LOCAL AND GENERAL

Wairarapa Times-Age, 4 August 1938, Page 6

LOCAL AND GENERAL

The Queen’s Birthday. Today, August 4, is the birthday of Queen Elizabeth. The Lady Elizabeth Angela Marguerite, daughter of the 14th Earl of Strathmore and Kingborne, was born on August 4, 1900, and is 38 today. On April 26, 1923, she married the second son of the late King George V and became the Duchess of York. On December 11, 1936, King Edward VIII having abdicated, the Duke of' York became King and his Duchess Queen, the Coronation taking place the following summer. Plane Movements.

The Wairarapa and Ruahine Aero Club’s Whitney Straight left for Wellington this morning at 11.30 o'clock with a passenger. Yesterday the Wellington Club’s Miles Magister machine visited Masterton for the carrying out of a height test. The plane flew over Masterton at a height of 10,000 ft.

Mr Savage’s Health. Denials of rumours of his ill-health were made by the Prime Minister, the Rt Hon.M. J. Savage, in several addresses in North Canterbury yesterday. He declared at Darfield that he had never felt better. “They have been trying to bury me for the past six months, but I won’t lie down,” said Mi - Savage, who enumerated the complaints from which rumour said he was suffering. “I am feeling as well as I have ever done in my life,” he said at Darfield. Maori Child’s Death.

The police are investigating the death of a young Maori child at Hicks Bay, while under the charge of people who had adopted it. The child was transferred during a hui in January, and the relatives were disturbed recently by lack of information concerning its progress. The foster parents stated that the child died from sickness and was buried without a permit The parents of the child live in the Waihou Bay district, which is difficult of access during the winter. Hoist With His Own Petard.

Persistent questioning by counsel in the Opunake Court recently sought elucidation of the phrase, “or words to that effect,” used by an insurance inspector when relating a conversation with another man. The words were meaningless to him, said the lawyer, who laid great stress on his objection to the term. Long afterwards, the same witness being still in the- box, long after the subject had been passed by, counsel repeated for the court typist the answer to a question. “I want that down,” he said, “or words to that effect.”

Flight of Capital. That New Zealand capital in considerable quantities has gone to Australia recently because of investors’ uneasiness over the socialistic trend of legislation in New Zealand and the Government’s heavy expenditure programme, is the general talk in Australian commercial circles, according to Sir Charles Marr, of Sydney, representative for Sydney West suburbs in the Federal Parliament, and an ex-Cabinet Minister, who arrived at Wellington aboard the Wanganella yesterday. Sir Charles added that he knew of two Australian firms which had between them withdrawn from New Zealand investments amounting to three-quarters of a million. The money had since been invested in Sydney. Great War Anniversary.

Twenty-four years ago today came the declaration of war between Great Britain and Germany, an announcement which came like a thunderclap to millions of people who had never envisaged the possibility of such a conflict. There were few who realised to what magnitude it would grow, or imagined that 17,000 New Zealanders would die on foreign battlefields. On August 5, the day following, the Gov-ernor-General of New Zealand, Lord Liverpool, read the proclamation of war on Germany from the steps of Parliament Buildings. Intense excitement prevailed, and there were demonstrations of loyalty throughout the Dominion. Erosion in New Zealand.

“Unless steps are taken to. arrest erosion in New Zealand, the country will finish up a barren waste producing nothing,” said Mr H. Landon Smith, founder of New Zealand Perpetual Forests, Ltd., and a director of New Zealand Forest Products, Ltd., and Independent Oil Industries of Australia, Ltd., who was a passenger from Sydney aboard the Wanganella yesterday. Mr Smith left for Auckland last night on business. Mr Smith, who is a frequent visitor to New Zealand, said he had been appalled by the great damage that was being done by erosion in various parts of the country. In an interview yesterday he mentioned the denudation of the hills in Marlborough and Nelson, and said that some of that country would be better shut up and planted in birch. The trees would protect the land, and in forty years’ time would produce valuable timber.” New Zealand as a Consumer.

New Zealand was a big consumer of her own products, said Mr Rocke O’Shea in an address to the Wellington Rotary Club. She consumed 37 per cent of her primary products, 90 per cent of her agricultural products, 25 per cent of her pastoral products, and one-third of her dairy, poultry and honey produce. “Despite the protests of vested interests,” said Mr O’Shea, “the Government of England supports our need for a balanced national economy. England does not want a puny child hanging round her apron strings. Australia has risen to sturdy manhood on her farming and manufacturing industries; Canada was of little importance while she depended on her primary products alone. New Zealand must tread the same path as these other countries, and the sooner she sets out definitely along this path the sooner she will consolidate her standard of living.”

State Help Wanted. After a discussion lasting three hours, the New Zealand Fruitgrowers' Federation, Ltd., qnd the New Zealand Fruit Export Control Board, at their annual combined conference in Wellington yesterday decided to ask the Government to organise through the Internal Marketing Department, with the co-operation of the growers, the sale and distribution of pip fruit in New Zealand, and to give a minimum guaranteed price for such fruit. The resolution was based on a remit put forward by the Nelson provincial conference. It was carried with only six dissentient votes. The chief opposition came from Canterbury. The discussion was taken in committee. Before the motion was put to the meeting, the Director of Internal Marketing, Mr F. R. Picot, gave a brief address on the subject under-discussion. The decision automatically disposed of certain other remits on the order paper.