OUR PUBLIC SCHOOLS COLUMN.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 16994, 3 May 1917, Page 3

OUR PUBLIC SCHOOLS COLUMN.

(Conducted by .Maoibtku, to whom all oomQtunicatious must bo addressed.) FOX* SENIORS AND JUNIORS. [Magister will he glad to xeccivo Nature Notes, marked papers containing educational articles, diagrams, details oi experiments, etc., ol scholastic interest to teuchera und pupils. Correspondents must use OHLX side ol tho paper, and whether using u pen uamo oi not, must send both .YAM* ajuxjiikss.] £20,000,000,000! The Empire hasn't spent ihat amount — I uiuo say £d,ouO,(aX),lX\j will cover expenditure, all told, to date. Btit why my heading-? Robert Bridges, the poet laureate, m a letter to the London limes in February, says that an American was talking to a Prussian junker in Berlin in DDIS, when the question of tuUire developments came up. 'Ihe first step to world domination, was to destroy Franco so that she could not raise her head for a hundred years, and then England's turn was to come —this and more Bernhardi . and other Pan-Germans have told us before. When the Prussian was asked what they meant to do when they had conquered England, which was taken as a matter oi course, he said: "The first thing we sh'a;l do is to impose an indemnity of twenty thousand million pounds." "• But,'' objected the American, " there is not so much money in the country." "We know that," said tho Junker, "but we shall occupy England until they have paid it. They will have to work it out:" "But if they refuse to work", how can you compel them?" "The lash." said tho Prussian. "What! Slavery?" "Yes, slavery." Our poet laureate uses tills as a text to help forward the war loan movementand reasons that if we are to raise £20,000,000.000 for the ■ Germans, ' we may just as well raise it to keep the Germans out. so he says. "For myself, I prefer the war loan." OUR NAVY LEAGUE. I was one of tho privileged few—for it really was a privilege to be present at the annual meeting of the Navy League—to hear Professor Bedford's address, and I have neither read nor heard a finer description. in so few words, of the origin and evolution of our Empire navy : and of tho contrast the birth of the German navy of tho twcnticnth century is to the birtb of ours over a thousand years ago. Ours has been an unconscious slow growth, in keeping with the growth of our nation, and never with.any long, forward view, one -fixed purpose, of- carefully considered aggressivo expansion. Nothing- the professor said against the trappings of war was too strong, and this portion, together with what he had to say about our navy as a purely evolutionary and defensive weapon of war, ought to be read in all our schools. But I am not -quite so sure about the professor's concluding portion. The late Captain Mahan, of the' United States navy, the greatest naval historian that has ever lived, and whose works ought to be studied bv anyone wishing to understand what naval power means, ;' referred to nations as weak who depended upon commerce destroying: but T am not so sure that, under present, conditions, ho would not have modified his views. Up to the present war most, naval work was done in the age of wind, and not of steam. Tho French took our boats in large numbers, but. they did not sink t.hcm. and they were often talccn and retaken. No nation then had any great advantage on the sea over any other nation; there was not that, great inter-dopendenee among nations then that there is now; the British Isles, even had they boon isolated, were largely selfcontained —fancy our Homeland earrving ( on a war under present conditions for over 20 years ! —naval, actions were . fought between, forces approximately equal. Britain then had the.lead in coal, iron, and manufacturing industries, and so on. Bijt what a contrast now. The enemy's mercantile marine is pretty well intact. , though in enemy and neutral hands; our ships are sunk on tile high seas now, not captured, though the enemy's marine is' driven off the seas, and its navy locked up. A submarine is insignificant, in size, armament, and men. but it is coping successfully with Atlant : c liners, and the contest is tragically unequal. Submarining is not. decreasing, and as summer days grow longer the rate per month is. increasing. France in the eighteenth century and onwards was met on comparatively equal terms as far as ships, men. and armaments were concerned, but were disadvantaged when it came to Continental' support; but now Germany has an alliance whmh may prove lasting, as alliances iro. if fiermanv's nol : cy can continue until th n British Isles are starved, then what will bo t.he use of our navy? With Germany centrally situated it becomes for the time being rail power against sea nower; and if' Germany ran hold on at her present ratf. stalemate may result, which will be a German victory. Though now large and able to cover long distances, submarines can become invisible. If the submarining continues long, enough, one of two things is to happen: either Gorman submarines are goinsr to reduce the Allies to submission, or the Allies must rapidly develop protective measures or an effective offensive. But we cannot wait indefinitely. A decision must be come to within a short time—the Germans have fixed upon August. I think. Again, all our' lines of communication . to of action—to Greece, Egypt, Mesopotamia. German East Africa, etc. —are open to attack by the assassins of the seas; but Germany's lines; being in-' tcrior. And made up of-strategic railways, aro almost immune from attack. At present the Central Powers are more selfcontained than the British. And so I could go on. Had America not come in - the position would have been a serious one, beause an immoral code of fighting to which we could not sink and would not had arisen, one violating all Christian codes—if we oan apply t.he term Christian to fichting, at all— and all international' arguments. What I -have-said may be right or wrong; but, these "and' other points rise in my mind to indicate that,, owing to changed conditions. the crisis might have arisen before wo were able fullv to cope with a phase Captain Mahan did not reckon upon when ho wrote his works,,which still stand, though his decisions in the liccht of recent developments, submarine and ethical, might- have been materially: modified. - - \ ' Sir J. "Wdpon, K.C.5.1., in an article alluded to elsewhere, says: " Even if Germany's submarine campaign proves more successful than it has yet been, it is probable that on the Ist August next the total tonnage of the*-world's merchant shipping will not bo much less than it was on the outbreak of the war, and certainly larger than it was in 1910.'-' But this apparently includes nearly 4.000.000 of German shipping, or nearly one-tenth of the world's gross tonnage. ■' Tho United States is . building, he says,' 904.00u I "tons of new steamers besides a number of. wooden vessels of over 500 tons. SUGAR! SUGAR! SUGAR! Last week J -quoted what I thought were some, interesting facts on 6ugar taken "from "Defeat? The Truth about the Betrayal of Britain." I had heard that sugar was almost non-existent for some ' time in tho trenches, and Home papers tell us that a pound of vei-y inferior sugar costing sixpence or seven pence a pound can bo procured only by spending perhaps several shillings in groceries. I asked that teachers might institute a movement in -their schools to provide ex-pupils with pounds of sugarsugar and tin not, to exceed a pound when sewn in cloth or soldered up. In this way we can make sure of our 6oldiors getting what they cannot buy, and-the cost to us will bo less than inferior sugar at Home. To me it is an inexpressible shame that sugar, an actual necessity in the trenches and hospitals, can be procured not at all or only very sparingly, while it can be procured "by merchants or brewers for less worthy purposes. Some schools are entering hoartily into the movement. Extend it to other dry eatables—boiled lollies, homo made biscuits, c-tc. Then extend the movement, if you can, to cover 71b tins, contents and caliec cover to be just under that weight. Into that tin j put condensed milk, luncheon biscuits, boiled lollies, and cakes of chocolates. My! Won't the men's eves glisten when they open them! Just you try;, boys and girls. You won't see tho men's eyes dance with delight, but you are imaginative enough to form tho mental picture. Bog or borrow tins—another use for waste products. FOOD FROM ABROAD. Seeing you are going to be so good as to send what you can, I am asking the editor if ho has room to insert tho following, taken from "The Past at Our Doors," one of tho "Roadablo Books in Natural Knowledge," published at Is 6d (I. think) by the Macmillans: — In tho early days, when sugar, which seems to have come into Europe through the 'Arabs after the crusade, had not been introduced, wild honey from the woods was

used instead. .Even when introduced (in the form of fcho sugar, lor instance, which roaahod England [rom Alexandria in the reign of Hi.-tiry IJJ), it long oojitiuuod to bo regarded as a rare and costly spice, and remained so up to the trnio ot the discovery of iUnerioa at tho end of the fifteenth century. It was first refined and matio into loaves by a Venetian, the 'loaves" being mentioned in tlwj re«ien of Henry VIII. To take another artclo commonly obtained from tho grocer (or "grosser, ,J a namo originally applied to traders who dealt in the "gross," but who would bo bettor described as "monopolisers"), what we now call currants were, till about one hundred yoars ago, generally termed raiains of Corinth, or Corinths (as coming from tho Levant). And currants are still called "Oorints" at Tenby, in Wales. Tho fresh purrants of our gardens, on the other hand, are not rpally "currants" at all, but a. sort of dwarf gooseberries, and when introduced into England in 1533, were called "beyond-sea gooseberries." They are still termed "gooseberries" in France. Coffee, an article introduced from Turkey, is first mentioned in aibout, 1600, and in 1650 the first coffee-houses in England wore opened in Oxford and London respectively. Tho London coifee-houso was set up by a servant of a , certain Mr Edwards, a merchant trading to Turkey. This servant, a youth named Pasqua Rosee, had accompanied his master homo from Smyrna to prepare his coffee for him in the mornings. This excited "so much public attention that tho servant was allowed to open a coffee-house, tho sign-board of which represented'the head of Pasqua Rosco himself. We know from tho rhymes of Pope and other writers that "tea" was formerly pronounced "tay," as it still is in. Scotland .and Ireland and on the Continent' of Europe. Tho reason of this (to English people) old-fashioned pronunciation, which is perfectly correct, was that tea first cams t° 115 f rom Amoy, in the South of China, tho word was actually pronounced "toy?" instead of "cha," as in other parts of that country. Tea was sold in 1651, by one Garway or Garraway in London, and when introduced cost as much as ten sovereigns a pound. It tho Earl of Arlington who set tho habit of [drinking what was then called a "dish of tea" at court (in 1666), after which it soon hecamo the height of fashion. Marmalade is now usually, though not invariably, made from Seville oranges, but, as. its name shows, it was at first made like "at >0r V l l 1 ,° ollSo ''marmolada," from the Marmelo" or quince, or ratherr, perhaps, from a particular kind of honey-apple which was frrafted upon a quince tree. And "marmelo" comes from the Latin meli-melum, of which tho English ,f honey-apple" is a translation. In 1514, we read of a "box with preservo of qumco and marmolado," and later "maxmjilndo of quinces." 13ut two centuries and a-half elapsed before "orange marmalade" was mentioned in 1769) _ But the most astonishing history of all is that of the word "treacle." In tho seventeenth century the "Venico treacle." which was especially famous, was sold by an Italian who kept a small shop in Venice, not, far from St. Mark's Cathedral. But this was not in the lea-st like what wo should call treacle nowadays. It was an extraordinary mixture, composed of manv strange and some revolting ingredients, which was also called "viper-wine."and was sold as an fintidote against snake-bite, something on the principle of the proverbial "hair from the dog that bit you." ingredients included "vipers steeped alive in white wine (whence its name of viper-wine"), opium, snice. licorice, red roses, the iuiee of. rough sloes, "seeds of the treacle.of mustard" and manv others to be mixed with honey into a sort of drink. The vipers themselves sravo it, the name of .treacle from an old Greek word theriake which at first been.mo "trincle" both in French and English. Phis Greek word wis emploved to deferibe anvthinsr belonging' to a' therion or little wild beast." As this was the expression applied in a ,verse of the \W Testament, to the vir>er that came out of the fire and fastened upon the hand of /St. Paul, theriake came to bo' used of viperwme too. An old writer. - More, who lived in the seventeenth eentnry. used the word in its original sense when he wrote of "a most strong treacle [or ant-'dotel against, these venomous heresies." and tbi« was what was meant, too. bv tho noet Waller when ho wrote to_ the (to us strange-soundino-1 line: Vbu vipers treacle yield, and scorpions oil. To conclude this, extraordinary h'storv, Henry TT had a, £rrtv>t. spit of eold (such as was Twrf in place of a fork' at thati date) in wnfrh an pot.rifierl tonsrue" was set. Tin's was a. remarkably earlv examnle of a custom surviving in the island of Malta, where certa-in nmnll stones, coloured like the eyes. t,on"-iie. heart, or liver of serpents, found in the clnv of th« traditional rave of St. Paul. aP e st.ill steeped in wine and drunk hy the natives as an antidote nni>on. THE WORLD'S WI-lEAT SUPPLY. I have always recommended teachers to take "The Journal of Education." Last month's (April's) issue contains, among other good things, "Tho World's Wheat Supply," by Sir J. Wilson, K.C.5.1., delegate of Groat Britain (and of New Zealand) to the International Institute of Agriculture at Rome. Tho article is full of interesting matter and; statistics.