NEWS, VIEWS, AND OPINIONS.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXIX, Issue 76, 28 March 1908, Page 11

NEWS, VIEWS, AND OPINIONS.

The "Times'" correspondent's account of lis interview with Rais-jli on the occasion /lithe liberation of Mac Lean is one of the most delightful specimens of delicate irony that it has been our good fortune to come across for many a long lav Raisuli (whose captive the correspondent was, four years ago) pointed out that he has always been (m petto) a man of peace; "he has always loved peace and quiet, and it has been quite against his personal feelings that certain little episodes have occurred in his life." Any jeeling against Europeans? Ob, dear, no l None whatever: he likes them all, in a general way, and Englishmen in particular. All he wants, in fact, is a quiet life—and a fixed income. He likes to draw his dividends, and thinks that there is a good deal to be said for CapitaL Finally he is proud to enjoy British protection and he thanks God "that all has turned out for the best." It has, indeed —for him! Slight he not become dangerous asked the interviewer. Not at all: Raisuli has always been a "harmless, and innocent, but injured, individual." Well may he be described as "not altogether devoid of humour"! "Devoid of humour," indeed! Why. Raisuli is the zreatest humorist of modern times. The j Sultan of Turkey himself is not in it nith him. The gaiety of nations is grate- , ful to Raisuli. '

A "girl ploughboy," who refused to plead at the West Kent Quarter Sessions last month, can congratulate herself that she was not tried two centuries ago. A contemporary mentions the case of "an unknown man" who "stood mute" when tried in 1736 for robbery and murder at Lewes. They laid on him first 100 weight; then added 100 more, and then made it 350 pounds: yet he would not speak. Then adding 50 pounds more, he was just about dead, when the executioner, who weighed about 17 stone, laid himself upon the fcoard . . . and killed him." It was afterwards discovered that the man was deaf and dumb!

' The word "Infante," which was some veeks ago in all the papers in connection ■jrith the tragedy at Lisbon, was originally applied to the princes of the Royal families, hoth in Spain and Portugal, the corresponding title of "Infanta" being given to the princesses. Since 1388, however, the heir-apparent to the throne of Spain has been styled Prince of Asturias, while' the Crown Prince of Portugal bore ihe title Prince of Brazil until the separation of that empire from the mother country. But "Infante" has given a word to every language in Europe in the shape of "infantry," which appears to have been applied to the foot-folk who formed the personal bodyguard of the Spanish princes of the blood at the time when most soldiers in that country were of the mounted kind. At the same *time, it is to be noted that a French officer addresses his men as "mes enfants," while the Kaiser cries out to his soldiers, "Guien Jlorgen, meine Kinder!"

There is a good deal of discussion going an about the enormous salaries that are offered by rival American impresarios to stars of the European operatic stage. Some suggestions are king made to put a stop to tbe practice, but they strike one as rather in the nature of wasted energy. Great vocalists are quite entitled to make as much money as they can out of the recktes rivalry of New York Opera House companies, and, after all, the frenzy of competition will soon exhaust itself. Even in America they do not run the opera business as a pastime, but for profits; and when the fabulous salaries given to famous artistes leave no margin ior profits", we may quite confidently anticipate a ''slump," which will be much to the liking of operatic directors on hoth siies of the Atlantic.

Surely the mystery of life was greater thai the mystery of death in the case of a fire months' old child which has just Men the subject of an inquest at Battersea last month, it had what the doctor calls "drumstick" fingers and toes, its heart was on the right side instead of the leit, the position of the lungs was reversed, the aorta curved down the nght side instead of the left, there was bo spleen, the liver was on the wrong side, and there was no division between jffl two chambers of the heart, while the artery which should have supplied the lungs with blood was closed, the wood passing through a communication between the aorta and the remaining Portion of the pulmonary artery. With JUJnbled anatomy the child lived, m the medical evidence proved that its o-atn wa s not directly due to the disar™ged organs, but to an attack of bron™tis. Still, death came mercifully, for we medical view was that if the little I™ llved until it could stand, it *oula have died of heart disease. That |#athed at all proves the tenacity i we, and forms a comment on the vast fTtv 5 healtMl y constituted childannually results from negli-

&nothing have the habits of the S?n ™ r]d altered more ° matter of redding presents. 3S P ° pU,ar as ever > but not long ago all sorts of use- •- ornamental trifl(?s were bestowed * onae, it is now considered "the KtC 'j 3 Set of frie nds to club toll;!" aad . one fine piece of furaihool-° r i Pleces of P late - Then »£*"»> ttanl -f Ve COme into hi S h favour, swf- ay be said - t0 the - initiative hadi? m t matter by some of our SEdV £ 4 esmen ' notably Mr. Balfour Biwr. + iT aldane ' wbo almost invariably With fi i brfdeS 0f their acquaintance ->vo4r^ y " b^ Und co P iss of their favourite fer£> c Queen has of late much prei«d J4 Ddants t0 cve T other form of and her Majesty's presents to rwal ' Jp era % speaking, of truly Poled bein S Pendants corner niV ° f diam onds, sapphires, I A Jewelled muff-chain is a tcria rfdal with VieHi , and not infrequently her Royal Jolns wi th the Duchess of Fife sir!%- , a ""Adding offering to some Hi" eild ' But whereas the Queen's e d Trith are almost invariably embellisha cr °wn and a monogram inditlie'JL . tlle donor's name and rank, EefiSrlL 8 ?" 31 by ber daughters do not fete™;, ori^n - 1 p er - hoth °nr Sovereign and his BOWL? n ° cxce P tion to the ruleaW/ W a reat deal abont Prefer™ tiT 1 ? 88 ' and those jewellers who c the honour of their custom do not large profit* as. might he

The reported discovery by the Czarina of a •Terrorist death-sentence" lying on the bed of her sleeping son recalls two similarly tragic episodes in the life of her mother-in-law, the Dowager-Empress. On one occasion she found on her husband's dressing table a curious and unfamiliar jewel case, and, on picking it up to examine it more closely, was both surprised and alarmed at its weight. Hurrying with it to her own room, she plunged it into a basin of water, and summoned the Prefect of Police, who pronounced the innocent-looking jewel case a bomb of a particularly deadly type. On another occasion, on entering Alexander's study, the Czarina fancied she heard a slight rustling sound behind the window curtains. With a rare presence of mind she took her husband away under pretext of bidding his children "good-night" in the nursery. On leaving the room she locked the door and gave the key to a party of soldiers, who, on entering and examining the study, made the startling discovery that someone had made his escape through the window.

The City of London has just missed an epidemic of "Bottled Torture," which was happily frustrated by the energetic action of Dr. Collingridge, the Medical Officer of Health for the City. The attention of the doctor was recently called by the assistant medical officer of the General Post Office to the serious results which followed the use of the material known by the terrible name of ''Bottled Torture," which it was discovered was sold by a novelty dealer in the city for the purpose of practical joking. In one case the victim suffered an extreme irritation of the skin, which almost amounted to cellulitis, as the result of the application of this substance. Dr. Collingridge, jn his last report, states that "bottled torture" consists of the stinging hairs of the pod of a tropical plant, ilucuna pruriens. The pods are four or five inches long, shaped like the letter "S," and clothed with a thick coating of short, stiff bristles of a bright brown colour, the points of which are notched or finely serrated, and easily penctrats the skin, causing unbearable itching. Tim; city dealer was at once informed of the danger of the use of the material, and immediately destroyed it, and the wholesale firm of novelty dealers who supplied it to him, and had no idea as to the purpose for which it was bought, at once discontinued its safe. Four retail dealers in other parts of London also destroyed their stocks. j

Remarkable figures relating to the hours worked by railway men are contained in a return issued showing the number of railway servants of certain classes who, during the month of October last, were on duty on the railways of the United Kingdom on one or more occasions for more than twelve hours at a time, or who, after being on duty more than twelve hours, were allowed to resume work with less than nine hours' rest.

The return shows that of 113,490 en-gine-men, guards, brakesmen, signalmen and examiners;—

49,501 were on duty 12 hours in a day.

65,394 were on duty 14 hours in a day.

11,201 were on duty 15 hours in a day.

1537 were on duty 18 hours in a day.

During the month there were 5204 instances of men resuming work with eight hours' rest, after having been on duty for more than twelve hours.

A separate table shows that out of a total of 1,643,298 days worked by 65,858 enginemen and guards during October the number of working days which exceeded twelve hours by one hour or more after deducting the time spent in travelling home after relief from responsible work was 56,180.

The King's diamond, the largest in the world, was cleft in Amsterdam last month by Mr. Joseph Asscher with complete success. Cleaving is the preliminary to the cutting of the gem, and was accomplished in the following manner. The diamond was embedded in cement, and the sharpest diamonds available were bought to make the first incision. The making of the incision took several days. Next, a specially made knife-blade of finest steel was fitted into the incision, and then Mr. Asscher struck a terrific blow on the knife-blade with a thick steel bar. This cut the stone in twain. The next process is the cutting, which will be entrusted to Mr. Henri iCoe, who will work for a whole year in a locked room with three assistants. His daily hours of labour will be from seven in the morning until nine o'clock at night. A watchman will keep guard outside the door of the room, and two other watchmen will always be on guard in the building. The diamond will be cut by being pressed against a disc oiled with a mixture of diamond-dust and oil, and revolving 2,400 times per minute. At night the great gem will be placed in a special safe in a strong room with walls of iron and cement 2Jffc. thick. The head of the Asscher firm, armed with a revolver and accompanied by ten of his staff, places the gem in the safe and takes it out night and morning. The diamond, which is worth intrinsically £500,000, now weighs about 12!b., and will when cut weigh about Hb.

The coronation of the youthful Manuel of Portugal, it is notified, will not take place for some time. It* as there are those who believe, it will not take place at all, the omission would seem hardly so extraordinary as would once have been the ease. The state of Portuguese finances might make the absence of so expensive a function quite sufficiently explicable. The score of expense was quite good enough for King Haakon, and in point of fact he gave, with sailorly bluntness, that as his reason for preferring to remain an uncrowned Monarch. And there is an even more important member of the profession who, as far as a coronation goes, is still uncrowned; though it is not, probably, on the score of economy that the Kaiser has found reason for remaining so. The double funeral in Lisbon, by the way, involved the expenditure of a good round sum, but in this, as in other directions, Royalty has of late years shown a worthy desire for economy. No modern ruler has been buried at the cost of Alexander the Great, at whose funeral a million pounds were spent, part of the money going towards providing a solid gold coffin for the dead ruler. The Emperor William of Germany was buried at a cost of £25,000, and the last rites of the Grand Duke Nicholas ran into £40.000. At the' funeral of President Carnot a trifle of £6,000 was spent on flowers alone. A sum of £35,000 was spent on Queen Victoria's obsequies, £8.500 of which went for the entertainment of Royal and foreign guests, and £ 15,000 for the travelling, food and accommodation of troops. When tha Duke> of Wellington was laid to rest in 1852, a sum of £70,000 was spent, giving hira what has been described aa the juobt; splendid funeral oi iht.iuaetfieatb. ecu.v *. ■ ""t ... '.« .',. w