CURRENT TOPICS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 100, 18 October 1911, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS.

WHY NOT NEW PLYMOUTH?' Che proposal to establish another cable service with Australia, the line to be laid direct from Sydney to Auckland, has been followed by an agitation in the south to lnive the cable landed at the Blurt'. There may be good arguments in | favor of the southern connection, but why is it that the Taranaki Chamber of Commerce allows the opportunity to pass of bringing New Plymouth to the fore? The time is ripe to urge that any new' ea,ble from Australia should be landed at New Plymouth. First, on the score of cost, wo are nearer to Sydney than is any other New Zealand port, and - this should weigh in our favor. No I difficulty should be experienced in ' ob- . taining a good landing place here for a , cable. These are arguments of to-day. ' Then we have to consider the future. ' New Plymouth, on account of the oil - industry and the iron industry, promises [■ to become a very prosperous and irnI portant port, and will in all probability become it fuelling station for naval and - other vessels fitted for the consumption - of oil fuel. In such a ease the port _ of New Plymouth seems to be quite well -situated as a cable station, and the v matter is one in which some movement should be taken in commercial circles.

KEEP OFF THE GRASS! Lately there has been some heartburning among, little New Zealariders at the temerity of the politician who dares to go out of his old territory to try to snatch a seat. The feeling that no stranger has a right to shove his nose in "our town" or "our city'' Or "our electorate'' is too common in New Zealand to be pleasant. It is indeed common in all small communities where everybody knows everybody else. Australia has parochialism in a very virulent form, holding that the strange mechanic or the worker who has not been born on the spot has no right to tread it. It is to be noted that no town or community advances because a given number of people settle in it and live and die in it. It is almost alwavs the "new blood" that, stirs a community to action. "Distant fields are green," and it is because people who are attracted by distant fields have the pluck, resource, and enterprise to sample them that events of importance occur, that progress takes place, that ideas are germinated. Who does not know of the business people of a town who look askance at the impudent stranger from Northville who lias the insolence to plant a new store ill Monlhvillc, ov the Westington citizen who finds the gold in Eastington which the oldest inhabitant knew nothing of? We are all perhaps necessarily n little parochial, and involuntary the northerner gets angrv when he hears the south has a new railway station or becomes a port for a new steamship line or sets a couple of extra yards of metal. While we regard the politician not as a servant of the whole Plate but as a person whose sole business it is to get as many "loaves and fishes" for bis constituency as possible. we must be parochial rather than national. We shall grow out of the childish method of protesting that if Smith was born at Tuvercargill he has no right to found a business at AVhangarei, or dare to woo the electors of Palmerston North. Smith's real business, if he is a good politician with national ideals, is to set New Zealand before district or party, and to pull the old chariot along and not to be content with a wheel spoke. It doesn't matter so much where a man was born as what lie is. The poor old story about the rolling stone gathering no moss is in a crippled condition. Moss isn't a prime necessity to a atone nnvhow. The fact, that a man has been glued to one spot. for fifty years

isn't a qualification. It's frequently a disaster. These are not the days when a man need wear a smocfefrock because his grandfather did, or vote for the son of Binks, because Binks was in Parliament. These are, the days when the rolling sfnne rolls into dark spots and shifts the moss; the days when the whole earth is asking "why?" arid is travelling far afield to find out; when men are eager for new ideas, to meet new people, to nib intellects with the stranger, f« teach and to lie taught by the outsider, and for the citizen of Auckland to fall on the chest of even the citizen of Wellington and call him brother. The rolling stone made New Zealand, and it is the rolling stone that will go on finishing the construction. The man wiio sees a menace in every new face should be prised from* his place and set a-wandering. He would be appalled at the way the world has been wagging while be sat on the parental step, and although he may return to the step saying it is the finest step in the world, he will be less angry with the stranger who has dared to sit on the step on the ■opposite side of the road.