TOPICS OF THE DAY.

Press, Volume LIX, Issue 11315, 3 July 1902, Page 4

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

The centenary of A HundTed Years trousers in England of was completed last Trousers. month. Like the

daring inventor vi the umbrella, ihh first men who appeared in tihe streets clothed as to their nether j limbs in trousers, had to endure a storm of ridicule. No doubt they looked grotesque enough to people accustomed all their lives to knee-breeches and stockings, and the caricaturists of the day did not spare tile pioneers of the new garments. But trousers, once introduced, had come ~o stay, and their adoption has long been universal. They have had their vicksrfcudes during the hundred years of their existence, in response to the arbitrary whim of fashion. They ihave fitted tightly as a glove, or flapped in generous folds round the wearer's legs, or, as in Cnrikshank's time.kavecompromised 'ttrirfc two extremes by clinging tightly round the knee, and widening down-wards into expansive "bellbottoms." But through every change of cut, from the days of "peg-tope ,, onwards, they (have never lost tffceir hold upon mankind. Strictiy speaking, this te th* centenary, not of the adoption of trousers, but of their readoption. Long before the Roman invasion of Northern Europe and Britain, the Celts and! the Cymri wore the close trousers or loose pantaloons, called by then bracae or brachae. The Romans compelled the ancient Britotw to abandon their "breeks," and wear the costume of tfceir conquerors, but the garb of old Gaul was too dear to the Celtic people of Nosrti Britain to be relinquished, even at the bidding of Imperial Rome. In England trousers gradually came into use again after the \ritinlrawal of the Roman troops. They are mentioned in the litera-

tare of Henry Vltf* time, end Ben Jonsou J in a pJa-y of lus, clothes one of the charaotera in "gewney "waieteoafte asd troaees/ *"• A writ-er in. thie London " Daily Mail " I notes also that Defcker in the " Gull'e Horn fc- Book," 1609, speaks of "tie Italian's close » etrosser." Bα* t&e fashion of wearing trousers unwt hive gradually died for * at the beginning of the nineteenth century * knee-breeches and stockings were universal xf in England. ~ Among the minor details Franking which hare -engaged th« atLettere. tention of Mr Drake, the n Federal Postmaster-General, d has been the " Frank Stamp System," in a use in the various public departments of ,1 the several States. This system, by -which a letter bearing a device impressed by a> ruibber stamp, has travelled free through the ! * Post Office, has gpown to the dimensions « of a scandal, and has been the subject of * discussion in the Federal House, It ap|f pears that in all the States these rubbsr stamps have been distributed among the departments, each bearing the name of the s department responsible for its use. All c would have been -well if the original intenr tion had been adhered to, and the gwmps y used only en official correspondence, but s thtey seem to have been kft about in the most absent-minded way, and to have been II borrowed right and left. The Victorian 8 Defence Department seems to have been s utterly conscienceless in the matter. The & (Brank stamp*, or envelopes and postcards ]m already stamped have been issued indiscriminateJy to tihe various divisions of the forces, and secretaries of rifle clubs, who a were among the recipients, have used them s to frank correspondence whidi certainlr B could not be jegarded as official. "One r budding Borneo," we are told, " wrote to „ his Juliet, stating he would be in front of her balcony at a> certain hour." Unfe<> c tunately for him, he left the envelope con--8 taining his tender addresses open, and, bavj ing authority to examine suoh letters, tih-a g postal authorities detected the gross abuse of the franking privilege. Another person canvassed for support for a church . bazaar through the post by means of s franked envelopes, and a third convened a . meeting of the committee of his football . club in the sanw manner." How many of these stamps are in existence th« Post-master-General las no idea, though he > tried to make a collection of them for i some time. As it is the legitimate and 5 lllegxtimate « se ma de of tlie franking svs- . tern means that the Post Office renders s free services to tie other public dspartmenta, calculated at clone upon a quarter of a million annually The passing of the > Postal Bates Bill will, however, enable Mr . Drake to put his foot upon a practice which . so grossly abuses privilege, and before long the civil servant wall have to stamp his loveletters as ordinary mortals do. De la Bey's eulogy of 1 De la Bey General Clements as and the best General . General Clements, whom he encountered ■ suggests that some useful hints might be furnished to the British military authorities, if the Boer leaders in the field would give a plain, un L varnished history of their experiences. The . "other side" of the war that we have so far heard has been mainly from Boer leaders who were not in the field—in Mr Dooley's phrase, '-the men behind the guns—ten thousand miles behind and willing to be * further." And their views were toop soaked in Anglophobia and perjury to be of the slightest value as criticism. The saving of , the Xooitgedacht Camp, to which General ( De la Bey alludes as General Clements's best piece of work, was one of the gratifying features of one of the British "mishaps" which gave so little cause for congratulation, Clements's force was encamped on December 12th at Nooitgedacht, in the Magaliesberg Mountains, whither he had gone to break up De la Bey's commando But at dawn on the 13th De la Rey, who had been reinforced by Beyers, and whose total force amounted to nearly 5000, took the initiative and attacked tie camp. The- first onset was repulsed, but the Boers, after a desperate fight, managed to seize the top of the hill, which was held by four companies of the Northumberland Fusiliers, and were thus able to command the camp, there, by compelling dements to retire. All accounts agree that the Nortnnmberlands fought splendidly, until their last round of ammunition was expended. According to one correspondent, the Boers encompassed them on the plateau to the east, went, and north. Gradually, and by sheer weight of overwhelming numbers, they drove back onr men to the edge of a precipice, drawing in their lines as they advanced. At length their firing line, taking cover behind th& huge boulders with which the plateau was strewed, crept to within fifty yards of our men By this time the Northumberlands had fired their last cartridge, and there was no possibility of obtaining a further supply. Surrender was, therefore, inevitable Nine waggon-loads of Boer dead and wounded were removed from the plateau alone Some hundreds of the Fusiliers were captured, but were subsequently released. It is understood that many of th«m broke their useless rifles before surrendering, bo that they should be of no service to the enemy. The retreat to Commando Nek was carried out with coolness and regularity, though, through, many of the native drivers bolting, a Ofuantity-of transport was lost. Also, owing to the hot fire poured in by the Boers, a good deal of ammunition had to be abandoned, but as the Boers mistook this for stores, and set fire to it, with the result that a frightful explosion took place, some of the bullets found b2lets after all. The Mounted Infantry is described as covering the retirement magnificently, sixty of them keeping the whole -of the Boers at bay, while the Army Service Corps vigorously helped to defend the transport waggons, many ol the men thus coming into action for the first time in the war. "The retreat of only 600 men a distance of twenty miles in the face of exultant thousands of the enemy, was a eplendid performance." Subsequently, reinforced by j General French, who had previously routed i th« enemy, General Clements drove off 5000 of them under Dβ la Rev in good i style.