Notes and Comments.

Feilding Star, Volume VIII, Issue 2311, 14 March 1914, Page 2

Notes and Comments.

To-day's History, Sir Walter Raleigh born, 1552. Battle of Ivry, 1590. Sir Samuel Baker discovered Lake Albert Nyanza, 1864. Johann Strauss born, 1804. -

Johann Strauss, the famous orchestral conductor and composer of dance music, was born at Vienna on March 14, 1804. It was during a carnival of 1826 that Strauss inaugurated his long line of triumphs by introducing his band to the public of Vienna, where his famous " Taubert Walzer " at once established his reputation as the best composer of dance music then living. The number of his engagements became so great that lie found it necessary to eniarge liis band from time to time, until it consisted of more than 200 performers. In 1833 he began a long and extended series of tours. His greatest successes were achieved in London, where he arrived in time for the coronation of Queen Victoria. He died at Vienna on September 25, 1849. Strauss was survived by three sons—Johann, Jo-, seph, and Edward—all of whom have distinguished themselves as composers of dance music.

Even Over in Canada. Another evil attaches to environment. Apparently" a modern nation may be corrupted by a bad neighbour, as in the days of Biblical history. For good Canadians are complaining against the exercise by bad Canadians of the corrupt practices of American politicans being imported over their borders. First ,the Montreal Daily Mail and now the Toronto Globe, two of the foremost newspapers in the Dominion of Our Lady of the Snows, urges the nation to be.up and about the work of cleaning out tho national stables. The Daily Mail made no bones about exposing the political grafters—naming five prominent public men—and as a result the Provincial Parliament at Quebec set up an investigating committee. A record of the proceedings reads like one of Craig Kennedy's scientific detective stories, for even as that American sleuth used the hidden sensitised detectaphone to transmit the conversations of plotting criminals, so we read that, in the endeavour to prove tlie existence of bribery, American detectives established themselves as contractors in Montreal, and submitted a private Bill to the Legislature. Hotel 'rooms and odices were equipped with leteotaphones, and conversations with the persons it was desired to trap wero recorded in shorthand in'an adjoining room. Thousands of dollars, it is alleged, changed hands over the Hill, which, according to the charge, went through 'like greased lightning.' No wonder the disclosures are causing " intense excitement," and threaten the existence of Quebec's Liberal Government. Now the Globe wants to make the matter one for national as well as provincial enquiry.

Mr J. G. W. Aitkon, who underwent an operation a few weeks ago, continues to improve. He is still in a private hospital.

In connection with th c frauds on the Customs in Christchurch, tlio Sun .states that several suspected persons Ihivo left the Donminion, and thiit extradition proceeding will probably be instituted.