HERE AND THERE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17831, 27 April 1926, Page 8

HERE AND THERE.

AN EYE FOR EVERYTHING. SPEED BUNCHES. A “hustle" restaurant is being opened in London. Its object is “to save a third of the time usually occupied at meals.” It sounds very fine and businesslike, but let u$ pause before we cheer (says the Sydney “Sun”). The Americans are usually depicted as a race of tired business men with nervous dyspepsia. Probably when they are young they are care-free fellows. with merry souls, full of that “pep” of which we read so much in their advertisements. “Pep” is probably short for-pepsin. Where does one obtain this vitalising stuff, except meals? Probably the American’s addiction to chewing-gum is due to the fact that he has no time at meals to •load himsfclf with" th£ mecessarv quantity of this digestive. lie cuts the time of his lunch down. He dashes through his dinner, and outraged nature strikes his shrewdly in the midriff. Besides, after all, apart from hygiene, isn’t one of the pleasantest periods of the day that time spent over the table? Why cut it down in order to rush back to the desk ? Rather let the good unionist spend his extra four hours over his lunch. Thus he will avoid dyspepsia. It is far better to be happy and free from this, even though one remains poor, than have the wealth of a Rockefeller, together with his hairless cranium and his fear of lobster at midnight. It is said that our teeth dig our graves. Why be in a hurry, then ? Is it not better to dig slowly and quietly, pausing to converse with our friends, than to dig at high speed towards that bourne from which no epicure returns? Let us distrust highspeed lunches. CAREERS FOR MARRIED WOMEN I think that it is quite possible for a woman to have a career and to run a husband, so to speak: but I don't think that she can have a career, run a husband and bring up her children properly—as I have tried to point out in my “ Three Kingdoms.” A woman can rule over any two of these kingdoms with a reasonable amount of success, but not over the three. I don’t know anything about American husbands, but, speaking from experience. I do know that an English husband expects a good deal of attention from his wife. Although he may not have the slightest objection to her working, he is inclined to feel aggrieved if he considers that he is being grossly neglected for the sake of her outside interests. In other words, I think that the average Englishman objects to careers- for married women more on personal and spiritual .grounds than on any other.—Miss Storm Jameson, novelist. HAS CIVIUSATION FAILED? Is civilisation a failure? This is a question that always arises when one sees the disastrous effect that association with the white race has upon communities that have for hundreds of centuries had a happy, vigorous life. Can anyone feel that we have conferred the slightest physical benefit on any native race to which we have first sent our merchant seamen and later our missionaries? The former have taught them to drink to excess and have decimated them with diseases, while the latter have altered t'j'ir habits, teaching them a moral code which invariably results in their degeneration and degradation. Why do we insist on imposing on other races, who have existed in communities, leading happy lives long before us, our methods and ideas, on the supposition that our habits and creeds arc more suitable to them than theirs? The native living in his normal surroundings and following his accustimes habits and diet, if placed in favourable circumstances, is an infinitely finer animal physially than is the product of civilisation.—Sir W. Arbuth-* not Lane.