LOCAL AND GENERAL

Feilding Star, Volume XVIII, Issue 4593, 19 May 1922, Page 2

LOCAL AND GENERAL

FATAL FOURSOME We had been on Gallipoli a fornight (says a writer in the Bulletin) when four mates of my regiment' decided that'the chances of a man seeing Australia again was one in four. So they arranged that none of them was to touch his deferred pay and that the survivor on reaching Australia was to rocoivo the lot. Two days later a Jacko bomb claimed the first. In the following mouth two of the others were wounded; bift they played the game, and were back in the line before their wounds were thoroughly cured. The fourth was then badly gashed by a shell splinter. Ho was sent away to hospital, but was returned to Anzac Covo two days before the general evacuation, and had hardly set foot on the beach before a shell from Beachy Bill sent him west. Later a spray of machine-gun bullets registered for tho third man beneath the date palms of El Quatia. That left only one, who was now eiy titled to collect. Fate gave him his chance, for a bomb-dropping Taube wounded him again at Bir el Abd. and oii coining out of hospital he was offered a cushy guard job. But he refused to tako it, and fell at last within sight of Jerusalem, sniped by a miserable Arab. So Death won the wager thumbs down. BEAUTY'S BEST. Mr 0. Caldwell, of Apiti, with a surveyor's experience behind him, selects the Tangarakau Gorge, on the Stratford-Main "Trunk route, as the most beautiful place of its kind in New Zealand. '"1 believe," he says, "that it is one of the best works of Nature. I rode through it one beautiful summer morning. Some of the olifl's are perpendicular, and about 300 feet high. They are clothed with many species of shrubs, ferns, lianes and mosses, many of which live in seams that occur at intervals on the faces. The Tangarakau river is in parts a torrent. Tho road runs close to it. A ride along the road when the plants are in bloom ig delightful. The sweetest songs of birds are heard all the time as the traveller moves on." WHERE WOMEN WIN. (Scandinavian women may well claim to be in the forefront as regards social and political progress. Norway was the first European country to give women the suffrage. Finland first made women eligible for Parliament, and at present has 18 women members. Danish women were conceded the vote in 1915, and first voted in 1918; they also sit in Parliament, and at present thero are 11 women members. Swedish women were franchised in 1918, and voted for the first time last year. They were also made eligible for Parliament, and five have been elected. In Norway, though tho first of the group to grant political rights to them, few women have been elected, and at present only one sits in Storthing. In Sweden marriage law places women on an equality with men; the principle of equal pay is accepted, and daughters have equal rights of inheritance with sons. Throughout Scandanavia women arc admitted to the universities and to professions, with the exception. of the church. Each of the Scandinavian countries has appointed a woman delegate to attend the League assembly at Geneva.

THE GREAT PARTNERSHIP. There would be a complete cure for the continual trouble in industry, says the London Spectator, if both sides could be brought in the mass to believe in what is really a simple and obvious truth, that industry is a great partnership. There are actually three distinct parties interested in industrial production. Fir.'";, there are the manual workers; secondly, there are the managers of industry who are usually described a s the employers : and, thirdly, there arc the capitalists —a class which, of course, includes the employers, but also includes the whole public and a great many of the manual workers themselves. Manual workers, even when they have money invested directly or indirectly in industry, generally do not recognise that they are capitalists.

HAREM LADIES' RUSE. Since the chief of nolicc at Constantinople issued an edict proclaiming that Turkish women dancim in public are liable to prosecution the dancing resorts have been thronged with Turkish women from the harems disguised as Europeans. The fox trot, and even the modest waltz, shock the old-fashioned Turk, despite the fact that they have had to discard many old customs —including that of having four wives—owing |to the high cost of living. Turkish women who have been abroad grumble when they get home, as they cannot go about to tea dances, and similar amusements. They have therefore formed Turkish women's clubs where the yachmak, or veil, can be discarded in favour of becoming afternoon or evening frocks, procured for a H mall sum, in which they may bo seen in various ballrooms dancing merrily with Europeans, while their less ■ clever sisters, demurely veiled, lookon longingly. But to dance with a foreigner is a greater offence than to dance with a Moslem, and all Constantinople is on the tiptoe of expectancy to see what will happen when the local Turkish vigilance societies discover tho ruse. Tho sum of £2,000,000 will bo spent by the Education Department on salaries this year. America is spending money like water on education. It has been reported that 40 ppr cent, of the pupils leave school in New Zealand without obtaining proficiency certificates. Imports into New Zealand from Germany for the March quarter were valued at £5228. For the corresponding period in the previous year they were valued at £5096. During tho last "fortnight there has been a fairly severe outbreak of diphtheria in Hamilton, and there arc at present 21 patients in the isolation ward of the Waikato Hospital. Wooden bridges, remarked the Minister of Public Works at Eketahuna, should last at least 25 to 30 years. "Oh, yes," added the Resident Engineer "(Mr Hannah), - "even kauri ought to last 40 years." The iimij bridge under discussion had lasted only 16 years. As an indication of the eagerness to obtain secured positions, even at a low salary, tho secretaryship of the Sterling Dairy Co., Otago, winch was advertised at a remuneration of £156 a year, drew forth 27 applicants, wliose addresses ranged from an area covering from Christchurch to Invorcargill. "Farmers are buying motor cars again," said the representative of a leading Canterbury motor firm. "It's a good sign. If means that business is getting back to the point we want it to stay at—solid and firm. We have sold 20 cars in the last four weeks, and prospects are bright. This winter is going to be 7Q per cent, better than most people expected." "Whatever be the outcome of the Bishop Liston case," says Mr Geo. ! Harford, National Vice-President oi the P.P.A., "I know that next ses- • sion of Parliament a law will be passed making it a penal offence for any man to utter ft uch sentiments as the Bishop uttered at Auckland." "Mako eggs your main object," urged Mr F. C. Brown, Chief Poultry Instructor, in a lecture at Sohvay on Saturday. "And to get eggs you must have the proper strain. ' MiBrown said that when lie went to Blenheim, some years ago, to manage the egg-laying contest there, such a thing as a'laying typo was not known in New Zealand or in any other part of tho world, but to-day the White Leghorn had become supreme as a laying machine. In the early days, if a hen laid 120 eggs, in a year she was regarded as something out of the ordinary, but now records of 300 per annum were fairly numerous. In a statement made in Wellington on Wednesday night on the oosition of the railways, Mr ,Massey made clear his opinion that a further increase in charges to the public was at the present time inadvisable. About 100 telephones in Auckland city and suburbs were disconnected on'Monday morning owing to non-1 payment of subscriptions. ' '