HERE AND THERE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 16748, 1 June 1922, Page 6

HERE AND THERE.

An EYE FOR EVERYTHING,

WITHOUT A NATIONAL ANTHEM* is generally known that just b&foT*j diplomatic relations between Grwat Britain and Germany were resumed the war, the British Government asksa Germany what the Fatherland’s National Anthem was. The German Government replied: “ At the present time the German people have no National Hymn.” Before the revolution, “Heil Dir im Seigerkranz 99 (Hail to Thee in Victors’ Laurels) was the official anthem, hut it was never regarded as quite satisfactory. For the melody is of English origin, and the text first saw the light of day in a Strasburg weekly on January 24. 1790, under the title of “ Song for a Danish Subject on the King’* Birthday, to be sung to the melody of the English popular song, f God Save Great- George the King/ **• It was afterwards altered several times for Prussian and then German use. Then there is “ Deutrchland Ueber A lies,” but it is rather “ compromised ” and would not be unanimously accepted by all classes. A call to German poets and musicians during the war, asking them to produce a National Anthem, failed miserably, and the Republic has left the matter alone.

FIRST SLAVE TRIAL IN MOMBASA A curious litigation of a criminal nature, involving the freedom of an Arab child and referring back to the old slave trade of the Zanzibar coast, has been occupying the Mombasa Courts. An Arab, Said ibn Abdalla, and his wife, Fatima bint-i Abdalla, were originally charged with making a claim to “ the body and property ” of a girl named Centi, and at a later date the woman Fatima was charged alone withr j having, in 1914, removed the girl to j her own house as*a slave, and with kidnapping her. It appeared that at some ! date after 1907, the date of the abolij tion of the Legal Status of Slavery Or- . dinance, a slave married a woman who I was formerly the slave of the father of 1 the accused Fatima, and the kidnapped I girl Centi was the issue of that mar--1 riage. The court heard evidence that •in 1914 the gm! Centi’s father joined 1 the arm}’, and she was claimed as a slave on the ground that her mother had originally been the property of the accused woman’s ’ father, j The judge found, however, that the | girl Centi, by reason of her age (13), was born a free woman, and convicted ■j the woman Fatima both of kidnapping and slavery. The sentences were two [ days in prison and fines totalling £2o, r. lenient view being taken of these serious offences because this ia the firsti | case in Momoasa. *** EFFECTS OF PIECEWORK. ; Doe* the system of piecework in an industry tend to make men antagoni*1 tic to one another? According to Mr A. S. Everndon, the industrial representative of the Victorian Amalgamated Society of Engineers, it does. In fact (says a Melbourne paper), if his statement in the Arbitration Court can lie taken a* his firm conviction, piecework does even more than antagonise men one towards the other—it degrades them. From being respectable wageearners. they apparently deteriorate into veritable money-grasping machines. “It takes away the manhood from the t man. who is really opposed to the man [ next to him,” Mr Everndon told Air ' Justice Powers. “Tt breeds antagonism and discontent, and I say that the | employers would lose more by the introduction of piecework than they would gain.” The A.S-E. is opposed to the introduction of this system, but Air Etomdom further told Mr Justice j Powers that they had had in many cases ; to “ protect members from themselves.” He admitted that there were a few j men. but they axe in a «mall minority, who liked piecework. He did not know J of any engineering firm in Australia, ! outside the Broken Hill steel works, | which employed the system. No man should be forced to accept any system which he was against. ATr Alaughan, who appeared for the Adelaide Steamship Company, referred to the miners and their piecework system, to which Air Everndon replied that the miners conducted their own affairs, and the engineers wanted to do the same. The position might be different altogether with the men who were working underground. Whv surfacemen should hei “ degraded ” by piecework, while unj derground workers find it beneficial, ’9 | a question Afr Everndon did not answer. Shearers are pieceworkers, yet they work on the surface, and do not feel “ degraded ” or even antagonistic to one Another. RAGS AND ROWDYISM. Ragging is n time-honoured custom (says the ** Westminster Gazette.") At Oxford and at Cambridge it ha* often been carried to extravagant but ingenious lengths. and tolerated in ' good humour by its victims. In Lonj don. even when hospital has raided 1 hospital and trophies have been cap- , tured and recaptured, nobody has mad»i ' serious complaint. Youth, ti e onlooker : has said, will have its fling; and i 4 is 1 >otter that young men should vent j their high spirits in harmless, and oven boisterous, mischief or in elaborate 1 practical jokes than that they should spend their leisure arul their energies !in less reputable ways. But the rags I of the past have always been conducted I ypith a sense of humour, which, like | Charity, cover? a multitude of sins, i There is always tlies danger that a rag with the hum out left out will he hardly | distinguishable, from a riot; and in tho rase which has just occurred at Oxford it degenerated into something worse- It is difficult to find any element of amusement in the pre-arranged release of a sackful of rats ; n a public street, to the inevitable terror of women and children, and of their subsequent slaughter by a crowd of undergraduates, whose pleasure, it was to finish bv throwing the bodies at anybody who might be supuosed to regard such missiles with disfavour. The whole affair was brutal and disgusting rather than funny ; and if undergraduates still wish to be regarded as gentlemen they must discourage this sorb of thing in the future.