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Press, Volume LIX, Issue 17813, 12 July 1923, Page 8

In some remarks, in car issue of Tuesday, upon the letter from Mr G. W. Russell wo briefly answered the main, point of his letter—relating to lanu settlement in Canterbury—by quoting the number of holdings as follows : Year, Number. .4 re a (acres), 1911 11,576 6,537,567 iS22 13,3-59 8,114,144 , .Mr Russell has had th© wisdom to bo content with these figures, but the local Liberal pnpiT, which for some reason, l'elt that, it ought to intrude, told its unfortunate readers yesterday that our statement was "inaccurate" and "unreliable," "tor one statement used is the number of holdings in Canterbury province and the other is the number of holdings in the Canterbury Xsand District. Wo should not have referred to this matter," it gees on. "if it) were not to show once again how unreliable Reform statistics usually prove when they aro tested." Now, if our eontemporary will do as wo did, it will ascertain from the local Lands Department that the Canterbury "provincial district" of the 1911 figures is exactly the same as the Canterbury "land district" of the 1922 figures. If the Liberal paper did not know this, it ought not to have ventured an opinion. If it did know the fact, it has been guilty of something much more reprehensible than ignoranoe. Th© spectacle of such a critic gratuitously offering "to show once again" the unreliability of "The Press" is peculiarly comic. "One-© again" is a true word. The Liberals car. k«ep on doing this sort of thing indefinitely.

Are tho English, as well as a nation of shopkeepers, a nation of eleepy heads ? "John O'London" attempts an answer. Lord Haldane sleeps between eix and seven hours—going to bed when ills work is dono, say, at 1.45 a.m. Lord Leverhulme is even more wakeful, per-

haps because commerce demands more vigiianco than law: his pro gramme is lire hours bv night, and forty winks after Inneh. Lord Burnhnm, a slave to the printirig-pvess, confesses that, he is not the master of his destiny so far as becl-timo is concerned, but boasts that if he is neither happy nor healihy without eight hours !>v night, ho never 6leeps by day even in the House of Lords. Mr John Galsworthy sleeps about seven-and-a-hnlf hours by night, but resists when he can-—which is seldom—the disposition to sleep by day. Sir Eric Geddes cannot keep the world going on less than eight hours as an average, and when wet Sundays come or sea-voyages, he takes "the opportunity of storing up ten or twelve hour's sleep." "Mi- Chesterton takes "all he can get/' being a late riser because lie is a late rctirer. Mr St. Loe Strarehey requires nine hours, and would like ten, while Sir William Orpen takes ten. General Booth "needs" seven hours, and when for ar.y reason he lies awake, he reads — by preference, and for example, Earl Balfour's "Foundations of Belief," which means, surely, that his wakeful periods are brief. But Dr. Marie S topes accepts the old adage,—-six hours for a man, seven for a woman, eight for :i fool, nine for a child, and ten for a genius. "By a coincidence." she confesses, she requires ten herself.

<y For the first time since Roosevelt's tiiiy. an important. American appointment has been given to a Southern negro. Mr Walter L. Cohen, who has been made Controller of Customs for New Orleans, was nominated to th© Senate by Mr Harding, and rejected. He was nominated again and rejected again. Then Mr Harding acted during the recess, put Mr Cohen in ollice without salary, and without Senatorial endorsement, and tho appointment will stand for at least a few months. But of course it must not be supposed that Mr Harding has been reading "Uncle Tom's Cabin," or has developed a new conception of the brotherhood of man. Mr Harding is a white politician: Mr Cohen a politician technically black, and it happens that each can be of servico to the other. Even a temporary appointment will have an important bearing on Mr Harding's candidacy next year, and will at tho same time confirm Mr Cohen's coloured leadership—if we may speak of colour where a family has been white for two generations, but was "tinged" by one great-grandparent the generation before..