GENERAL NEWS

Pahiatua Herald, Volume XXII, Issue 5853, 28 September 1917, Page 7

GENERAL NEWS

Speaking in the House on the. t ijuoj Bill, Mi- G. It. Sykes (.Master ton; resented the Attorney - Gene r - al s reference to Masterton as a gloomy town, and to the poor accommodation afforded by its temperance hotels. “There is no gloom in Masterton.” (Hear, hear, and laughter;. Mr Payne : "The bloom is on the rye.” (More laughter.; There was no more patriotic and no more generous place than Masterton. It wa sruot always so; but> now that he represented it “everything in the gaflden was lovely.” (Hear, hear, and laughter). The Woodville Bowling Green will be opened on October 3rd. Twentysix new members were elected at the annual meeting. Mr T. B. Slipper. of Wanganui, who was one of the principal speakers at a Second Division meeting, at Palmerston North, is a racy speaker, and he infused a good deal of humour into j his remarks, mostly at- the expense of the Defence Department. He stated that a certain percentage of blunders must be made by a big department like that if defence in. times like these, hut when they attempted to call up a man who had been dead for twenty years it wjould take a lot of explaining. (Laughter.) Again, men had been posted as defaulters' who had been on active uerv’oe m France for over two years; and yet. again, men bald been called up under Section 3b who had volunteered and been turned down. Mr Slipper mentioned another aase. A married man volunteered and went to camp, yet the wif e was thunderstruck on reading iXH the press that- hor husband had been drawn in the ballot. “We will overlook these last castes,” said Mr Slipper, “but what I can’t get over is this man who has been twenty years dead.'’ (Laughter.) “There is more dpuhe-distflled*, concentrated, tripkvexpo.ns(on, fourcylinder humbug over relief work by societ-y-woradr than is to b e found elsewhere under the canonpy of heaven (says the Sad Francisco “Argonaut”). Nino Hmeg out of ben! 'it is a mere excuse for self-display for pleasure, and for van’ty. Women, who could draw cheques that tyould relieve the unbearable misery of a thousand families, and who would never know even that they had spent the money, arc found kn ttinng un wear able stockings cultivating ridiculous garden patches at immense expmise, organising elaborate devices for extracting nickles and <liimcs from the poor people, for which they and not the poor people will get the credit, and sc'reatn.ng their activities to high heaven. Thoy arc spread like a m atm a over civil-j isahon.” I n other places besdes I America, too.