RANDOM SHOTS

Auckland Star, Issue 123, 24 May 1919, Page 18

RANDOM SHOTS

ZAMIEL

We have been told lately of sheep selling for five shillings and half a crown per sheep,' not per pound, and at the freezing works, not in the shop. Now it is stated that meat is to go up is price. Well, well! 4444444444 Last week I drew Count Brockdorff Rantzau's attention to an appropriate quotation from Kipling. X have since recollected that a London paper happily attached this verse of Omar's to a cartoon representing the Kaiser and the Crown Prince standing outeide the Peace Conference building: There was the Door to which I found no Key; There was the Veil through which I might not see: Some little talk awhile of Mc and Thee There was—and then no more ot Thee aad Me. Now that the peace terms have been formulated and presented, another verse of the Rubaiyat may have come to the minds of the German delegation: The Moving Finger writes; ana, having writ. Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a line, Nor all your Tears wash out a \V. rd of It. 444445:44.4* "Lethargic encephalitis" is the name given to the new disease that hae appeared here. Its most frequent manifestations are "progressive lethargy and stupor." Surely this disease is neither new nor uncommon. Most of us had it as children, when there were jobs and home lessons to do, and often it was cured by a stick or a shoe applied with energy in the proper place. Government departments sometimes have it badly. It must have been this disease that afflicte;! the burly bluejacket in the '"Punch" joke. He appeared before tlio ship's doctor. "What's the matter with y>u You look all right." "Yes, sir; I eats well and I sleeps well, but when it comes to a drop o' work I get all of a tremble"! 4444*4x44* If we are to judge by Lord French's revelations, what a duffer Lord Kitchener was, to be sure! It almost looks as jf French wished us to think that there was something providential in his death half-way tli rough the war. But the trouble is that Kitchener, being dead, cannot reply. Judging by comments I have heard, this important point is well recognised. 4444444444 "We can take no part in celebrations in favour of an event that makes the workers of one nation elaves of the capitaljrits of another nation." So eaye the president of the Federation of Labour. I am going to put this in my ecrapbook, and I would like to place alongside it the impassioned protests that the Federation made when the Germans enslaved the people of Belgium and Northern France, especially when they deported men and girle, some of them to a fate worse than death. The workers of Belgium appealed to the workers of the world for sympathy in their frightful trial, and the New Zealand Federation, being so strong an opponent of slavery, of course responded. Will anybody tell mc where I can got these protests of the Federation? 44444.ti£44 A correspondent in the eountrj- seeks my sympathy for teachcre in regard to new duties which the Department seeks to thrust upon them. A new idea ie to establish central schools, and do away with email schools. By this arrangement money is saved, and the children are better taught, since the larger the school, within limits, the better the organisation possible and the better the quality of the teachers available. To meet the difficulty of conveying ohildren to the central schools, the Department, so says the "Taranaki Herald," recently wrote to the boards suggesting that in appointing masters preference should be given to men who could drive motor cars. The teacher thus begin hie day by collecting the children, and end it by taking them home, filling the interval with teaching. I agree with the "Herald's" remark that the idea is not likely to be popular with teachera. Nor is the other idea, also said to have been suggested by the Department, that teachers' wives might provide hot meals for the children. Has the Department no woman about the place to tell it what running a house means, without cooking for ten, twenty, or thirty children in addition? Is it possible that the Department assumes that the teacher does not have children of his own? To expect a teacher's wife to cook for a whole school is like advertising for a lady help who can milk and chop firewood. If this sort of thing goes on, the teacher will have to rise and make rude protests. In the old days ho was required to teach "the three R's." and a few other subjects. To these have been added all sorts of things, from nature study to physical culture and domestic science. If he objects ho is liable to be told that he is old-fashioned and unprogressive. and not sufficiently interested in his work. But if, in addition to all these things, the Department is going to expect the country teacher to get up early in the morning and motor over venomous roads to bring children to school, then do his five hours' teaching, and then drive the children home again—besides getting in the supplies for the children's mid-day meal and superintending it— then teachers -will take to farming or working on the wharves. 4444444444 Here ie a story told to mc as having happened in Auckland. A woman saw in a shop a fur coat much beyond her means. We will say the price was eighty guineas. She bad forty. Said she to the shopman: "You let mc pay in my £40 for this coat, and when my husband comes along to buy it for mc. you tell him the price is only £40, so that he will pay that for it, not knowing what it has really cost." The shop agreed, and the wife told the husband about the lovely fur coat for £ 40. To the wife's horror he came back and said it had been sold. Next day she saw the same coat on the back of a woman with whom her husband was friendly. 1 feel inclined to offer a prize for the best solution of the problem: "What should she do?" lam assured this happened in Auckland. It may have; strange [things happen t^""