LOCAL AND GENERAL.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume XLII, Issue XLII, 27 March 1922, Page 4

LOCAL AND GENERAL.

According to a London cable the German mark exchange rate on. Friday touched 1530, and closed at 1455 marks to the pound sterling. Owing to the scarcity of fat stock, the staff at the Waingawa freezing works have been retrenched, 14 butchers and 14 labourers receiving notice on Tuesday. The economy campaign of the Government is reaching desperate lengths, says the Manawatu Daily Times. Last Saturday night the train between Masterton and Woodville was run without lights, and the guard had to strike matches in order to inspect passengers' tickets.

Among the amusing incidents told of by the Bishop of Melanesia last week was a story illustrating how the natives are very quick to pick up slang without knowing how it applies. He told of one man who, after being sentenced by a magistrate, went out of court, greeting the Bench with: "So long, old thing; be good."

In the early hours of Tuesday morning, states the Dunedin Star, an engine that was being "blown down" —i.e., the steam taken out of it —escaped from the locomotive yard at Dunedin and ran down into the passenger yard at the station. A car was in the way, and this was telescoped and badly damaged. No one was hurt.

"I think it is generally recognised," said the president of the Arbitration Court in Wellington on Thursday, "that the business of 'higher, still higher wages' has temporarily, at any rate, come to a stop. Everybody knows that industry throughout the country is not good at present, and everything depends, more or less, on the prices we get for our primary products.''

Returns prepared by the New Zealand Air Board give the following facts as to flights in the Dominion during the months of January and February: Passengers carried, January 883, February 503; hours flown, 71 hours 57 minutes, 59 hours 26 minutes ; approximate machine mileage, 5246, 4335; number of flights, 484, 294. The grand totals for the eleven months of the flying year are: Passengers 8617, hours flown, 936 hours 55 minutes; machine mileage, 63,752.

The Bishop of Melanesia was very lucid in his description of the vagaries of the native mind, when talking of Melanesia last Friday night. He related that one man who was in charge of a school at a certain place reported that his school was getting on well and had been open every day. Asked if the scholars were regular, he said: "Oh, no, they have not come; but I have rung the bell every day." It is an amusing sidelight on their character.

Speaking to a Star reporter on the scope of musical education in New Zealand, Mr Will Hutchens said that as far as a New Zealand musical college was concerned, there was a good deal to be said for and against. Such a college would fill a great need, but of course a truly good musical education demanded that breadth of knowledge which could only be obtained by a personal connec tion with the older countries. An artist might develop splendidly in New Zealand from a technical point of view, but artistic development required personal contact with musical life in the various great cpntres of the world. That meant that any local conservatorium would have limitations, however much it might increase the appreciation for music. The older world could not be dispensed with as a finishing ground for Colonial n^usical artists, for it was that personal contact with the older schools of {nought which made the all-round musician.