In view of the "better service for the South Island movement," the Union Company has decided to alter the vessel’s route, so that in future she will come to Dunedin from Melbourne, via Bluff, and from this port will return to Melbourne, via Lyttelton and Wellington. After the end of this month she will make the new routes.
Correspondence education works
Over 200 New Zealand children living in isolated districts are being educated by post through a special branch of the Education Department. The children of settlers living 50 miles from schools and of lighthouse keepers and others were receiving correspondence education at the present time. An experienced primary school teacher was in charge of the course, and had about 209 children taking her lessons. Although the system had been in operation for only six months and the results already were highly successful, the system had revealed a certain amount of illiteracy. There were in the backblocks children of 12 and 14 years of age who could neither read nor write, but the responses of the children to the lessons were particularly good, and the letters that were reaching the department from parents were most gratifying. He was assured that the progress of the children who received their education by mail was very often as rapid as the progress of the children who attended the ordinary schools.
Opposition to Jewish state
Another protest on the part of the Arabs of Palestine against the British Government’s policy in that country is recorded in the attitude of the Congress at Nablus in opposing the proposed constitution and in refusing to regard with favour the prospect of Palestine as the national home of the Jews. So far all efforts to reconcile at least a considerable section of the Arabs to the Zionist programme have met with indifferent success. The Arab movement has been described as neither "anti-British" nor "anti-Jewish," but simply "anti-Zionist." In their objections to the course of action that is being pursued under the British mandate for Palestine the Arabs have some strong supporters in the Imperial Parliament. All indications suggest that the British Government has a delicate task before it in respect to the administration of the mandate in Palestine.
Join radio fad with caution
To the editor: Sir, As radio equipment will, in the very near future, be installed in thousands of homes , and as a fair technical knowledge will be needed to guard against inexperience, I take the opportunity to warn which I trust may be the means of helping those who, today, are eager to launch out in that direction. Radio is probably understood by boys and young men better than by adults, and thousands of these throughout the world have been experimenting for some time, and may have arrived at a very advanced stage of progress by stepping out in the right path, while thousands have paid dearly for their experience. To those about to follow in their tracks I beg space to give a little guidance and keep them on the right way as many rush in during the period of excitement. The best results are obtained from sets using the outside antennae or aerial wires to collect the waves. As the ambition of every experimenter is to erect these as high as possible they become the weak part of the equipment. In many cases they are run in too light a wire, and give out or break under wind stress or strain, and in every city many highly-charged wires are running in the vicinity, with the result that an aerial coming in contact becomes charged also. Loss of life and many fires have been the result of inexperience in this direction. I have seen wires entering a building in a haphazard way instead of proper insulators and leading-in tubes, the cheapest way often being taken. Lightning does not visit very often, but when it does, an antenna wire is a great attraction. A lightning arrestor should be in a circuit outside the building, and a heavy switch to cut over when it is not desired to operate. — I am, etc, F.J. O’Neill, Dunedin.
ODT, 2.9.1922
