CURRENT TOPICS.

Pelorus Guardian and Miners' Advocate., Volume 25, Issue 40, 26 May 1914, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS.

IT is satisfactory to learn, on the authority of Sir R. Baden-Powell, that “ the money is coming in very well ” in response to his appeal for £250,000 as an endowment fund for the boy scout movement. The “ Chief Scout ” has been explaining in detail his scheme for the use of the money, and this is what he said: “In the first place I want to take the waste of the whole nation and make it a great national asset. lam thinking of the lads who, unless they become scouts, will grow up slackers and drift out of blind alley jobs into the ranks of the unemployable. We are out to give lads character and energy, chivalry and discipline, from which will proceed thrift and determination, and the other qualities that make for success. Then we train our lads in a trade, or give them business instruction.” That is a great ideal, and it is one that is well worth supporting by all classes of citizens. There are now 160.000 scouts in Great Britain, 10.000 in the overseas Dominions, and an estimated total of 500,000 in foreign countries, including 300,000 in the United States.

Great Britain’s annual drink bill shows a greatly increased consumption over 1912. The total amount expended on alcoholic liquors in .1913 was nearly £167,000,000, more tlim £5,000,000 above the 1912 figures. The average expenditure works out at £3 12s 5d per head. Since 1909 the per capita expenditure on drink has increased by nearly 3* shillings. The papers generally contend that this does not

mean that the nation is growing less temperate. It simply means a period of sustained prosperity. “ Heavy drinking and good trade,” says the “ Daily Mail,” “go together. It sounds,, and is, appalling enough that wa are spending on drink a sum equal to four-fifths of the entire national revenue ; that the working class family should be estimated to waste one-sixth of its income on liquor and that the national expenditure, if we omit abstainers and children under 15, should work out at £7 per head.”