THE Wairarapa Age. MORNING DAILY. MONDAY, MARCH 9, 1908. WILL HE REMEMBER?

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9043, 9 March 1908, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age. MORNING DAILY. MONDAY, MARCH 9, 1908. WILL HE REMEMBER?

There is a saying—or used to be—to the effect that it is only when a Mayor or other local magnate is killed or injured, or meets with some other mishap through some defective municipal work, that there is a moderate chance of having the defect remedied. It may, therefore, be something for the country folk to rejoice at that Sir Joseph and Lady Ward, while motoring "up north," on Friday last, had "an experience" which gave them a faint idea of the difficulties of traffic in the "roadless north." Travelling from Waipu to Maungatoroa, by motor car,, the Ministerial party encountered a thunderstorm, and this made the road so bad in a brief space that all hands had to get out frequently and push their conveyance along. The Premier is reported to have "put his shoulder to the wheel" manfully, and he sang cheerily to the accompaniment of nature's band. He always appears at his jbest in the electric light, and must have been enchanted with the liquid music of the pattering raindrops and a thunderstorm obbligato, as the lightning illumined the "darkness of the scenery." Notwithstanding he v/as drenched, he was, it is understood, perfectly cool. Lady Ward, indeed, is said to have "thoroughly enjoyed the novel experience." Well, doubtless, it was a novel experience for most of the party to be bogged with a motor-car of great power on the slight provocation of a temporary shower during the height of summer; but what about the experiences of the settlers who have to use such roads during the depth of winter! It is no novel experience for them to be bogged, and have to get out of their vehicles ar.d

walk some miles to their destination. The average country woman going to a market under such conditions does not enjoy it, nor are the farmers induced to sing as they haul their vehicles through glue-pot holes, or have to leave them stuck in the raud. Sir Joseph's Billy Barlow experience ought to make him usefully acquainted with the trials of the "backblockers" all over the North Island, for the road he traversed isn't "shucks" to hundreds of others in districts as well settled as those, say, in the Wairarapa Valley, within fifty to a hundred miles of the woodblocked metropolis.