Timely Topics

Northern Advocate, 25 July 1938, Page 4

Timely Topics

i Congress says the “Christian Science | Monitor”)' served the cause of huImanoness when on June 7 it sent to I the White House a Bill ,CONGRESS which provides that all 1 REWARDS horses 'and mules used ‘ SERVICE, in the service of the ; Government shall be i humanely disposed of or sent to pasture when their years of service are ? over. The sad end of these animals i has occupied the attention of humane i workers for many years. Disposed of |at auction, the animals , often were fused for further work for which they • were no longer fitted. Mules someI times ended their days in mines. | Horses continued to draw burdens t sometimes heavier than they had previously known. The action of Con- | gross is encouraging. In such legis- ? laticn, however, the United States still t lags behind England, Germany and f Italy. Legislators who sponsored this | measure might v/ell continue the proI gross thus begun. ® IE 13 52 ' ; “There are some conventions in dress, I imagine (says “YY,” in the “New Statesman”), which will never be allowed to disapCONVENTIONS pear. It is difficult to IN DRESS- believe in the possibility of an efficient police force in which every policeman w'as allowed to exercise as much liberty of choice in regard to his clothes as a journalist. A police force garbed as variously and as eccentrically as the art students in the Latin Quarter of the last century would make a poor showing at controlling a mob in a street riot. .The policeman of today, indeed, owes half his confidence to his uniform, and' his uniform inspires confidence in others. Dressed for work, he fs not only John Smith: he is the Law. The truth is our clothes make us to a great extent what we are. It is because men instinctively realise this, I fancy, that | they have always been so absurdly i particular about convention in dress, j “Naturally, they go too far. Human 1 beings always do. There was a magistrate, for example, who reproved a solicitor the other day for appearing before him in a grey suit; he said it was not respectful. And the case could not continue till the solicitor disappeared and dressed himself in rej spectful blue. Even here, however, j the magistrate is not to be greatly blamed. Obviously, he looked on the grey suit as the thin end of the wedge, and it is only an exceptional man. who can regard the thin end of the wedge with anything but suspicion. ‘lf X let this pass,’ he must have reasoned, ‘how can I prevent some other solicitor from appearing in his shirt sleeves, or even, during a hat wave, in a bathing costume?’ That is how most people argue. Human beings are far too logical.”