NEWS AND NOTES

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 103, 2 May 1914, Page 12

NEWS AND NOTES

[The following items of intelligence hay« been, selected from files received by the latest mail.] "Unless there is a speedy amicable understanding between masters and men, tho productive power of the Commonwealth will be" seriously hindered." That is the view taken by the Rev. F. C. Spurr, of Melbourne in an article in the London Christian World. "Labour here as everywhere else," he goes on, "has had to fight for its rights, and, so far as Australia is concerned, it has won some notable victories. In no place is the working man so well off as here. His hours of labour are fixed upon the basis of an eight-hours day. Wages Boards determine his rate of pay. His health and limbs are protected in every possible way. There are really no 'dangerous' trades for him on this account. He can claim equality with his master. He is never called upon to grovel to a 'superior.' He is a creature entirely independent. More often than not he owns his own house, while he has a substantial_ sum standing to his name in the savings bank. His daughter can earn her thirty or forty shillings a week behind the counter or at the typist's desk ; and yet, despite all this, there is scarcely a week without its local strike. Upon the least < pretence tools are 'downed.' Ferment is nearly always in the air. Professional agitators take care to keep strife stirring. In a word, labour is tending to become a tyranny." Dr. Thompson, Canadian member for Yukon, has presented to the Duke of Connaught, on behalf of the Arctic Brotherhood, a, beautiful lampshade made of cariboo skin and decorated with gold nuggets. The presentation was accompanied by an invitation to the GovernorGeneral to visit- the Arctic regions. The latest British height record is that of Engineer -Lieutenant Briggs, R.N., who, at Eastchurch Naval Aerodrome, reached a height of over 15,000 feet. An extraordinary feature of Lieutenant Briggs's achievement is that when he descended it was found that his face was severely frost-bitten, and he was at once placed in sick quarters. When the aeroplane was at its greatest height the airman's thermometer registered a temperature of 38deg. below zero. The world's record for height is held by Legagiieux, who, on 27th December last, ascended 20,295 feet. The disastrous effect in India of the wild talk indulged in by Tories as to " civil war " in Ulster was recently emphasised by Mr. T. P. O'Connor, M.P., at Wellington, Salop. Referring to the threat that whatever the people of this country might do the people of Ulster would rise in arms, Mr. O'Connor said that was a gospel which was new in history. The odious infection of the new Tory doctrine had shown itself in many parts of the Empire. The speeches of the Orange leaders were printed with great care in organs of sedition in India, and Indians were being taught by Tories to read the gospel of rebellion and anarchy. • Had- they come to this, in free and democratic England, that when the democracy had elected its Parliament and its Ministry, the Army is to be placed against the people? A more mischievous, wicked, and prejudicial doctrine he had never heard. The Tuscans go a steo farther than the British Army in objecting to mutton as human food. They .taboo it absolutely. Hedgehogs, yes ; but not the meat of the sheep in any form. 'Tuscan beef must have worked hard (itiithe shape of beautiful white oxen) in order to acquire tenderness j and Tuscans eat the herds, but not the flocks. And tijere may be some cause for this prejudice of so many kinds of people. Doctors report " idiosyncrasies " whereby abnormal digestions revolt at mutton that endure all else. The late " J. 8.," one of the best English journalists of his school, will be greatly missed from the columns of the Christian World, to which he contributed for so^ many years. The following extract is from the last article he wrote for the paper: "Christianity has got on without any special buildings, and it could do so again. A vast deal of church architecture has been a mistake, a setback to its pure, spiritual element. We hear now of religious buildings here and there being converted into workshops, into all sorts of secular uses. We need not trouble over that, provided we have the contrary movement} that of using, as the early Christians did, the workshop, the dwellinghoilse, the hillside, for its gatherings and worship. It is the continuous complaint of the Fathers' that when the Church came out of the back streets and from its*humble conventicles to sumptuous buildings and worldly recognition, its early spirit declined, its purity was soiled." The St. Petersburg journal Novoe Vremya publishes various details of the economic reforms which the new Russian Administration proposes to carry out. In order to combat drunkenness, it is proposed, first, to reduce the output of vodka ; secondly, to increase the penalties on illicit trading; thirdly, to teach the people the advantages of temperance through the medium of the churches and schools; fourthly, not to admit extenuating circumstances in the case of crimes committed while under the influence of drink. At the Academic de France, Professor d'Arsonval, in describing Dr, -Marat's new method of curing stuttering with the aid of the kinematograph, said that the stutterer should see his imperfect movements in detail and compare them with the 'movements of persons ,who speak normally, so as to be able ultimately to imitate them, until the defect of speech has automatically disappeared. He finds that much more rapid progress is made by utilising the kinematograph than by employing phonographs. Dr. Marat first of all has a film taken, en which a stutterer and a person of normal speech are both represented pronouncing the ■ same phrase. Then he has them photographed separately. _When the stutterer is aware of the various articulations on the film he realises that he himself speaks too quickly, and never again forgets to regulate the speed of his utterances. M. Edmond Perrier, one of the directors of the Academy of Sciences in Paris, who has been experimenting for the past ten years with the problem of noises in cities, at a recent meeting declared that neurasthenic conditions were prevalent among _ railway mail sorters, printers, linotypists, typewriters, telegraphers, and mechanics, following the uninterrupted subjection of the nerves to noises. At the same meeting M. Emile Gatltier, the scientific writer, said he found Paris was the worst city existing for rackets. He said the entire population was suffering and showed all the typical signs of noise fatigue. France is again alarmed over her de« creasing birth-rate, which has fallen so low that more people actually die yearly than come into the world. Although the subject is bi>ing seriously studied no legal measures have so far been successful. In view of the rapid increase in the population of Germany the decline in that of France imperils the country. It is admitted on all sides that had the increase of population of the two countries kept abreast _of each other the necessity of increasing the French term of military service from two to, tjjjree yem 2g|W .?£!s few? w;!»4'- "_

A motor-bus service from Bcyrout to Bagdad, > via Damascus, is the latest scheme for the development of the Orient. A London firm sent ont six of these 'busea, with British drivers, in order to start the service at the end of March. The 'buses are similar in design to sightseeing cars, with transverse seats and a canopy. The 'buses will travel over the desert roads made of earth hardened by long years of horse and camel traffic. They will carry the mails, which are now sent by horse-drawn carriages, at the mercy of maurauding Bedouin bands. The mails at present take twenty days for the trip, and it is expected that this will be shortened by the new service to one Week or less. A committee which includes the Duke of Wellington, Lord Boberts, and the Lord Mayor of London has been formed to raise a public fund of £10,000 to purchase the Waterloo battlefield in order to preserve it from a speculative builder. "Mexico is not at war," is the opinion of the New York World. "It is on a drunken and marauding spree. It moves only when supplies are low. It has flat money, flat law, fia.t patiiotism, flat everything except drink and plunder. If any one of its various chieftains had atnlity, energy, devotion to a worthy idea and five thousand true fighting men, he could command the situation within a fortnight." Vilhjalmur Stefansaon, the leader of the Canadian Arctic expedition, has discovered that he can do without salt. He compares it with a narcotic poison — "It is hard to break off its use, as it is hard to stop the use of tobacco; but after you have been a month or so without salt you cease to long for it, and after six months I have found the taste of meat boiled in salt water distinctly disagreeable." However> ' Mr. Stefansson found during his exploration of the unknown lands of Arctic Canada that salt had a distinct value. It seems that among the uncivilised Eskimo tho dislike of salt is so strong that a saltness imperceptible to an ordinary person would prevent them from eating at all. This circumstance was often useful to Mr. Stefansson in his travels among the " blonde " Eskimo of Coronation Gulf, for whenever his Eskimo visitors threatened to eat the explorer out of house and home it was only necessary to put in a little pincb_ of salt, and thus husband resources without seeming inhospitable. A guest who tasted anything salty would quickly bethink him that he had - plenty of more palatable fare in his own house. The abolishment of the execution of criminals by the . headsman is being earnestly agitated in Germany, the only civilised country where this form of executing the death sentence exists. A number of the German States have abolished the axe and the block, but its use is etill confined principally to Prussia. In a paper which he read before an audience of St. Petersburg medical students Dr. Manoukhin claims^ that he has achieved remarkable results in the treatment of tuberculosis and other diseases by Rontgenisation of the spleen with attendant leucocytolysis. It is said that M. Maxim Gorki owes his recovery to this treatment. Hoemophilia is likewise reported to be curable by the same method. Medical opinion awaits with interest the results of the clinical observations which are now proceeding. Rontgenisation, or X-ray treatment of the spleen, has been practised, in England tor a considerable time. A very eminent radiologist has stated that he had frequently employed the method in cases of leucocythsemia, a disease in which the white blood corpuscles multiply to an enormous extent and eventually cause death. In this condition the spleen, in which white blood corpuscles are formed,' enlarges enormously. Under X-rays the spleen is reduced in iize, the white corpuscles are destroyed, and "leucocytolysis" and temporary recovery take place. The improvement is said to be of a most "astonishing" character, but has not hitherto been i'ound to be lasting. Thre6 young women dressed as nuns have been arrested at Chiasso by the Italian Customs officials. They were going past with the downcast eyes and discreet air appropriate to their habits when' one of them stumbled and from her ample sleeve fell a packet of cigars. A lynx-eyed official noticed the slip and pounced down upon the, woman and her companions. A search showed that concealed in their robes they had quit© a large supply af saccharin and tobacco, which they were bringing across the Swiss-Italian frontier. The supposed nuns in fact belonged to a gang of smug» glers, whose ingenuity in dodging the Customs authorities is well known. Much excitement has been caused in Bavaria, by an order of the War Minister prohibiting the brutal treatment of soldiers. In future non-commissioned officers abusing their authority will risk losing their rank and pension, and commissioned officers will risk being cashiered. Baron yon Kress, the Minister in question, says that officers must remove from their minds the idea that brutality is necessary to the maintenance of discipline. He sa.ys that a bemeaning treatment is of the greatest danger to army discipline and that recruits ought to feel assured of just and humane treatment. Not only actual brutality, but bad language, is forbidden. "Among the very poor marriage Is ceasing to be regarded as a necessity." This statement was made by Mrs. Cobden Sanderson at a recent meeting in the Women's Institute, London. Mrs. %mderson went on to explain that it was the desire of the Divorce Law Reform Union that the marriage bond should be strengthened, not loosened. Poor nomen, unable to obtain divorce, took the remedy into their own hands and established free unions. In her opinion, to compel two people to maintain a tie of which both were weary was not to raise the ideal of marriage. "I can understand the view-point of the Catholic or High Churchman who objects to divorce altogether," Mrs. Sanderson said, "but I cannot understand the attitude of mind of those who, admitting the principle of divorce, will not havo tho grounds of release extended." At Helions Bumpstead, in Essex, * number of agricultural labourers have been locked out because they have joined Agricultural Labourers' Union. They asked for "king's" wages and conditions —i.e., the mimmum wages paid by King GeoTge, as a farmer. There is also a movement among agricultural labourers in several other counties, particularly in Norfolk. The Spectator remarks : "Wo do not. know all the details of the Jock-out if Essex, but if the men have been dismissed for the mere act of joining a Tracts "Union we sincerely hope that they will win in the struggle; with their employers. There could bf no better sign than that Jvyrici'ltuTcul labourers, instead of hypnotising and enervating themselves bjr reckoning on getting ready made prosperity from Acts of Parliament inspired by Mr. Lloyd George, should try to better themselves by their own efforts. We trust that they will not wreck their cause by excesstve demands v.-liirh it would be ecomomically impossible for their employers to grant, or by violence or other illegalities. If they avoid these j errorc ami offenceis, they will ceuUinly