CURRENT COMMENT

Taranaki Daily News, 12 October 1929, Page 17 (Supplement)

CURRENT COMMENT

OTHER POINTS OF VIEW

(By

M.O.S.)

Taranaki advance . fashion jotting: Overcoats will probably be worn this summer.

The New Plymouth Debating Society will meet finally for the season at' Kawarda Park pavilion next Friday evening to discuse Beer and Cheese.

Granted that some moving pictures are simply unspeakable; but it cannot be said that the “talkies” are not on a sound basis.

Sunday passenger flights from the Bell Block ' aerodrome were prohibited last week-end by police regulation's. It is rumoured that people who ride in trams on Sundays are also under surveillance.

Taranaki tourists who plan to visit Auckland this Christmas- are advised to travel north by the It is reported that several cases of sea sickness have occurred on the Mahoenui-Te Kuiti * section of the main highway.

Two notable complaints regarding the deplorable condition of public roads have been published in the papers recently, the first by the Rev. J. D. Scott, of Onehunga, to the nation at large, and the second by Mr. L. J. Morris, of Okaiawa, to the Hawera County Council: “If our nation is to escape the moral disasters that befell Rome,” stated Mr. Scott, “it muist be guided by those signal posts erected by the prophets of Israel which warned the people of the pagan dangers ahead.” Mr. Morris remarked; “Unless something is done the road will become a quagmire in wet weather and another millstone around a struggling cocky's neck.”

Gerbault, the tennis player, in a recent message from Paris, said that he was going to live on a Pacific Island. He was not a hermit through sickness or love, said Gerbault. He was in love only with the music of the sea. It is pointed out that, in the Pacific, Gerbault should have no difficulty in forming a Coral Society.

During the past few weeks fanners in Taranaki have merely been somewhat coarsely concerned over the question of “fishiness” in pork, and the suggestive phrase of “selling the pork with or •without scales’” has been tossed recklessly about. ' In Sydney, however, it is pleasing to note that the higher aspects of life have not been altogether neglected, and that a band of women has .formulated an illuminating list of rules for. Modesty In Dress. The appalling spectacle of children aged five and six' 3 displaying too much limb is covered by Rule 1, which states that girls from four to ten years shall wear

dresses to the knee, and sleeves at leant to the elbow. Rule 3 states that all girls over 14 years (and presumably up to 40 years) are required to wear dresses at least 4 inches below the knee when sitting. Flesh coloured stockings, apparently, are the particular invention of the Devil, V necks are never, never to be worn, and bathers are not to loiter on the beach in bathing costumes. £tOf course, the execution of this programme, undeniably laudable, will take considerable departmental regulation. Officials with, tape measures will have to be freely admitted to infant schools, drawing rooms, ladies’ guilds* and other haunts of the sex. Coastal guards would have to be inaugurated again to protect the beaches. Then, again, Md cases wopld crop up of women, /accuficd of wearing V necks, pleading ignorance of the alphabet. In the meantime we can only pray to be delivered some day from the terrible sin of having bodies. # ft ft # Meanwhile, things in Great Britain are not wholly admirable. In that . Garden of Eden the Free Church of Scotland has found the serpent rearing his sinful head, and has. bee: moved to rebuke publicly the Duke and Duchess of , York, who went so far as to witness a Sunday ambulance demonstration, and then presented medals. It was explained by the father of the Duchess, the Earl of Strathmore, that Sunday was the only day when all the railwaymen could be. present at the fame time. In that case, there is no valid reason why the demonstration could not have been held in sections. If, for example, there were 501 railwaymen, the Duke and Duchess could have taken 100 on Monday, another 100 on Tuesday, the next 100 the following day, and go on, and 'the odd railwayman so as not to spoil the symmetry, could have given a demonstration by himself on Saturday morning. Even in New Zealand, it is Hinted, people cook roast dinners on Sundays and read newspaper supplements* In the circumstances not a few people will agree with Mr. Fraser, a minister of Govan, who desired to send a resolution to the Puke of York asking that “such an insult to Scotland should not take place again." It simply amounts to thia: If the corruption of the country by Englishmen in high places continues Scotland will just have to ask for Independence. ft ft ft ft While, however, England’s Scottish premier, Mr. Ramsay MacDonald, has been ha vino- a reception in the United States almost equal in popularity to that of Mary Pickford or Gene Tunney, Mr. D. Kirkwood has discovered that Mr Snowden is a wolf in lamb’s clothin", a Tory wearing the woolly guise of a Labour member Mr. Kirkwood is, of course, famed for his perspicacity. It was he and no other who. some years ago, exposed the' Royal family as a parasite battening on the working classes, and made the suggestion, curiously disregarded, that the King and the Prince of Wales should be paid on piece worki Now, at Glasgow, he has urged Mr. Snowden to fight the bankers and financiers of -Britain as ho fought the leaders of foreign- countries .at the Hague. It is a .pity; a great pity, that Mr. Kirkwood was never a metiiber of our own Dairy Control Board.