted almost entirely to sheep farming, the product of which is shipped either from the little port of Wairoa or from Waikokopu, or else is transported into Napier or Gisborne by motor-truck. When the railway is completed the wool that at present goes to Napier by truck from the southern areas of the district tapped will probably be carried by train. That centring on Gisborne will, however, continue to be sent into Gisborne by lorry and thence loaded on to the home liners in the roadstead. The dairy produce and other agricultural output from the fertile flats about Gisborne will in the main go the same way. Thus the expectation of paying freights for the new “trunk railway” cannot for many years he very large; and the passenger traffic, substantial though it may be, will still not be sufficient to pay even a fraction of the interest charges on the enormous capital cost of building the line. When Napier and Gisborne are linked, it will be logical to continue the process by linking Gisborne with Opotiki. This, too, will be a fearfully expensive work. Railway construction in the East Coast districts is conducted in the face of all sorts of natural obstacles. The viaducts being built on the southern section of the Napier-Gisborne line will rank among the most noted engineering feats in the world. For part of the route the railway will just be an impressive sequence of tunnels and viaducts, and in that treacherous country the maintenance of the line in a condition of stability will be a costly business. This is one of the lines which the Prime Minister defends on the grounds that it is a trunk line, and necessary to complete the existing system. But since Sir Joseph himself turned the first sod of the railway nearly twenty years ago, it is perhaps only natural that he Should feel a sentimental interest in its progress. The Prime Minister’s other references in his statement on the subject deal with the desirability of eliminating non-paying branch-line services, and of co-ordinating road and railway traffic systems. The first of these objectives is ideal provided the Government is sincere. If it is pursued to its proper conclusion there will be some heartburning down in Otago and Southland, where fragmentary railways that have been running at a loss for years are scattered all over the landscape. The second ideal is equally praiseworthy in theory, but can only be accomplished by legislation which may be regarded with suspicion as a restraint of legitimate trade. Without such legislation the Government’s benign effort to eliminate competition by the process of buying it out can only have such a sequel as it has had between Napier and Hastings, where the State-owned buses have been for some months opposed by a fleet of small, privately-owned saloon taxicars that must he doing considerable damage to the Government revenue over that particular route.

BATTLING WITH A SCOURGE

IIIIIEN a menace to human life assumes the proportions reached by the international scourge of cancer, experts and laymen alike must offer a warm welcome to any promising means of relief. Thus there is every justification and, in fact, an urgent need for the machinery now being put in motion to establish throughout the Empire ample funds for the purchase of radium supplies and the advancement of radium therapy. In England the National Radium Fund amounts to £300,000, and there is every prospect that the plain talk and pointed advice of experts which was a feature of last year’s conference of the New Zealand branch of the British Medical Association in Wellington will bring about ultimately a much-needed co-ordination and strengthening of radium funds in this country. Figures, significant enough to bring a feeling of dread to the healthiest of men and women, prove the serious nature of the position and stress eloquently the past helplessness of medical science in the face of a parasitic disease the incidence of which has increased steadily in New Zealand from one death in 5,000 persons in 1875 to something in the vicinity of one death in 1.000 last year. In 1910 the prevalence of cancer, as indicated hv the number of fatal cases, overtook that of tuberculosis which, on the other hand, has fallen away with almost equal steadiness. Overseas the position is equally grave and the alarming figure of 53,000 deaths each year is debited in the United Kingdom against the scourge. It is not to be wondered, therefore, that the response in Britain to the appeal for funds has been a satisfactory one. L nfortunatelv it has been followed by a wave of enthusiasm and blind belief in the power of radium that has tended to produce a false perspective, and, for that reason, an expert medical commission has issued a candid report which places the restraining hand of cold observation and fact on pulsating hopes that may be doomed to cruel disappointment. This report, a precis of which we published yesterday, asserts definitely that radium will cure surface canceror.-i growths. Beyond that, the commission is careful to make clear, radium treatment cannot be hailed as a certain cure any more than surgical excision may be regarded as final. “A new weapon and a powerful one has been placed in the hands of the medical profession, though how effective it may be is impossible, as yet, to say.” This observation included in the closing paragraph of the report sums up a conservative but apparently highly authoritative review. The assurance that cancer is neither contagious nor hereditary will be welcomed, as will the statement that great improvements are being made in radium treatment. The report may have the effect of dampening exaggerated enthusiasm, but in no wise should it weaken public support for radium therapy— support which is essential if an effective salient is to be thrust into the creeping advance of a vicious disease. Today the power of radium may be limited, but it is certainly potential and deserving of the fullest investigation and trial.