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Wairarapa Times-Age, 28 October 1939, Page 6

Maori Battalion. Enlistments in the Maori battalion up to yesterday for service with the special force reached 799 —one short of the required strength. Healthy Ashburton. Ashburton borough yesterday completed a full year without notification of an infectious disease. This is a record for the town. Till last week the county had had immunity for 10 months. The combined population is 19,000. Miscellany of Coins. To have 10 coins tendered for two 3d fares was the experience of an Auckland suburban bus driver this week. The coins comprised three pennies, five half-pennies, and two farthings, and were offered by two recent arrivals from Europe. The bus driver said that he had been driving for 19 years in New Zealand, but had never before received farthings for fares. Subsidised Labour for Farms. The employment of 5000 men as subsidised farm clearing workers is expected in the near future by the Minister of Labour, Mr P. C. Webb, who said in a statement that 2800 men were now employed under scheme 4B and that work to absorb another 1000 was already planned. ’‘So far complaints generally have been negligible and the country is assured of considerable profits as a result of the diversion of labour from public works and scheme 13 jobs,” said Mr Webb. One of the major difficulties the farmers had to face was finding the 25 per cent of wages, and also the extra cost for fencing materials, seeds and other essential requirements. The State Advances Department and many of the mercantile firms and banks had agreed to advance their clients sufficient money to I enable them to avail themselves of the lopportunity of employing men who | were formerly on scheme 13 and pub- ' lie works.”

Special Force Enrolments. Mr S. A. Jameson, Masterton, has enlisted for special naval or military service in New Zealand or abroad. The enrolments in the Special Military Force in Masterton have now reached 298, Hitler and Mussolini. Mr H. G. Wells, in his latest book “The Fate of Homo Sapiens,” has something to say about Hitler and Mussolini. Mr Wells declares that Hitler is insane. He considers Fascism the “weaker associate” of Nazism. The exponent is Benito Mussolini. Compared with Hitler he is sane, intelligent and human. He is vain, rhetorical, and immensely energetic, with the energy not of morbid concentration but physical abundance. He is faced throughout with a thread of the ridiculous. Where Hitler is an unqualified horror, Mussolini is, as schoolboys say, a bit of an ass, which is much more endearing. Until we remember the castor oil campaign and the poison bombs in Abyssinia, and the like, he is a lark. But then the lark stops singing. Fruit Export Proposal. Information concerning a proposal placed before the fruitgrowers of the Dominion by the Minister of Marketing, Mr Nash, that the Government buy for export 1,000,000 cases of fruit during the coming season at a purchase price of 6s 9d f.0.b., was released in Hastings yesterday, but it was also stated that the Minister had intimated to a special fruit committee in Wellington that at present he was not prepared to go on with the plan. His reason for this withdrawal was stated to be lack of unity among growers which would result in attacks being made on the Government by members of the industry. In any case it is doubtful if the proposal would be received favourably by growers in Hawke’s Bay at least, if the views of prominent orchardists in the Hastings district are any criterion.