The Otago Witness. WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE SOUTHERN MERCURY. (WEDNESDAY, JULY 23, 1913.) THE WEEK.

Otago Witness, Issue 3097, 23 July 1913, Page 47

The Otago Witness. WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE SOUTHERN MERCURY. (WEDNESDAY, JULY 23, 1913.) THE WEEK.

“ Nunquam aliud aatura, oliud gapientia dixit."— Jutexai,. “ Good nature and good sense must ever join.’’— Pope. Ifc is generally considered that if Mr William Watson in a fit of pique

The I’oct Laureate.

and passion had not penned ‘‘The Woman with the

Serpent’s Tongue” he would probably have been made Poet Laureate; but since the appointment is in the hands of the Prime Minister, and the venomous poem was popularly supposed to have been hurled at Mrs Asquith, the selection of another poet for the office can scarcely he wondered at. The poetry of Dr Robert Bridges—the _ new P< et Laureate is a doctor of medicine, who. prior to his retirement from the profession, held a number of hospital appointments —is not so well known as that of Mr William Watson, hut his accession to the Laureateship is certain to direct attention do some of his shorter poems, even should Ills longer, more ambitious, and sever! y classical efforts in verse still remain the property of the few. From the point of view of the farming community, Dr Robert Bridges has this in his favour, that he loves retirement, and revels in the solitude of country life. In his home at Yattcndon, In Berkshire, which adjoins the upper and unsullied reaches of the River Thames, the Poet Laureate has been “a most exact observer of those natural phenomena which accord with his temper of mind; but his observation is not in the manner of a realism hard and unqualified: It is guided by a delicate instinct of selection; it is subject to a- law of beauty; it is a quest, not for fact, but for delight. His; eye can read the details, the minion type, in the hook of Nature; and it can also find rest or excitement In breadths of prospect—the still solitude of English downs, a woodland after the havocs of autumn gales, the scourge of the surf and sweep of the tides seen from the cliff. Spring and summer are dear to him. To a community descending almost entirely from Scotch forbears. Dr Bridges will appeal in his lines “To Robert Burns’,” with the subtitle “An Tvokstlc on Instinct.” A couple of th<> closing stanzas from this poem place the immortal “Bobbie” in a light which appeals to th“ imagination— Robert Burns ns Robin Hood suggests all sorts of possibilities: Thou migh’st have lived like Robin Hood, Waylaying Abbots in the wood. Doing whnte’er thee seemed good. The law defying. And ’mong the people’s heroes stood Living and dving.

Yet better bow than his thou bcndest. And well th-3 poor mall thou befncndest, And oftentimes an ill amendest; When, if truth touch thee, Sharply the arrow home thou sendest; There’s none can match thee. The vo>'ue oi Mormonism in New Zealand and Australia, at an} iate,

Jiorraonism ai.tl Sniailiiux.

is likely to suffer a severe setback if the allegation

turns out to be conec that the present epidemic of smallpox rras introduced to this Dominion by a Mormon missionary- And Dr Cumpston, the I cetera! Director of Quarantine and other quar antine authorities in Australia hat reached a definite conclusion that the disease was introduced to Sydney from Aew Zealand. While the attack m the case of Europeans has been diagnosed a compartively mild form of the disease, entailing, probably, not much more inconvenience than that imposed by vaccina tion itself, yet with the Maoris the ca=o promises to be more serious. Accurdm to the latest intelligence from the north, three verv severe cases have been discovered among the Maoris at near Te Awamutu, and these hare be declared to be true smallpox, eun the marked characteristic Di Erenglev, of the Auckland HealtJ Department, comments on tins de '®‘P' meat in a significant fashion 1 he department’s fear/- he is reported to hare said, “that this mild or modhied form o smallpox might become more ) nn nt a comparatively immune aboriginal iac such as the Maori,, seems, a-hortmiately to have a!readv been demonstrated in the occurrence in the Te Awamutu district That recognised authority Di Aichda Reid, in his book on "The Laws o Heredity.” has an interesting chapter “Acquired Immunity. an extract from which is pertinent to the present outbreak of smallpox amongst the Maoris; ! has been conclusively proved expenmen tally that if smallpox be passed through c series of calves it becomes cowpox; in the horse it becomes horsepox: transfer ed back to man it is vaccinia By then the nature of the microbe has been profounolv altered. Owing, probably, la a virulence —lie.. oSenoivo and power)—they are unable to spicad o\ i the bodv but are restricted to the spot of inoculation where they and their toxins are most concentrate. The toxins, how ever, permeate the body, and induce a general change, from which results recovery from vaccina and immunity to smallpox. The absence ot the microbes from the blood scrum aud,_ therelmo from the lungs, prevents their Affusion bv the breath. Probably it is for this reason that vaccinia, unlike smallpox, is not air-borne. Consequently it does not atfect people in the vicinity. It has become like rabies, a disease which is communicated only by direct contact and under particular circumstances It doe* not, during its passage through a senes of human hosts, again evolve the ancient characteristics of smallpox, _ because, on the one hand, the failure of its microbes to pass naturally from a sufferer to his fellows results in the extermination ot all that are not artifically removed, so that there is no survival of the liitest as regards the power to migrate, while on the other hand, man aititicually enables the more and the less fit to migrate alike. Human races which have had no ancestral experience of smallpox, which have not been weeded out by it, have comparatively ] ow powers of resistance. A party of Esquimaux who visited Berlin, and wcie vaccinated there, developed a general disease resembling or identical with smallpox. and perished of it. The microbes, therefore, were able to spread over the entire body. Doubtless, if vaccinia were passed through a series of such people and then through more resistant types, it would again become smallpox just as harmless saprophytic organisms become virulent parasites if passed under favourable circumstances through a senes ot living hosts.” The newly-founded Chinese Republic is once more in troubled

Hip Aiviikfiiins o! China.

water?., and tbe President. \ uan Shih-Kai, is being

called upon to give proof of his power to quell the rebellion in the south fomented bv Dr Sun Yat Sen, and which, it is said, has been anew called into being owing to the tyrannical autocratic methods of the President. 1 he awakening of a huge nation like the Chinese is not likely to be accomplished and the new Government set upon linn and permanent foundations without a recurrence, for some time at least, of those sporadic disturbances. It can scarcely be expected that so strongly conservative a people as tlm Chinese will adapt themselves offhand to the changing conditions and wondrous transformations now taking place. For, after all, these riots and revolutions and disturbances are only symptoms of a still greater cliangc, and possibly the prelude to still mightier convulsions. which may have world-wide consequences. The New York Outlook, in an editorial, states the case for “The Xew East" from an American standpoint. Some of the sentences used are striking, and will bear reproducing: “It is quite certain that if one is to understand what is going on in the Far East to-day. he must have both knowledge and vision—he must know the facts, but he must also use the imagination in interpreting them. Looked at close at hand and seen in detail day by day. the East seems full of disorder and swept by conflicting currents; hut these disturbances are incidental to the awakening of its dormant energies; they are not the, signs of approaching anarchy, but of reorganisation, of liberation of unused powers. There are strongly-marked currents moving through this restless sea of human life that was lone quiescent : there are powerful general tendencies behind the disorder : and there is also a spiritual force which has immense potentiality, and in the East of to-day it is the potential which is the

dominant Factor. No man of vision can see the East of to-day without seeing the East of to-morrow. The Old East has become the Young East with possibilities of development as rich and as varied as those of the farthest West; and in youth it is not what has been attained that holds the interest, but what lies within reach of the unspent ardour, the unused vitality. The West is thinking and talking about the Old East; there is a new East, not yet fully aware of its power, but rapidly coming to a knowledge of its resources for good and eviL In China there may be a period of disorder; there may even be another revolution; it may be that an era of anarchy may set in. No man can forsee the events of the near future, but of the outcome no one who knows the resources of the Chinese character can be in doubt. A people cannot change its social habits and political institutions over-night, so to speak, without disturbance of long-established values, outbreaks of distrust and panics; but a capable people having slowly or suddenly become aware of powers which it has not used, will certainly learn how to use them, no matter how painful the education may be.”