RANDOM NOTES

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 156, 29 March 1938, Page 8

RANDOM NOTES

Sidelights On Current Events

(By

KICKSHAWS.)

Alberta’s arrest of a journalist for misreporting a speech takes us into the realms of costless discredit. - That winner of the Irish Sweep who tore up his ticket because his wife disapproved of gambling is, we understand, also expected to- replace the petticoat strings when they wear out. * * V

This effort to make prisons more cosy appears to work on the principle that if the world has proved to be unlit, for heroes, the least that can be dune is to make the prisons lit for criminals. s » *

“I would like to endorse heartily a reader’s opinion that you be given two columns in which to enlighten the publie on so many interesting subjects,” writes “J.C.G.” “For myself. J have a friend in the Old Country whose younger brother, aged 16 years, is due to leave school in another 12 months or so. Could you tell me of any address at Home where careers officers are employed to advise public schoolboys on careers most suitable to their personal inclinations, and to their parents’ practical possibilities from a monetary point of view? I know some • schools employ careers officers on their permanent staff, but am wondering if there is a department which specialises in this subject.” [The Education Department, has kindly supplied the following information: “As a result of an arrangement between the heads of secondary schools and the Ministry of Labour in England, a series of inexpensive pamphlets has been issued to give some general knowledge of the conditions an.l prospects of careers in various professions. The series is under constant revision to keep it up to date. In addition, a ‘General Guide: Careers for Secondary School Boys’ is issued. All i the above are issued by the Ministry of Labour. The Ministry of Labour has a Training and Juvenile Department, which arranges for giving advice on choice of employment.”] » » *

Sir Samuel Hoare’s efforts to make prison cosy for the inmates may produce the curious repercussions that have become noticeable in the United States of America, where the good prisons are very much better than tlie medium hotels. Riker’s Island, America's “guest house, for criminals.” was once a city dump. Each prisoner is interviewed separately with a view to finding him congenial occupation. Thu food is on a scale not excelled by most high-class boardinghouses, and lietfer than some hotels. Tlie cells are provided with hot and cold water. It may be that one may obtain a bathroom attached. Indeed, the rates are delightfully cheap considering the amenities offered. It costs ratepayers about 10/a day to house prisoners in this guest house. Criminals, especially the unsuccessful ones, have found life incomparably easier at Riker's Island Ilian in the gangster labryinths of New York. So much so, that many of the vagabonds use Riker’s Island as their winter hotel and summer resort. * * &

One hears much about the lack of amenities among the convicts of the First Fleet. Yet it must have been lack of supervision and bad organisation > that produced such deplorable results. The food scale, for example, was twothirds the scale fixed for the naval service. The food supplied included Tib. of bread a week u man; salt porn, 21b.; salt beef, 41b.; peas, 21b.; oatmeal, 31b.; butter, 60z.; cheese Jib.: aiid half a pint of vinegar. Considering that we do not give our prisoners in New Zealand any fresh butter even today, the convict ration was not so line. Apparently, however, the convicts never got their full ration, and the food supplied was not up to standard : which seems to indicate that there were criminals who were not convicts. We appear to be going to other extremes these days. The jail at Valencia, Spain, was so cosy before the civil war that men committed crimes to get there. Prisoners pleaded they could not write and refused to apply for remissions on their sentences. America is thinking of charging board and lodging for her prisoners, but the problem is not even solved in that way.

’ One effect of Hitler’s recent effort in I Austria is the problem of finding room a for the people he does not like or those who do not like him. This is the secs ond time that Hitler has left the world r the problem. His first pogroms left e the world with the problem of how best to help about 100,000 Jews. Out of this total about 25,000 emigrated undei their own power, so to sj>eak. Palestine took about 30,000. Central ant ? Eastern Europe took about 18.000, ami II about 10.000 went to America. As a matter of fact, until comparatively re 1 cently there were about 15,000 of these 1 refugees still without homes or ’ The recent Austrian putsch has there ’ fore been timed to keep world authori- ’ ties busy for another decade or so. Hit- ' ler also provided a problem when he took over the Saar area. Some thonsands of the permanent inhabitants found life intolerable and fled. Mosl of them were found new homes. * * * It is a curious factor of modern civi- . lisation that all the large-scale migrations have been caused, not by the active desire to move on the part of members of a community, but by the “order of the boot.” After Russia boiled over, some 2,000,000 people were shot to the four cornet’s of jhe world, over its seven seas and its several continents. We have in New Zealand, citizens who would never have been here if Russia had not provided the world with a migratory problem second to none. After the expiration of the British Mandate over Irak in 1932 the Assyrians in that area found themselves left to choose between massacre or migration. They naturally selected the latjter, but nowhere could be found where they could migrate. ’ Brazil, British Guiana, French West Africa, were all tried, but the plans fell through. There are still some 20.000 Assyrians without a home. Half of them have tentatively settled on the Khabbur River, too close to the Turkish frontier for either them or the rest of the world to feel happy. » » * Regarding churches "J.H.D.” writes: “Many years ago, while on a visit to Norwich (England), I was taken into a public-house close by the cathedral The bar. a large, bare, stone, vault-like room, had evidently at some time been one of the chapels belonging to the cathedral, as in the centre of the floor stood the pedestal and battered remains of the bowl of what had been a bnptisimal fount. At one corner and part of the Paisley (Scot) Cathedral there is a small licensed bar locally said to be a survival of the ancient custom of providing ale and bread free to weary wayfarers by the monks. Alas in these degenerate days you have to pay for it. This old custom. I understand, still survives in the south. The modern Canterbury pilgrims somewhere on their journey arc still treated to a glass of ale and bread.”