HERE AND THERE.

Otago Witness, Issue 3273, 6 December 1916, Page 62

HERE AND THERE.

—Japan Growing Rich.—

Financially, the war has placed Japan in a position beyond her dreams of avarice. Her specie holdings that before the war stood at £35,300,000 have to-day reached more than £60,000,000, with fair prospects of seeing £70,000,000 before the cio e of the year. Indeed, her financiers seem to be somewhat inconvenienced by this sudden and abnormal increase in gold, and are evidently at a loss how to utilise it. So far Japan has devoted most of her immense increase in gold to the purchase of 4£ per cent, bonds of her own issue on the London and Paris market-, and £10,000,000 in the purchase of English Exchequer bonds in America, to accommodate the Bank of England. Her ability thus to redeem large cjuantities of the bonds which she floated in London and Paris during the war with Russia for munitions aifords her some of the indemnity she failed to get at the Portsmouth Ptace Conference. Money has not been so cheap or abundant in Japan since the establishment of the Japanese banking sysiern, and naturally there is unceasing activity and high prices in the Stock Exchange. When the war is over Germany will find in Japan a formidable competitor, and this competition will have to be faced by British and American manufacturers as well. It is a competition that will begin in the shipping business ; indeed, it has already begun. Similar prosperity is evident in the cotton industry, where output and exports have witnessed unprecedented expansion with record prices, while wages have remained stationary, though already the lowest in the world, with efficiency increasing.

—Too 111 to Learn.—

Mr Gecrge Newman, the chief medical officer of the Board of Education for lingland and Wales, in his annual report gives some startling figures as to the jDhysicai condition of too large a proportion cf the children of the worker;:—the future citizens of England and Wales. "Not less than a quarter of a million children of school age are seriously crippled, invalided, or disabled ; not less than a million children of school age are so physically or mentally defective or diseased as to be unable to derive reasonable benefit fr m the education which the State provides. If this total figure be considered merely from a financial point of view, and quite apart from the suffering, disease, and premature death entailed, it will be seen that the St:rtc is not getting adequate return, on physical grounds alone, for a substantial part of its expenditure on elementary education. It is said sometimes that, in the interest of economy, the State cannot afford such a complete scheme. My submission is that, in the interest of economy, the State cannot afford to neglect a complete scheme. A complete scheme of remedy is in process of building; "but only a start has been made in dealing with the problem. Sir George lays emphasis on the value of open-air life, and refers to the remarkable change in the health and vigour of the young men who, after enlistment, have undergone physical discipline in the open air. —Lot Speech Recovered. — Shell-shock was responsible for depriving Private S. Macdonald, of the Seaforth Highlanders, of his speech. He was proceeding with, the rest of his company along a communication trench at the Somme when a shell exploded close by. Though uninjured bv fragments, the concussion was 'so seve're that he was rendered unconscious, and remembered little until he came to at a clearing hospital. He then found that he was unable to speak. He was conveyed to Bangour Hospital. For three weeks he was dumb, but the other day he recovered his speech by an accident. He lay in bed smoking a ekarette, which lulled him over to sleep. In his slumbers lie accidentally swallowed the smouldering end of his "fag," which caused him to "start up suddenly and cry out. From that moment his speech was restored and his father, who visited him at the hospital the following day, was delighted to find his son able to converse with him. Macdonald belongs to the Airdrie district. A remarkable incident occurred during the presentation at Liverpool Olympia for the first time of the pantomime revue "Razzle Dazzle." Its outstanding feature is an effective tableau entitled "Scotland for Ever," and while this was in progress it was interrupted by a discharged soldier who lost his nower of speech many months ago suddenly rising and shouting lustily "Scotland for ever."

Slight confusion ensued, during which the overjoyed soldier dashed out -of the theatre shouting that he was going to tell Maggie. —The Night Owls of Berlin.—

The night life of Berlin is said to be the horror of Europe, if not of the world, and it is to be honed the city will be well

bombarded before our "Tommies" enter. In the central and working-class quarters drinking goes on practically unchecked. Immorality is rampant, and thousands of Berlin girls wander about, a disgrace to their sex and to humanity in general. Vice is extending into and invading the family circle. So many women were divorced lately that it was found necessary to build .special home? at Frankfurt-on-the-Main to accommodate men whose wives had 'gone wrong, and who were no lunger fit to take chai'sre of their own offspring. Hundreds of harlots might be seen any night parading in some favourite resorts, and even among them many respectable-look-ing srirls, whose parents were close by engaged in beer-drinking and gossiping, too busy to look after the welfare of their children. Berlin, in fact, is so ridden with vice, the women corrupt on such a scale, that it would bo a blessing if it met Hie fate of Sodom and Gomorrah before it was entered by the Anglo-French army. Even the French' frequenter of the Moulin Rouge—run. it seems', by German moneywould be ashamed to lend the night life of a native of Berlin. On one occasion, when a distinguished professor delivered a lecture on the pornographic features of Goethe's life, the vast hafi where he spoke was inundated with many thousands of absolutely indelicate females of the upper and better classes. The Tyranny of Drugs.— On the evil habit of drug taking, the Hospital writes:—"The factory girl who is sleeping in an unhealthy room with the windows hermetically sealed, and subsisting on a diet of fried fish, pickles, and strong tea, . continues to do so fortified by the bottle of medicine, and when at last she finds she is getting worse, she applies at the hospital, saying that the panel medicine was. not strong enough. Again, the panel doctor tells the workman that he needs artificial teeth, or a month at the sea, or special diet; but he has no clearing house to which he can refer such patients, no almoner wdio is trained to carry out such directions, so the patient disregards the instructions, but carries off the bottle of medicine, which may soothe the symptoms, but cannot touch the root of the trouble. It would therefore seem that, sooner or later, unless the working classes are to be relegated again to the tyranny of drugs, the State will have to appoint some centre for social service to each group ■of panel doctors, to which patients can be referred for treatment, and which will be in close communication with each doctor."

Four Hundred Years on One Farm.— Mr Leonard G. Slade will on Michaelmas Day give up the tenancy of a farm of about ICOO acres, at Aston, Upthorpe, in Berkshire, known as Thorpe Farm which has been handed down from father to son in his family in unbroken succession for 409 years. The family have in their possession a lease or copy of a lease which was "renewed to John Slade, his son Henry, and Elizabeth, his wife, on the same terms that his father, John Slade, had held before him," by the monks of Cirencester, in the year 1533, showing there was at least one life interest before that date. After being tenants only, the family, in 1628, became owners of the property, but it was sold in the year 1833, since when the Slades have continued uninterruptedly as tenants. Mr Leonard Slade has in his possession, among others, a record that Henry Slade contributed £25 to the defence cf the country against the Spanish Armada, which, of course, represented in those days a very much larger sum that it would now. How We' Grow.— Everyone knows that men are taller than women, but it may be news to many that this difference begins at birth, when the baby boys average 2-sin longer than the baby girls. At maturity the average difference has increased to 4in, when the man's average height is" sft 6.3 in; the woman's, sft 2.4 in. The difference, however, is not constant, but varies at various periods of life. Thus the girl is smaller than the boy from birth to the age of 10; but boys and girls approximate each other increasingly in this respect until they are nearly the same from eight to ten. From this point on, at which begins the accelerated growth of the stretching period, the relation alters. In this period the girl gets ahead of the boy in size, but by 15 the boy has caught up, and by 19 or 20 he' has attained the typical adult superiority of about 4in. Pocket Air Bags.— A mine-rescue oxygen apparatus has been developed lately so that outfits are now provided small enough to go in a large-size pocket, and weighing only 61b. One will supply a miner with good air for half an hour or more. They are not intended to take the place of the standard apparatus used by rescue crews after a mine disaster, but .rather for constant readiness in the mine, so_ that whenever noxious gases develop a miner can quickly put on the apparatus and work his way out. The whole affair is simple, consisting of a small cylinder of oxygen, a breathing bao-, a cartridge case containing chemicals. and'a tube for the mouth. Air is breathed in and out of the breathing bag. The chemicals absorb the bad gases that come out in the breath, and at short intervals the air in the bap; is freshened by the admission of oxygen from the cylinder.