LOCAL AND GENERAL

Evening Star, Issue 17920, 16 March 1922, Page 2

LOCAL AND GENERAL

An inquiry into the action of Dr T. M'Kiblrin, officer of health at Auckland, in criticisin.tr the Minister of Health, the Hon. G. J. Parr, is to bo hold by Mr A. D. Thomson, Civil Service Commissioner, in Wellington this week. Dr M'Kibbin ia to be represented at the inquiry by Mr C. P. Skerrctt, K.C. Interviewed by a reporter at Wellington yesterday, Mr F, F. Hockly, M.P., chairman of the Recess Parliamentary Commission, appointed to consider what amendments in the Licensing Act may bo necessary should No-licenso not be carried at the forthcoming General Election, stated 1 definitely that tho proceedings of tho committee will not be open to tho Press.

Apparently in sympathy with the stokehold hands of tho Mahcno, which is held up in Sydney, no seamen or firemen offered to sign on on tho Mocraki at Wellington yesterday, and tho vessel’s parture for Sydney was postponed. MfAnwhilo tho Union Company is not signing on the crew until the necessary seamen and firemen have been obtained. Throe hundred passengers are in Wellington waiting to proceed to Sydney.

Tho conference of dairy •factory managers at Auckland passed a resolution rocommendinu tho installation of refrigerating plants at cheese factories. It was also resolved that dairy companies should bo requested to inaugurate a system of grading milk for cheese factories, tho suppliers to bo paid according to the quality. It was agreed that turnip-tainted milk should not bo accepted at cheese factories. At the Auckland Police Court yesterday Walter Preston was fined £SO for letting with a lad seventeen years and ten mouths old. The evidence tendered was that ho had betted with tho accused outside tho Takapuna course on January 30. and that ho had previously had bets with the accused. Preston’s record showed _twentyeight previous convictions, including belting, playing two-np, and other offences relating to gambling. An Auckland tramway rnotoyman, J. M Eveloigh, who has invented a patent safely device to sound a warning to motormen on tramcars should the fuse blow out. or a simi'a: defect appear in the air brake system of tho trams, recently gave a, demonsijration of the invention to the City Council. The device was tried on a car! and the Tramways Committee (states the ‘Star’) has recommended that the invention bo installed on six cars and tested for throe months, the tramways engineer to report, upon its operation during that period.

Words spoken in Melbourne were heard in Wellington, Auckland, Awanui, and Awani.a last- week. This remarkable result was achieved in the course of some experiments m wireless telephony. The messages were '-cut out from Melbourne, and they were received by the blew Zealand stations, where the operators report that the voire was strong and the speech good.

At the concleaioi of an address to members of the Auckland branch of the P. and T. Association on (he aims and objects of the Alliance of Labor, Air J. Roberts was asked a. question respecting the loyalty ol the alliance. His method of answering the question (according to (ho Auckland ‘Star’) was as follows:—This question, he said, was promoted by opponents of the Labor movement, who ought to know better than to drag the name of the King into the miro of industrial strife Those people certainly did not have much respect for (lie King when they were prepared to bring his name into questions which did not concern him.

At the conclusion of the central military command rifle meeting at Trentham on Saturday, General Sir E. A. Chaytor, K.C.M.G., general officer commanding the military forces, in presenting the successful Territorial, Cadet, and Reservist, competitors with their respective priY.es, said he was anxious that as many people as possible in New Zealand should take up rifle shooting. As the public by now knew, or, at least, should do, the object of paying so much attention to the shooting of Cadets and • Territorials, particularly to the first three years of the former’s period of training, was not that they were preparing for another war —indeed, he hoped and prayed there would not be another war—but to be prepared for the sudden attack of a. probable hostile nation. There was nothin" like “keeping war away.’ 1 Ho would like to sec rifle shoot;tg in Sew Zealand as populu’ as it was in Switzerland, where service shooting was indulged in extend /ely There coal Ibe no po« siblo doubt that the only ..ffectivo way to train oneself as a marksman—a marksman, that was, who would bo a reliable unit in the field—was by practising service shooting. Taking up rifle shooting was the best way in which a nation could keep quiet and enjoy peace, but at the same time let the other follow know that wo were a tough nut to crack. “ Never before were the people of tie world so heavily taxed, nor was business progress so greatly hampered by taxation,” stated Mr James S. Alexander, when speaking as president at the annual meeting of shareholders of the National Bank of Commerce of New York. lie pointed out that a huge part of the taxation was for armaments; therefore reduced armaments would mean less taxation in the future. Economic power that would have been taken for war preparations through Government taxation would remain in tie channels of industry and commerce to perform helpful services for mankind. Ho also mentioned that international debts could not be paid from the meagre gold reserve still held in Europe, and if they were paid by commodities it would create a serious problem for American industries. Fundamental economic world reintionsbips were essential for a return of prosperity to great and small nations alike. What is a perfect lady? The question lias received many and varied definition?, but the best definition we have stumbled across was elicited by an American. A woman witness, asked a question as to what had boon the conduct of a plaintiff in a divorce case towards her husband, replied: “ She treated him like a porfest lady, to bo sure.” The judge, who admits that bo dislikes the distinction between “women” and “ladies,” thereupon ask’d from the perfectly self-possessed witness a definition of a perfect lady, and she gave it without hesitation : “ A perfect lady is a lady what stays at homo, keeps ler home clean, and minds her own business.” That satisfied the judge. “ I hardly know,” writes a correspondent to ‘Manchester Guardian,’ “ wfich experience makes mo the more bitter—to read in an evening paper on Budget day that the tobacco tax is tip again, or to read the report of the dividends declared at the annual meeting of those who nuke money out of my smoke. Both experiences make me vow that I will give up smelting —a vow modified next day into a it ere resolution to cut snicking down by half—and the resolution is forgotten by lire end of the week. I have now discovered how to cut my tobacco bill down by onc-jialf without making vow or resolution. Vvhen recently in Dublin a friend handed inp his pouch, and asked me to try the 1 Sinn Rein mixture.’ It was a suspicious-looling compound—half ordinary tobacco and half green leaf. It was exceedingly smooth and agreeable to smoke. I found a gleet many people :n the town smoking the mne mixture, including eminent professors find artists and men of letters. Anybody jean make it. The green leaf is the comjuon herb coltsfoot, which can bo picked uj) at an}- wayside. It is dried to the light pitch, snipped up with a scissors, land blended in half-and-half proportion with tobacco. Coltsfoot as a smoke has dairy advantages (adds the correspondent).; It is not likely to give one a ‘smoler’s throat.’ It. has long been known is a euro for colds and catarrh, and it wards off some of the evils that tobacco simelimes causes. It does not burn the tongue, nor does it burn, holes in a slender incline. One remembers the old-fashioned ‘ coltsfoot toffee,’ given to children for cjdds. lint there is no suggestion about the ‘feinn Fein mixture ’ of objectionable mediated tobaccos. An. Irishman laughingly !suggested that bis friends smoked it t<J cut down the English revenue. These) are hard days to suggest a way to Englishmen to aim a blow at the Exchequer, lut I pass the wheeze on to the poor anl un-