NEWS OF THE DAY

Evening Post, Volume CXXVIII, Issue 72, 22 September 1939, Page 6

NEWS OF THE DAY

Summer Time on Sunday. Summer Time begins again on Sunday next, September 24, and all timepieces on that date must be advanced 30 minutes. This is the earliest possible date for the commencement of Summer Time, which is fixed by statute to begin on the last Sunday in September. As Summer Time ended last autumn on the latest possible date, April 30, that having been the last Sunday in April, it follows that the present period of Standard Time, which has only a day or two more to run, has been the shortest possible. Day of Atonement. The Day of Atonement, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, begins tomorrow. It is the culmination of the ten-day period of repentance which began with the New Year. Special services and observances mark the Day of Atonement. In Praise of the Maori. At the commemorative dinner last evening celebrating the arrival of the Tory at Petone, many tributes were paid to the courage and vision of the early settlers, but when Mr. Justice Blair proposed the toast of the Maori j race he humorously challenged the justification for those tributes. He { conceded that the voyage of the Tory \ was "quite a good performance," but j he said it was a Cook's tour. . A far | better performance was Kupe's trip I from Hawaiki, with no sextant but a calabash with a hole in it, and no chronometer but the skies. "That was a very much greater performance than that of any of you people who boast, and have been boasting all night, of what a wonderful performance it J •was taking the risk of coming to a country that was already settled by a very much better people than those who came to settle it," said the Judge. Drowning of Cats. "There is no actual cruelty in drowning a cat," stated Mr. J. J. Hinchcliff when reporting to a meeting of the Otago Society for. the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals on a complaint of cruelty to cats. The complainant had stated that a neighbour, a girl of sixteen, drowned all the cats that came about her place, including the pets of her neighbours. It was not a case of cruelty, and the complainant had been advised that +.he society had no jurisdiction in the matter. "I. saw a pile of three or four cats she had drowned," Mr. Hinchcliff added. "It looks more like a case for the sanitary inspector," commented a member. The Spring Equinox. The spring or vernal equinox occurs on Sunday next, the sun then being vertical over the Equator, and day and night, expressed in apparent solar time, will be equal all over the world. The equinox marks the beginning of spring from an astronomical point of view, and for the next three months the sun will be steadily moving southward and appearing higher in the sky each day, therefore giving greater warmth. That the equinox this year synchronises with the resumption of Summer . Time is merely a coincidence. Any strong winds experienced round about the time of the equinox are invariably termed equinoctial gales. As the end of September is normally a windy period of the year, the chances of escaping equinoctial gales (which really have no connection at all with the equinox) are very slight. Postmaster Baths. Advice has been received that authority has been given for the erection of a new office, rest room, and dressing room accommodation at the Postmaster baths, states' a Rotorua correspondent. The matter has been under the consideration of the Department for some time. It has now been decided to replace the existing building without delay. Situated on the shores of the lake, the Postmaster is supplied with one of the strongest curative waters in the district, and bathers are able to stay immersed only twelve minutes without discomfort. The present building is in an extremely bad condition, due to a combination of the strong fumes from the spring and vandalism. German Ruthiessness. i Examples of the ruthiessness of the German invaders in Belgium during the Great War were discussed by Mr. F. G. Hall-Jones in an address to the Invercargill Rotary Club on Tuesday. He saM that while in Belgium he had seen tne memorials to the martyrs of Dinant. This was a town of about the size of Gore. When the German troops reached the town only women and children, and the infirm were there, all able-bodied men being at the front. During the night the troops broke into a wine cellar and began fighting among themselves, two soldiers being killed in the brawl. Next morning when a court-martial was held, the troops claimed that their fellows had been sniped and thereupon 674 women and children were seized, lined against eight walls in the town, and executed. Memorial plaques of great; .-beauty had since been erected. During the German occupation 23,700 Belgian civilians were executed, Mr. Hall-Jones added. Councillors' Stony Hearts. "The time is just about ripe when some organised form of propaganda was used to break down the stony hearts of some of these councillors," said Mr. J. L. Mac Duff, a vice-presi-dent, at the annual meeting of the council of the Wellington Lawn Tennis Association held last night. Mr. Mac Duff was referring to the unsuccessful attempts by the association to get a partial or total remission of the rent paid by the association to the City Council for the courts at Miramar. The City Council was spending approximately £ 12.000 a year for the upkeep of reserves used by various sporting* bodies, he said. Surely it could afford something for the upkeep of tennis and the courts at Miramar, which catered for several thousand players. The treasurer, Mr. C. K. H. Donnell. said that the £12,000 spent by the council was used for only fourteen grounds, which were set aside mainly for sport. He thought that the Tennis Association was entitled to ask for a total or partial remission of the yearly rental of £100 for the courts. He thought that every player should get behind the association to let the council see that they should not have to pay £900 rent for the nine years that the association had to run at Miramar. The Price of Wellington. A reply to critics who comment on the price'paid for Wellington when it was taker from the Maoris was made by Professor F. P. Wilson, president of the Early Settlers' Association, when replying last evening to a toast at the dinner celebrating the arrival of the Tory in 1839. He said there was a general misconception of the price that was paid. It was generally said that the price was about £1000 worth of compa-qtively useless articles That was wrong. The real price paid for Wellington was the provision that the Native population should be provided for by putting aside one-tenth of the land for the perpetual benefit of the Maori race, so that the critics who described the settlers as "land sharks'* were absolutely wrong; the settlers were creating a lasting benefit for the Maoris, far greater than the Maoris were giving.

War and a Bronze Statue. Through the outbreak of war delay may occur in the delivery of a bronze statue of a Maori chief which will stand at the base of the obelisk being erected on the summit of One Tree Hill as a memorial to the Maori race, states the "New Zealand Herald." The sculptor, Mr. R. O. Gross, has sent the plaster model of the statue to England to be cast, and cabled advice is awaited as to whether the war will affect delivery. The proposed date of the unveiling is January 28. A Matter of Transport. A novel, but perhaps dangerous, method of ascertaining whether a man is an Australian or a New Zealander was explained last evening by Mr. Justice Blair when speaking at the dinner celebrating the centenary of the arrival of the Tory. All one had to do was to ask if the man's ancestors arrived in the first ships, he said. If the man were a New Zealander he would beam with pride, but if he were, an Australian he would give the questioner what was technically known as a "sock on the jaw." The Centennial Art Exhibition. | In connection with the collection of j pictures which Mrs. Murray Fuller has j secured for the Exhibition at the National Art Gallery during the Exhibition period, the following letter has i been reived from Sir Edwin Lutyens. the press&Sent of the Royal Academy of Art, London:—"May I offer my congratulations to you and the Board of Trustees of the National Art Gallery on the comprehensive collection of the works of English art, both of living and deceased artists, which Mrs. Murray Fuller has collected and assembled for your Centennial Exhibition."