RANDOM NOTES

Dominion, Volume 23, Issue 110, 3 February 1930, Page 10

RANDOM NOTES

SIDELIGHTS ON CURRENT EVENTS LOCAL AND GENERAL

(By

Cosmos.

The New Zealander who has not seen a motor-car Is hard to find. But not the man who has not seen one in tlmA ♦ » • "Women’s feet are two sizes larger than In 1890,” declares an Investigator. Their feats, however, have increased In even greater proportion. • • • ’ The Armament Conference appears to realise that war Is what results when one country takes steps to defend itself from another country that is taking steps to defend itself, • • « “Lack of Water Said to Delay Farming on Mohave Desert” Is the caption over an Informative article In the "United States Daily.” Similar conditions were reported from the Sahara some time ago.

Mrs. Frank P. Schuh of Chicago has sued her husband for divorce because he failed to lead the right card in a game of bridge. Mr. Schuh is luckier than the husband whose wife shot him for a similar error two months ago. Bridge will soon be classified among the dangerous amusements.

How the harsh heel of oppression may crush even the tender neck of childhood Is reflected in one of the last orders of the former Spanish Dictator, General Primo de Rivera. By the ukase, the Innocent children of Spain are forbidden' to attend bullfights or prize-fights until they have attained the ripe and blase age of fourteen.

It Is reported that unless the President of France grants a reprieve, Augustine Agogne will walk to the guillotine for matricide, with face veiled and clad only In a shirt Much discussion has arisen concerning the origin of the guillotine, famous, of course, during the French Revolution. Roughly resembling an Inverted orangeslicing machine, this instrument for causing “immediate and painless death" was supposed to have been invented by a kind-hearted physician named Joseph Ignatius Guillotin. So far, nobody has been able to corroborate the painlessness of this form of execution, any more than It has been possible to corroborate the truth of Guillotin being the originator. In 1866 Dubois, a re- . sident of Amiens, stated that the idea only was due to Guillotin in as much as at a meeting of the Legislative Assembly he expressed an opinion that capital punishment should be the same for all classes. Later on, acting on this Idea, the Secretary of the "Academic de Chlrurgle” submitted to the Legislative Assembly in March, 1792. a method “sure, quick, and uniform.**

Some declare that the secretary was the inventor. The first person to test the efficacy of this Improved method was a highway robber named Pelletier executed later in the year 1792. The first political victim was Dangremont, who was executed a month or two afterwards. A similar Instrument was actually used In England at one time. Indeed, the origin of the guillotine might well have had its source in the town of Halifax. That town had the power to use a peculiar instrument closely resembling a guillotine not long after it was founded in the fifteenth century. This Instrument was used as late as 1650, long before France had adopted the guillotine, for the dispatch of any criminal convicted of stealing to the value of upwards of thirteen pence halfpenny. Other countries have also used various types of the guillotine. Under the name of Mannaia, an instrument of this type was in use In Italy at an early date, whilst in Scotland the idea had been in use long enough for it to receive the envious nickname of “The Maiden and the Widow.” A pessimistic news item concerning births in Britain states that the rate is now below the figure necessary to maintain the population at its present strength. In the case of Britain, with a population of nearly 350 persons to the square mile, as compared to three for the same area in China, it is obvious that the limit to population must be close at hand. It has been estimated, in fact, that taking Europe as a whole there is now little room for large population expansions. Limiting factors, experts declare, are bound to come Into force sooner or later to make it difficult for a population to increase. But the limiting factor has more to do with death than with births. The two combined decide the issue. The cable message seems to have ignored the death-rate, in spite of the fact that in most civilised countries it is more efficacious to reduce the death-rate than to Increase the birth-rate. In Europe, for instance, the population has tended to increase at a faster rate the more tha birth-rate falls; partly due to improved conditions and greater efficiency of production. In the case of France there has been a steady rise of 9°??' lation, some 34 million in about fifty years, in spite of a felling blrth-rata France has now reached the position where any further population increases can only be brought about by improved agricultural methods. Two blades of wheat must be made to grow wheie only one grew before, a difficult proposition in an intensely cultivated country. An increase in the birth-rate without increased supporting power for the population does little more than increase the death-rate at the other end. In 1900 Ontario had a birth-rate of 19 per 1000 and a death-rate of only 10. Since then the birth-rate has risen to 24 and the death-rate to IL Practically the whole of the additional population has thus found Its way into the graveyard. In the case of Germany, a country which was increasing at the rate of nearly three-quarters of a million annually just before the war, physical deterioration was so serious that only 40 per cent, of possible recruits could pass the acceptance tests for the army. Gloomy talk about birth-rates immediately raises the “Yellow Peril” scare. Most Eastern countries have a birth-rate of 50 per 1000, or nearly double the rates in Europe and Australia. The glorious fertility of the East, however, is set on by a yet more glorious death-rate. Actually, the increase of population in the East is about one-fifth of that ot Europe. The population in New Zealand and Australia doubles itself every fortv veers, or over twice in A century, some fifty per cent fester than Japan.