NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21346, 22 November 1932, Page 8

NOTES AND COMMENTS

RESURGENT GERMANY

''Field exercises" are to be organised by the "Reich Board for the physical training of youth," established by a recent Presidential decree, says the Times. Tho courses are to bo held at special "field exercise" schools, tho purpose of which will be to train instructors. There will be three distinct tests at the end of each course; an athletic sports test, including sprinting and longdistance races, jumping, putting tho weight, and swimming; a miniature rifleshooting test; and a "field exerciso" test, including drill and marching, digging, mapreading, sketching, visual tests, and estimation of distances, description and exploitation of terrain, camouflage, scouting, and message running. Each school will bo run by a director and staff appointed by the board. The youths taking the courses will live in what is described as "close comradeship;" that is to say, they will live under camp conditions. Party political activities are rigorously prohibited, and tho orders of tho director are to be strictly obeyed. Disobedience will be punished with expulsion from tho course. The discipline, that is to say, is apparently to be of the voluntary character which already prevails in the voluntary labour corps; anybody unwilling to obey orders is not wanted and can go and face his friends and relations—and, what would bo the hardest in this case, his unit in his own organisation —with the shamo of expulsion upon him. It is an advanced stage of the system in vogue in some German upper schools, where expulsion from classes is on tho whole remarkably effective as a substitute for more old-fashioned punishments.

BLACKBIRDS AND RAGWORT

In a lecture on "Birds and Plants before the Liverpool Botanical Society Mr. Eric Hardy said 48 species of birds feed on tho berries of the bramble group, 43 on the bilberry group, 33 on blackthorn and cherry, 24 on the crowberry group and 14 on the holly. As many as 29 different birds had been noted feeding on the elderberries, which form one of the greatest attritions to a wild bird sanctuary. Experiments in which the droppings of weedeating birds had been planted for the seeds contained to germinate and be identified showed that more weed seeds are distributed by birds in a dry than a wet summer, and therefore there were more weeds on arable land after a dry yeai; than a wet one. Birds with gizzards that crush hard seeds, as poultry, pigeons, finches and ducks, were agriculturally useful as weedeators because they crushed the weed seeds, but insectivorous birds, like robins and thrushes, distributed tho seeds in a germinable state, and thus what was apparent destruction of weeds was actually thoir distribution over a far wider area. Examination of blackbirds* crops in Cheshire showed that for nine months of tho year the birds fed on insects, weed seeds, mostly ragwort, chickweed, spurrev, sorrel, etc., and wild fruits, as wild rose, service tree and rowan. From July to Sep tember, however, they attacked cultivated fruit. Twenty-seven out of 89 blackbirds' crops contained gooseberries, while 285 birds examined generally showed that those living near towns ate more insect food and less fruit than those living in a fruitgrowing district. Titmice, often accused of attacking buds, only do so when after insects, and 20 blue tits shot "red handed" at the pears near Chester contained not a trace of fruit.

WOMEN AND FREEMASONRY Women's share in the history of Freemasonry was outlined by Miss BothwellGosso in an address given at .the Manchester Soroptomist Club. The exclusion of women from the full benefits of Freemasonry, said the speaker, was not always in force. On the contrary, in the earliest times only women were in possession of secret societies. Later, men arose and wrested the mystery from them. It was sometimes suggested that women should not be admitted to Freemasonary because it was a survival of the guilds of the Middle Ages, but thero were records of 500 guilds into only five of which women were not admitted, and these wero obscure guilds and not Masonic ones. In 1494 the" Guild of St. Catherine admitted brothers and sisters. The Corpus Christi Guild, York, also admitted men and women. By the 18th century the guilds had been slowly dying out, transforming themselves into benefit societies and trade unions. In Masonry itself a great change was coming. Up to the year 1722 there was no regulation that women should not be admitted, but in 1723 a clause was invented saying that women should not be admitted to Masonry. Later, however, women were invited to become Freemasons. It was during this century that the ridiculous stories arose about women hiding in clocks to listen to the secrets of Freemasonry. There were, however, noteworthy instances of women who had spied upon tho ritual. An American girl "spy" hid in a pulpit and learned the secrets and was afterwards admitted to the order. The movement flagged in tho 19th century, mainly becauso women were of no importance economically. It was Georges Martin, a French feminist, who opened the doors of Freemasonry for women in that century. Even to-day, however, women, though authentic Freemasons, were not admittod to tho Grand Lodge of the order. Referring to tho conditions of entry, Miss Bothwell-Gosse said that character counted for more than wealth or social position. No atheist was elegiblo, tho beliefs and doctrines of Freemasonry being founded on a firm belief in the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. A high moral standard was essential. The speaker thought that this qualification was even more important for women than for men, for while it would not hurt men's Freemasonry for one man here and there to come to grief morally it might spell disaster for any member of a women's lodge to fall short in this respect..