''Under these circumstances I doubt very much if Parliament will agree that the maintenance of the main roads should pass into the hands of the Government. We shall have a Local Government Bill next session, and whether it includes a clause for taking over the main roads or not, it will give members an opportunity to discuss the matter.''
He went on to refer to the general difficulty which obtains in the matter of the main roads in the Auckland province (says the New Zealand Herald), and stated that in the near future something would have to be done, either by taking over the main roads or improving the state of the finances of local bodies.
If the Government did take over the roads, it would have to get more revenue.
He had a scheme by which the necessary money might be found.
• Three hundred of the visiting Senior Cadets are to be favoured with an almost unique experience as a result of the billeting scheme now being organised by the Defence Department for the Dunedin visit by General Sir Ian Hamilton.
On Monday evening that number of the Cadets will be accommodated for the night on board the Union Company's steamer Monowai, at the Dunedin wharf.
They will be provided by the Union Company with tea, bed, and breakfast, gratis, and there is no doubt that those who are about to be thus favoured will carry away with them very pleasurable recollections of the hospitality so generously bestowed upon them by the Union Company at the present juncture.
• A long and interesting report on venereal diseases was submitted at to-day's meeting of the Wellington Hospital and Charitable Aid Board by Dr Hardwick Smith (superintendent of the Wellington Hospital).
The report dealt especially with the ravages of syphilis. The necessity for prevention and cure was dealt with, and the report urged a great deal might be done by education.
''In fact,'' it stated, ''by proper education of the young of both sexes as they emerge from boy and girl-hood into young adult life many of the diseases at present prevalent would soon be relics of the past. Instead of spending millions of pounds in treating the actual disease only thousands would be needed for education. Up to now we have been working on wrong lines. We have shirked our responsibilities, and have left our young to wander in the mire, and only when they have become hopelessly bogged have we grudgingly given to them the helping hand. This is a matter in which all right-thinking men and women must feel their responsibility. Not only the individual, but the country and the State finally, must come forward and aid. We must not ostracise those who have contracted these diseases. The blame should rightly fall on us in that we have not prevented it. First, let all our young know of these diseases and their effects both on themselves and on mankind at large. Then if syphilis is contracted by an individual it will be time to talk of laws to segregate and penalise the offending one.
''Education in those matters has heretofore been carried out systematically only in the services where compulsory lectures are given by responsible officers on these matters. The effect is easily seen when 25 years ago, out of 1000 admissions into hospital 170 of that number were due to venereal disease, whereas now only some 15 to 20 out of 1000 admissions are due to syphilis. - ODT, 24.4.1914.
