LOCAL AND GENERAL

Wairarapa Times-Age, 25 May 1940, Page 4

LOCAL AND GENERAL

Frost in Masterton. A frost of 6.3 degrees was registered in Masterton this morning.

Loan to War Expenses Fund. The Auckland Racing Club has decided to loan the Government £20,000 free of interest for the duration of the war and six months thereafter. Blood Transfusion Service.

The local secretary of the National Blood Transfusion Service requested an appeal for volunteers to be made per medium of “Ripples,” the staff monthly house magazine of the W.F.C.A. Ltd. As a result, 13 members of the staff have offered their services, the response being extremely gratifying and greatly appreciated by the society.

Sick and Wounded Fund. The Dominion total fox- the Sick, Wounded and Distress Fund now stands at £68,680, but miscellaneous amounts and donations sent direct to the Patriotic Fund Board will swell the total to more than £70,000. The provincial totals are as follows: Canterbury £17,300, Wellington £15,000, Auckland £14,430, Napier £6,200, Dunedin £5,500, Palmerston North £5,000, Taranaki £3,000, Wanganui £1,400, Gisborne £5OO, Blenheim £350. Bank Discount Rate. The Reserve Bank of New Zealand announces that the minimum rate at which it is prepared to discount or rediscount bills will be reduced to 2 per cent as from Monday, May 27. The Reserve Bank’s discount rate has stood at 3 per cent since September 6, 1939. A discount rate of 4 per cent was quoted by the Reserve Bank when it opened for business on August 1, 1934. The rate was reduced to 3J per cent on July 29, 1935, to 21 per cent on March 2, 1936, and to 2 per cent on June 29, 1936. It was raised to 4 per cent on November 19, 1938, and reduced to 3 per cent on September 6, 1939. Masterton Silver Band. The following programme will be rendered by the Masterton Band in the Park tomorrow, commencing at 2.30 p.m., weather permitting:—"Star of Hope,” march (Ashpole); “Sussex by the Sea,” march (Ward-Higgs); ••Argandab,” march (Thompson); "Tainui,” inarch (Trussell); “Call of Youth,” fantasia (Greenwood); “Moon Love,” fox trot (arr Denham); “Old Earth,” hymn (arr Broadhead); "Shadowland,” entracte (Henshall); "Love Never Grows Old,” waltz song (arr Denham); “South of the Border,” serenade (Kennedy); “Grandma Said,” fox trot (Wrubel); "Because,” song (D’Hardelot).

Cosmopolitan Fiji. “Whereas New Zealanders are a homogeneous type and nearly all on the one social stratum, and with the same ideals, it is a very different matter in a little South Sea Island colony like Fiji,” said the Hon W. Wise, M.L.C., 0.8. E., Director of Public Works in Fiji, who is in the Dominion on leave. “We have about 5000 Europeans, 80,000 Indians, and 90,000 native Fijians, and the Europeans came from very diverse sources. The administration is mainly in the hands of Englishmen, the commercial people arc New Zealanders and Australians, and now there is a generation of Fijian-born white people,” said Mi' Wise. "So it is a remarkable thing that the Rotary Club has been able to function successfully, and get such widely differing people to work together.”