CURRENT TOPICS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 268, 22 March 1911, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS.

AMALGAMATION AND TRAMS. The main plank in the platform of the recently-established Municipal Progressive Association is tlmo relating to the desirability of proceeding with the installation of a tramway service. Around this plank not a little discussion waged at the meeting on Monday evening. .Some of the speakers seemed to favor the idea of proceeding with the scheme as a nnuiipical undertaking pure and simple if the Greater New Plymouth proposals came to nought. Others took the view that the tramways should not be gone on with unless tie suburbs first came into the borough. Eventually this motion was adopted: "That it is desirable that tramway proposals be placed before the ratepayers at the earliest opportunity, after the question of Fitzrov merging with New Plymouth is settled." The word "settled" has two meanings in this context. If Fitzroy is not absorbed in the borough it may still be competent for the Association, or its "ticket" on t'hc Council—if, of course, the ".ticket" is elected —to place the scheme before the ratepayers. This might produce a wrong impression. The Association's first concern should be to concentrate its efforts on bringing about the consummation of a Greater Ne\y Plymouth, No doulpt, the as a body is fully liliVe to this necessity. There can Ije no question about the desirability of the amalgamation and of -Hie advantages that would follow. The interests of the suburbs and the borough lire identical, and nature never intended the town to be partitioned in the way it is. and governed by separate local bodies. It is the town of New Plymouth, alter all, and the town should be governed by one set of machinery, as other progressive towns are, if it is going to occupy the position nature intended it to, As for the tram scheme, the suburbs should be given to understand in the clearest possible manner that unless lliey join the borough and are jii'epared to take fltoir share of the responsibilities the inauguration of tile service would entail, the borough will not itself shoulder the burden, There can be no two opinions that suburban property will benefit most by the inauguration of a tramway service in the plaee, and this being so the owners should accept their share ot the risk, which, as has been conclusively shown, is not so very considerable. It would be a "fair deal" on their part to do so, and this, we feel sure, is how the majority of the borough ratepayers view thv matter. To give out just now ■that the tramways will be gone on with, whether or not the suburbs throw in their lot with the borough, is as injudicious as it is unwarranted, and may tend to raise hopes in the minds of suburbanites that probably will not materialise. For the Progressive Association to put tramways before amalgamation would be putting the cart before the horse. The amalgamation steed must first be brought into the borough, and the cart, in the sluipe of the trams, will no doubt follow. The Association no doubt realise this. What system of tramways should be adopted is'a matter that need not be discussed just now. A BIT OF A BLOW. When one reads that a cyclone lias torn across a few hundred miles of Australia and lias devastated everything in its track, one is bound to admit (hat' New Zealand is a comfortable little country, in which one must generally search for disaster. Barring an occasional—and preveniible—bush fire, an unruly river—which will become more unduly in proportion to the number of lire:—and an odd earthquake, there seems to be an abiding peace in this country. The citizen wilio ha - not seen an Australian cyclone need not be anxious to observe this caprice of Nature. Fortunately—at least in thi.s one particular—Australia is not, thickly settled, and a cyclone of large dimensions may begin and end without hitting anything that matters. We are told that a Queensland town has been blown away. Australia has many cyclones that do not strike towns. Most of them are particularly orderly in their march, tearing across' the country in a straight line, and deviating hardly <a foot from their path. Thus, for instance, one visitation, on its way,

carefully lifted a bushman's tent, and, incidentally, the bushman, too, and carried the lot many chains before killing the man and shredding the tent. But it left a similar tent intact which was pitched three feet from it. Another hurricane stripped a path three chains wide tlirough .heavy timber country, throwing giant trees aside as if they were tissue paper. If the Australian bushfaller could invent an artificial cyclone, axes and "forest devils" would go out of vogue, lu a l'JOl New South Wales cyclone, the giant swept a track through hundreds of miles of lmsh, the chief peculiarity being its mathematical precision. A squatter's large homestead happened to be in the way, and the cyclone sulipiy tore off a large corner of it. From a distance the homestead looked as if it had been sawn in two, so exactly did the wind <lo its work. Fences that happen to run across the path of a hurricane generally look like very complicated wire j puzzles a moment after. The acute liiisiliman who has had previous knowledge of the wind fiend develops rabbitlike tendencies when he hears the dreadful roar of the cyclone. If he has time lie may make a shallow and temporary grave and lie flat in case the fiend should come his way. If the cyclone is too quick for Jiini, he may save himself from being blown to smithereens by lying close to Mother Earth. Li any case, if lie is alive when the visitation is over he is glad to sec the tail of it disappearing in the distance. There is a quaint story of a tourist gazing across the bushland through a pair of binoculars towards the line of great gums that fringed the Lachlan river. The range was six miles. "Do those trees grow 'fruit?" he asked hi.s host; "I see some shining objects on the top of them." "Those," said the host, "are sheets of corrugated iron from the roof of my woolshed! We had a bit of a blow last week!" AN IRISHMAN'S JOKE. An amusing hoax was perpetrated a, few weeks ago in the correspondence columns of the Times. The Ulster Unionists had been attaching much significance to the sad story of a "mixed marriage" alleged to have taken place in Belfast. A Presbyterian woman, it was stated, had married a Roman Catholic workman named McC'anu, and ail went well until a prie.st demanded that the marriage should lie celebrated a second time, in order that, the rites of his church might be used. The wife refused, and subsequently her husband disappeared, and her two children were "secretly removed from her house." This tale, related b t v a "h ading Presbyterian clergyman," found its way into some of the London newspapers, and was used as an argument against conceding powers of self-government to Ireland. In the midst of the discussion the Times published a< letter signed "Herbert Pym," under the heading, "Another Mixed Marriage Scandal." The writer gave harrowing details of the "cruel and heartless desertion of the victim of a so-called 'unhallowed marriage' by the partner who should have remained faithful to her for life." "The poor mother," he proceeded, "thinking that at least she should have her children to console her, was, however, not only abandoned by her natural protector, but robbed of her offspring. Sir, this occurred close to Bangor, within twelve mile.s of Belfast; and I am in a position to say that the foul robbery of llesh and blood was perpetrated by a member of an Irish secret society." Nothing was said in the letter about the religion of the parties to the affair, hut the Tall Mall Gazette announced, in the course of a special telegram on the subject, that the "woman" was a Protestant i and the "husband" a Roman Catholic, j Then the Daily Xews sent a reporter to see Mr. Herbert Pym, who is a well-1 known citizen, and that gentleman ex-! plained, with many chuckles, that his letter referred to the sad experiences of a cat whose kittens had been drowned by an orangeman. He had written to the Times, he said, because he wished to render ridiculous "the attempt to make political capital out of the McCann episode." Mr. Pym certainly achieved some measure of success in his enter prise.

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