DAILY NOTES.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 7979, 7 April 1904, Page 2

DAILY NOTES.

The travelling public has A bailwat good reason to »feel aggrieved blunder, with the arrangements mad© by the Railway Department for the carriage of passengers between Lyttelton and stations on the north line. Under the revised the northern exI press leaves Christchurch at 8.50 a.m., while ; a train from Lyttelt-on reaches Christchurch a minute or two later. As a result, passengers from Lyttelton who desire to travel by the north train are compelled to leave Port by the 7.20 a.m. train, and to wait in Christchurch for a full hour until tfie departure of the north train." One would naturally imagine that a defect of this kind 1 was merely the blunder of a careless official, and that, it would have been rectified directly it was pointed out. But, although representations have been made to the authorities, it continues to-be perpetrated, and; the. public to be put to considerable unnecessary* inconvenience.' i. • ■ — — — — i Advocates of prison inform { trison will welcome the Governr 1 befork. anent'o decision to extend (the system under which con*ict* axe employed in the tree-plantinifop-

erations which tie Government is undertaking in various parts of the colony. Both the object- and the method of carrying it out are praiseworthy. Prison labour could be put to no better 'use than the reforestation of the country. Not only does the State benefit, but also the arrangement is a step in the direction^ of prison reform which earnest thinkers have advocated in. season and out of season far many years past. The 1 convict, instead of being cooped 1 up im the demoralising atmosphere of prison life, is allowed to work amid wholesome surroundings, encouraged by the knowledge thai his work is being put to a useful purpose. This reflection should be the means of restoring the moral balance of many of the less hardened sinners. Although most people are divobce aware that America is a wholesale, country in which divorce is made easy, not a few will be startled by 'the statistics which appeared 1 in, our cable messages yesterday. These indicate that during the past "twenty years no less than half a million divorces have been granted. This number is huge in itself, but when it is borne in mind that it represents double the number of the divorces which, have been granted 1 in the whole of Europe during the same period?, it becomes positively stupendous. Putting the present population of the United! States at seventy million, it means that during twenty years one in every seventy couples have been divorced. No wonder the Churches «fere exclaiming against the American divorce laws. They are not far wide of the mark when they declare that they are equivalent to a state of progressive polygamy. The Dunedin resident who A vile yesterday escaped with a fine action; of £5 for supplying with liquor an inmate of an Inebriates' Home, may count himself extremely lucky. We do not know what the full extent of the penalty for this offence is, but we are tolerably certain tihat if the offender had appeared' before certain Magistrates who we can call to mind, he would have found himself in gaol for a lengthy period. Assuming that the man was supplied in the full knowledge that he was an inmate" of aa Inebriates' Home, we can conceive of no viler offence than the one for which the Dunedin Magistrate considered £5 a sufficient penalty.