LOCAL AND GENERAL.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 60, Issue 194, 25 May 1940, Page 4

LOCAL AND GENERAL.

Because of the setting aside of tomorrow as a national day of prayer a-ncl intercession for the British Empire, the Ashburton Motor-Cycle Club has indefinitely postponed its final run of the season.

A loan of £loo' to the Government for war purposes, free of interest for the duration of the war and 12 months after, has been forwarded to the Treasury by Mr and Mrs T. Casey, ol 140 Ait'ken Street, Ashburton.

The p/resident of the Ashburton Returned Soldiers’ Association (Mr E. M. Gabites) will attend the annual meeting of the Rakaia Returned Soldiers Association and he will speak on the question of the formation of „a new group of returned men in this district, to be known as.the Mid-Canter-bury Returned Soldiers’ Association.

Motorists are attending in increasing numbers at the motor rc-rcgistra-tion office in the Methodist schoolioom in the last few days and the augmented staff in charge of the work has spent several busy periods. The new motoring year starts on Saturday of next week, when the number plates will be used for the first time. There are still many motor vehicles to be registered in this district, and it is believed that the final registrations will not be tar behind those of the last war.

“Sydney is becoming the home of refugees and Italians,” said Mr J. B. Unsworth, who arrived in Auckland after spending two months in Australia. Ho said that one Italian shop at King’s Cross, the most cosmopolitan area in Sydney, displayed .the following notice: “French and Italian spoken here. Also English.” Mr Unsworth added that Italians and Greeks controlled practically all the fish and vegetable shops, and the vegetable markets were run mostly by Italians.

“More than ever before we are in urgent need of shearers. The position is becoming increasingly serious, and we are looking to the Young Farmers Clubs for help,” remarked Mr A. Lawson, at a meeting of the Manawatu Young Farmers’ Club’s district executive. During a discussion on a proposal that a shearing .contest be bold Mr Lawson pointed out that farmers were in a growing difficulty to which the clubs could in a large measure afford a solution. They should be encouraged to take a lively interest.

A telling comparison between the treatment of men on active service and certain classes remaining at home was drawn by the Mayor of Pahiatua (Mr S. K. Siddolls) at*.the meeting of tlm Pahiatua Patriotic Society recently. “When I think that the men on active service are fighting 24 hours a day lor 7s a day,” he said; “it seems an absurdity for the Government, when talcing over the wharves, to allow one section of the community to earn 8s Gd an hour overtime. To my mind,” lie concluded, “this is one of the most disgraceful tilings that has ever happened in New Zealand.”

The Labour Caucus yesterday discussed difficulties associated "with the broadcasting of Parliament a.t the present time (says a Press Association telegram from Wellington).

There was a good attendance at the Ashburton Harmonica Band’s dance last evening. Monte Carlos were won by Mr and Mrs Frew, Miss Ashworth and Mr Houghton, Miss Williamson and Mr Telfer. Music was supplied by the Yacht Club Boys’ Orchestra. Extras weji'e played by Mrs Gordon and Mr P. Tavlor. Mr J. Millicham-v was M.O.

For the first time there was no bell to call the pupils of the Gisborne Intermediate School ter their places on Monday morning. Some members of the committee controlling the school suggest than an electric bell might be installed, but others believe that bells are a danger, in that children hearing the bell while still on the road might expose themselves to traffic risks in ail attempt to reach school in time. The children were called together by means of U whistle.

Rumours are easily started those days, and the wilder the stories the faster they seem to travel from person to person. Hew some of these tales get a start is a mystery, but once they are under way they circulate With amazing rapidity, most of them receiving additions as they go. Therd is no doubt that many are started: from “vvishful thinking,” as in the case at a. dance in a County centre the other evening,- when it was stated that the radio had announced the entry cf the United States into the war. Many people who were thebe' later spent much time listening for confirmation of the report. Other rumours are started maliciously, and some of these have had a very upsetting effect among those of netvous temperament.

Comment on the small amount of street lighting that could be helpful in the black-out is made in a letter from a New Zealand electrical engineer who has spent some years in Britain specialising in lighting work. “We have found it really amazing how little light can be useful when it is really dark,” he writes. The lighting we have evolved is of such a low value that il it is a clear, starlight night, even with no moon, the street lights are negligible. It is only on really dark, cloudy nights they show up, and then they are a real boon in preventing tripping over kerbs and the like. We never thought before the war that such low values could be of any use at all.”

“It seems to me that it is pot sufficiently realised that after the war there will be a new order in which there will bo chaos till science comes to the aid of humanity, and in no sphere will science be more important than in producing food for mankind,” said Mr A. C. Morton, representative of Massey Agricultural College on the district executive of the Manawatu Young Farmers’ Clubs, when referring to a special course for young farmers to be held at the college next month. More and more farming was dependent on science, he said .After the war there would be a complete reorientation of farming efforts, and he thought common sense would come to shed its light in the future.

A member' of the Ashburton Volunteer Fire 1 Brigade will be the butt of his fellow members’ jokes for weeks to come, after an incident last night, when the brigade was called to a fire. He sleeps on the Firei Station premises, his room being only about 30 feet from the bell, but the furious clanging of the bell failed to waken him, and it was not till the engine was ready to leave that his presence was missed and a man ran upstairs to the sleeping quarters. The fireman was peacefully sleeping, and had to be roughly shaken before his eyes opened. “The bell’s ringing,” shouted the messenger. “So it is,” said the fireman as he leapt out of bed.

The party of about 2o women who have been visiting Christchurch this week in connection with the educational week arranged by the Mid-Canter-bury Executive of the Farmers’ Union, returned last evening. A visit was made to the Karitane 1 Hospital yesterday afternoon, and members were entertained at afternoon tea by the Friends of St. Helens. Mrs Peter Fraser (wife of the Prime Minister) was present. The secretary of the executive (Mrs J. Gregory) said * this morning that all the women had enjoyed the visit.* The programme had been a very full one, and compared more than favourably with similar weeks in the past.

In an endeavour to save a pianoaccordeon a. young, woman used her bare arm to smash the window of the. room in; which tine fire Was burning fiercely in a house in Ashburton last night, oind she suffered cuts from the jagged edges of the glass. She had been attending a dance only a short distance from the fire and arrived at the house in an excited state. The firemen, had not broken 'any of the windows ini the house, thus preventing a, draught, but fire could bei seen through the window of a front room in which the' musical instrument was kept. The woman broke the glass with her fist and would have hit. it again had she .not been held back. The view that the nations of the world, including New Zealand, were heading for disaster because they were based on a false conception of society —the idea that individualism counted more than family life, was advanced by the Rev. Father J. A. Higgins in an address to the Honorary Justices’ Association in Wellington. Father Higgins said it was desirable to destroy one of the fal.Sb conceptions of mankind, that /to ho white, free, and 21 constituted'the complete citizen or the social unit. He preferred the conception advanced by M. Salazar, head of the Government of Portugal, that “the family is the irreducible unit of the nation’s social life.”

New Zealand’s native birds do not as a rule show a liking for a diet, of stones, pieces of metal and the other indigestible objects which are popularly supposed to form part of the daily menu of the emu and the ostrich, but conclusive evidence that one species of native bird has this curious taste was produced by a Dunedin sportsman. This consisted of a large tablospoonful of assorted pebbles, the largest being approximately the size of a small pea, and no fewer than 21 small carpet tacks, all of which were found in the gizzard of a pukeko he had shot on the Taieri. Another unusual exhibit was a small collection of pieces of sliott.v gold taken from the gizzard of a wild cluck, which had apparently been feeding in one of the Otago streams and unconsciously doing some “prospecting.”