AN INCONCLUSIVE APOLOGY

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2484, 24 April 1909, Page 7

AN INCONCLUSIVE APOLOGY

We are unable to endorse the special claim now put forward by Sir Joseph Ward that each separate line, without regard to secondary -or relative results of any kind, must (as a sine qua non of its operative existence), return 3 per cent, on the totai cost of construction. We believe the new doctrine to be fraught with mischievous possibilities in respect to the cause of land settlement and commercial enterprise, and we hope that Parliament will resolutely decline to sanction its application to the railway policy of the dominion. But in saying this we must not be understood to admit that the Lavrence-Rcx-burgh line would be unlikely to show a reasonable return, even 3 per cent, •vithin a few years of the completion of he work. Are all the unprofitable or unpromising lines in the dominion to be brought to a standstill? Do Ministers propose to back out of their farreaching engagements in connection .with the Midland Railway, the great white elephant of New Zealand. The •‘Lyttelton Times,” characteristically gloating over the injustice with which f)ta"o Is threatened, remarks that ' Jt would be well for the dominion as a whole if some of his (Sir Joseph Ward s) predecessors had exhibited the same courage in regard to. other undertakings of the kind.” Our contemporary s. candid allusion to the dubious «kjiactor of the great Canterbury -project deserves sympathetic .acknowledgement, but. after all, it has no direct relation to the circumstances of the LawrenctRoxburgh line. —Dunedin ‘btar. ■ “ tri /"1