CURRENT TOPICS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVI, Issue 216, 12 March 1914, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS.

THE RAILWAYS. Will Mr. Allen deny that it is sound business to invest money in railways that pay averagely a profit of £62 per milo in January—of £(K)0 per mile per annum—rather than in railways that pay averagely a profit of only £32 per mile in January— £3OO per year? The matter should not bo thought worthy of discussion. Any competent administrators, any intelligent financiers, should have but one opinion—the opinion of all business men. It is inconceivable that any private business would be thus extraordinarily managed, that any tramway company would make extensions to districts that could not pay and ignore districts which would pay handsomely, that any gas company would refuse mains to rapidly-expanding suburbs and waste shareholders' money in giving service to parts,, that could not pay interest on the cost of laying the pipes. The railway policy of the Dominion should be regarded from a business point of view. Lines should be provided where they are needed and will pay, not where they are so little called for that they can only be worked at a loss.—Auckland Herald. NOT WANTED. A correspondent follows up his cheerful invitation to this paper with a call to Christchurch people to choose at the next Parliamentary election men of sterling and tried character. It's an ancient ideal, this, but still only an ideal. Each constituency cries out for the best men, but it seldom gets what it wants, and for two reasons: One. that the best minds know too much of politics to come into the game; and, secondly, that when a "true and tried" candidate is up a majority of the electors puts in somebody else.—Christchurch Sun. THE HUIA. A member of the Wangamii Museum Board of Trustees, discussing the re ported appearance of a pair of huias in the up-river district, remarked that the Maoris ruthlessly destroyed the lmia. Another member declared that "if the Maoris becamo extinct rare birds would survive." Fortunately the Maori is not in immediate danger of extinction, but the huia has practically gone. It is, however, hardly just to blame the Maori alone for the destruction of this beautiful bird. The white man has [been an even greater enemy of these and other vanishing forms of native bird life. It would bo difficult to estimate the number of huias and kiwis and saddle-backs and native crows and other birds which have been slaughtered and sold to European museums and private collections by white men. Two men in particular, both famous naturalists, one a New Zealander and the other an Austrian, probably were the greatest offenders in this way that the country has known. And it was all done in the sacred name of science.—Lyttelton Times.