The Taihape Daily Times TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 26th, 1916. STATE FARMS.

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 201, 26 September 1916, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 26th, 1916. STATE FARMS.

AVD WAIMAEDTO ADVOOA.TE (With which is incorporated The Tal hapt» Post and Waimarino News.)

The Board of Agriculture recently submitted a report to the Minister of Agriculture on experimental farms. The theme of this report was, sell the farms, or so much of them as would render them next to valueless, at any rate, so that the land left would nor warrant the present excellent and effective staffs being retained to work them. The extraordinary aspect of the Board's recommendations was that with the proceeds of the sale of North Island farms, some £60,000, the Government should buy two farms in the South Island. We knew what this meant from the Government's sale of a portion of the Te Kauwhata farm, which was a huge loss from the public point of view, and we .have the experience that old time State buying produces somewhat similar results. However, it is gratifying to know that the Minister of Agriculture lost no time in turning down the Board's proposal. The Minister said he had given every consideration to the recommendations of the Board. "I have personally looked into the matter at the farms," he said. The different State farms are carrying on extremely valuable experimental work. He pointed out that there were ten young men learners on the Ruakura Farm, and the manager is keenly anxious to double the number, and will do so if the Government will furnish the resources, and yet the Board of Agriculture would sell t], land on which this supremely useim .work is being accomplished, while tne manager is so satisfied with tne soctf

work that he is anxious for capacity to double the number of learners. The Board did not say enough in support of its recommendation, for, to any public spirited person having a knowledge of the subject, it is not intelligible. The people of this country did not intend a Board of Agriculture to include among its duties a traffic in State farms, or in fact, any other lands, and had there been any thought of that being within the scope of its work, the people would have opposed its creation. Fortunately, we have a thoroughly practical Minister of Agriculture, and his knowledge has saved the country from what would have been a very great loss from every useful point of view.

SUBJECT FOR CONSIDERATION

If the Board of Agriculture would busy itself in going over fee huge areas of land in various parts of the North Island, and particularly those around Taihape, and estimate how many millions of money a year could be made out of their cultivation, or their more intensive cultivation, anc would calculate how many returnee soldiers could find homes on this lane, adding to our population a strain of healthy-minded, strong-limbed children, who would grow up as the future defenders of this soil their fathers fearlessly risked their lives to save from hordes of Hunnish invaders, while at the same time incalculably increasing the riches of the nation by more intensive cultivation, who would put a limit to the usefulness of the good the Board could accomplish? We believe it was Junius who said, "Tne submission of a free people to the executive authority of government is no more than compliance with laws, which they themselves have enacted. (While the national honour is maintained abroad, and while justice is impartially administered at home, the obedience of the subject will be voluntarycheerful, and almost unlimited." Our national honour abroad does not appear to be suffering, but what about impartial administration of justice at home? The callous neglect of the masses in the old world -has ever been a disgrace to Britain. After the subjugation of Napoleon at Waterloo, the British Government provided for returned soldiers by passing a law giving them the right to live by begging. To-day the British Government is setting an object-lesson for all Dominion Governments, a lesson which New Zealand seems not to approve of. Divers provisions are being made in England for returning soldiers, and only the other day a cable came stating that the Government was evolving a housing schesfte involving an expei; •

ture of '£3;000,000 after the war. Mr. Walter Long told a deputation "it was the nation's duty to provide decently for returned soldiers.'' In New Zealand we might subject ourselves to some introspection then ask what are .we Going to provide "decently" for our returning men. We are sending them away amid a flourish of trumpets, we send them cakes, and cigar ettes while they are away; what are we doing to "decently'' provide a means of livlihood when they return? We are told that very many of tnc men have been unable to get a bit of the land they have fought tor, and that numbers of them are seeking it through ordinary channels, in othar words, they have been passed on to the" tender mercy of land agents. Is this providing decently for our returned and returning fighting men? Is New Zealand devoid of a national conscience that it fails to realise its duty to provide decently for its returning fighters? The B'ritish Government says it is the nation's duty to provide decently, and this duty is equally incumbent on New Zealand. The Board of Agriculture now seems to be without any work to keep it from making mischievous recommendations, why not set it to concentrate on the subject of providing decently for returned soldiers; to list the huge areas of lane that are crying for cultivation, and •have them apportioned among the men who are coming back to us from the trenches in France, or the burning sands of Egypt? It is the nation's duty to provide decently; the national honour abroad is all right, is justice being impartially administered at. home?