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Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9047, 24 March 1908, Page 4

It seems a queer thing for an agricultural and pastoral association to be anxious that the Government should purchase White Island, in the Bay of Plenty, yet that is what the Opotiki A. and P. Association is urging upon the Ministry. The Island, which has an area of SSB acres, is extremely difficult of access in the best of weather, and imp)Ssible of approach in even moderately bad weather, for seabirds, which frequent the outskirts of the picturesque island, nothing lives or can live upon it. As a matter of fact, it is a crater, with a shell of black and barren rock, cliffs for its interior .walls. There is abundance of thermal activity, and sulphur abounds in great quantities, but not a speck of vegetation grows on the interior surface, nor is there to be' 4 found bird, beast, or insert within the huge ehasm. The island is useless for all practical purposes. Even tourists could only.be landed at rarest intervals, and then only with great difficulty. Tourist traffic there would not pay the hire of a steamer. The island might do for i\ quarantine station if it were accessible, because if the sulphur fumes didn't kill patients within three days, the microbes would assuredly be killed in that brimstone-sodden atmosphere. We trust the Government will not think of spending thousands of pounds on the purchase of such a tourist "white elephant." Too mu-.h money has already been spent for the sole pleasure of temporary invaders of our shores in the shape of globe-trotters. Much of the money uselessly spent upon the now huge and still growing Tourist Department would, if expended upon roads to settlements, have been a blessing to thousands of settlers and a boon to the dominion.

1 A capital idea, worthy of emulation in New Zealand, is being given effect to by the Savings Bank authorities in Adelaide. The object is to induce young people to save their pennies. The bank is providing home savings bank boxes, capable of holding several pounds worth of coppers. The receptacle is locked, the key being retained by the bank until the box is returned to the institution. This plan is likely to establish the habit of thrift in children, and that useful habit, early inculcated, should have very valuable after effects upon those who are thus induced to acquire it.

Sir Joseph Ward is still labouring under the delusion that criticism of the Government and its administration is "a detriment to our country," and evidently he imagines that when the country is thus assailed by any one it would be quite the proper thing for a Government supporter to "go for" the unpatriotic critic. "Instead of jumping up at catch cries," he told his Papakura audience, they should say, "We will allow no one to say anything to the detriment of our country.". All this because a good many dominionists express disapprobation of the present Ministry, and would , like to alter the existing order of things. He told his hearers that if they made comparisons they would have to admit that "other countries were ten thousand times worse off than theirs was!" This is, perhaps,

a slight exaggeration, but, excusable, as it was put forward in support of the necessity for crushing anyone who criticised the political party which had left other countries so far behind. At the same gathering, Sir Joseph became virtuously and courageously defiant. "He defied them." he said, "to find a man on either side [of the political arena] who would stand up and say he wished for the repeal of a single law!" As no one stood up, that of course settled the matter absolutely. V/ha.t next?