WELLINGTON TOPICS.

Taihape Daily Times, 20 June 1918, Page 4

WELLINGTON TOPICS.

THE WAK(

HISTORY AND PAINTINGS. WELLINGTON, June 19. It seems that the Dominion is .to have official war paintings as well as an official war history. The Minister of Defence has the latter undertaking in hand and already has invited relatives and friends of soldiers to forward to the Base Records Office letters and any other material they have in their possession likely to be useful immarrying out the work. Now the Minister of Internal Affairs is giving interviews to jthe newspapers from which it may be asumed his department will have charge of the artistic side of the enterprise. Mr. Eussell has a nice discrimination in both literature and art, and if history is to bo written and pictures painted dcr ministerial supervision he would bear the responsibility as cheerfully as would any of his colleagues; but with a lively recollection of the works of Now Zealand sculptors standing in/, various public places super-critical people are not joining heartily in the Minister’s, proposal that the officiaJ war pictures should be trusted to local painters. / PILLAGING. k Thefts from ships and from the wharves mainly of small articles of no great value in themselves, have become so common in .Wellington that the authorities are at last taking drastic action to lessen their frequency, A year or so ago they appointed special amateurs with a good knowledge of shipping and waterside, work in the hope that they would be able to lay their hands upon the offenders with more certainty than the ordinary police had done; but the result was not very satisfactory and the petty pilfering still went on. Another remedy is now being tried. The authorities instead of asking for leniency in such cases as are brought before the Stipendiary Magistrate are pressing for exemplary punishments, and yesterday a waterside worker with a good record of thirteen years was sent to gaol for a month for stealing four small packages of dried peaches. This

is the sort of treatment pilferers may expect in future. HELPFUL CELTICISM. The lead given to dissatisfied members of the community by the Trade and Labour Council in protesting against the administration of the National Government has opened the flood-gates to many put up complaints. It is not only in Labour circles that “helpful criticism” of the candid friend description is being heard today. Business men, who have growing: grievances against the Kail way Department and, in a less degree, against the Post and Telegraph are voicing them, quite, frankly, and. even newspapers that are all for,.the suspension of the party fight till after the war are deploring the absence of an official opposition to review the policy and administration of the Government. With the war still in the critical stage and with the meeting of Parliament four months away talk of this sort will break no political but it may be some indication of what will happen when, the Germans are beaten. SUPPLANTING THE COW. A gentleman with large interests in the Pacific Islands passing through Wellington this morning on his way to the National Dairy Show at Palmerston North had a good deal to Say about the impending substitution of the cocoanut tree for the cow. He had not read Mr Singleton’s remarks on the subject at the recent meetingof the South Island Dairy Assoeiati^i } but he had travelled much and had enjoyed special opportunities for observation and was satisfied that within a decade more butter would be produced from vegetable oil than from cream. The story, of course, is several decades old, and there still are many practical and scientific people who believe the cow will survive but if this traveller’s information is correct it will not be many years before margarine, if that is the name of the to the palate will be indistinguishable from the product of butterfat.