GENERAL NEWS.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 3184, 1 April 1911, Page 10

GENERAL NEWS.

British girls who come to New Zealand to enter domestic service -seem 'in many cases to be disappointed' with conditions ’here on arrival. A lady having much to do with such girls informed a Wellington '“Post” reporter that the girls sometimes cry on. their disillusionment. They say that they had been told before coming out that they were to get £1 or £1 10s per week, and all found. They are never able to say by whom they "are. tohl this, except that they have seen it advertised somewhere. As a matter of fact, they might bo able to receive no more than £2O to £2O a year at Home, but they seem to leave with exaggerated notions as to the length of the New Zealand housewife’s nurse. Many of them follow particular branches of service, and they are. appalled by the multifarious duties which the New Zealand V genera]” is expected to perform. “Itl/ ls 1 ' afbfso very different from what we thought it would be,” summarises their position.

Thursday was the 66th anniversary of the landing of the first 200' men of the 58th Regiment in Auckland by H.M.S. North Star. The gallant little band, the day after landing, proceeded to the Bay of Islands, where they attacked the dusky warriors of Hone Hoke, but the enormous force of Maoris was too strong for them. They saw some desperate^fighting, and 38 of their number were killed, and many wounded, before they returned to Auckland 1 to await reinforcements. Sergeant Jesse Sage, of Ponsonby, claims to be the sole surviving member of this gallant, 200. He is still hale and hearty, despite his 88 years, and his recollection of the. troublous days of “forty-five” is wonderfully vivid.

Presiding at the twenty-seventh annual meeting of the New Zealand and River Plate Mortgage Company, Mr A. M. -Mitchison spoke of the extraordinary progress which had been made in the Argentine in the past twenty years. He remarked that at the meeting a year ago he had stated that circumstances had been exceptionally favorable, and' that they would probably not be able to present such goed accounts next time, the circumstances then prevailing pointing to a reduction in revenue. That had actually occurred, but the causes were temporary. They were glad, on the other hand, to note the increased cultivation in districts of the River Plate, where such developments a short time ago could not have been anticipated, bait competition in mortgage business had become increasingly severe, and money had’ been pouring into the country from' many sources. With regard to the future of the River Plate, there were bound to be fluctuations in the welfare of that wonderful country, but the great factors of supply and demand tended to increase prosperity. The progress which had been made by Argentine was a remarkable phenomenon.

MARK TWAIN’S POPULARITY. Mark Twain had a. large following of admirers who came to regard themselves as his personal friends. Many of them lie never met. Most of them never saw him. All of them felt a sudden relationship and were flattered by it. Men and women in all parts of our outspread domain, the men especially, cherished a. private affection for him. They called him by his first name, which is the surest proof of abiding fondness-. Andrew Jackson was known as “Andy ;” Abraham Lincoln was simply “Abe” to every soldier boy; and as a later instance, we have “Teddy.” Some men settle down to a kinship with the shirt-sleeve contingent, even when they seem indifferent to the favor of the plain multitude. Mary . Twain never practised any of the wiles of the politicians in order to be cheered at the railway stations and have Chantaquas send for him. He did not seem over ■anxious to meet the reporters, and he had a- fine contempt if or most of the orthodox traditions . cherished by the people who loved him.

THE FALLING BIRTH-RATE. Professor Wilhelm Ostwald, who was awarded the Nobel prize for chemistry in 1909, publishes a. remarkable article in the Vienna “Neue Freie- Presse,” in which he denies emphatically that European civilisation is in a decadent state. But there is lie acknowledges, a fly in the amber, and he declares that the falling birth-rate i 9 the one tiring that gives even steadfast optimists sleepless nights. He ascribes this mainly to the initiative of women: “We have apparently the cruel alternative of women wearing themselves out as mothers, and renouncing a great share of the intellectual activity in attending which so many feminine pioneers have worked with self-sacrifice, or of motherhood being rejected, or limited to a minimum, and thereby the existence of the nation threatened. If this alternative has to be settled yes or no, there can'.be no doubt as to the answer. Women in the collective must make the sacrifice, for the highest civilisation has no value once it is doomed to destruction ’ ’