People and Their Doings.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20283, 18 April 1934, Page 6

People and Their Doings.

Women Now Sit in the Parliaments of Thirty Countries : Elgars Schoolmate Wants to Make Worcester a Second Bayreuth : A Bolshevik Fairy Tale.

'JMIE DRUGGING of little Bolsheviks

with the tinsel princes, princesses and bourgeois fairy godmothers of “ decadent Western nurseries ” is being put down with a firm hand. Official fairy story No. 1 deals with the torture and death of a little patriot who led the boys of his village against an ogre in a dress suit. The second in the series actually starts with “ once upon a time ” in the orthodox bourgeois fashion, but how differently it goes on! Once upon a time there was a blacksmith called Lenin who made axes with which he induced the peasants to split the skulls of the Czar’s Guard. Being caught, the blacksmith and his party, chained two by two, were sent by these wicked and cruel guards, to a “ cold island ” in the Arctic, where only birds live. sj? sSF JpOR A WEEK on end the Guards fired artillery to terrify the Bolsheviks and scare the birds away, but when the firing ceased and the birds came back, Lenin, walking along the shore, made friends with a black swan, which subsequently took Lenin and his friend Stalin on its back to Russia. After a time the food gave out on this long flight, and at last the poor thin swan said to Stalin, “ Comrade, if I do not eat soon the wind will bring me down. Have you not even an old bone left?” So Stalin took out his pocket knife, bit his lip hard, and neatly severed the two biggest fingers from his left hand, saying “ Here are two old bones left in my bag,” and so enabled the black swan to fly right on towards the world revolution. The “ folk tale ’’ is well told and the birds are at any rate all game ones!

HUBERT LEICESTER, five times Mayor of Worcester, and Elgar’s oldest friend and only surviving school-mate, is resolved that Worcester, the birthplace and burial place of Britain’s greatest musician, shall become a second Bayreuth, with Edward Elgar as its Richard Wagner. “It is not easy to make folk round here realise that the Ted Elgar thev knew', the son of the chap who kept the old music shop in the High Street, was anybody in particular. But if we have our way, we shall buy Elgar’s home. Marl Bank, on Rainbow 7 Hill, as a national and local memorial. We would like to have the former music shop in High Street for an Elgar Museum, and we want to build an Elgar Hall. At present this city has no concert hall—fancy that! “ Sixty Years ago, as a boy, Elgar formed " a Quintet. It was sometimes called the Sunday Band, because it played on Sundays, and sometimes the Brothers Wind, because it was all wind instruments. Ted played the bassoon, his brother Frank the hautboy, my brother William the clarinet, and I myself the first flute. Ted was sixteen then, and each week he composed music which w'as later incorporated into some of his greatest works. I have the manuscripts still, and Elgar borrowed them twice to recapture those early themes.” si? 1? OIXTY YEARS AGO (from the "Star” ° of April IS, 1574) Dunedin.—Captain Hutton has reported the existence of a very valuable coal bed at Tokomairiro, extending over sixty square miles, which is estimated to contain 1.000.000,000 tons of coal—good brown, not lignite. Captain Hutton states that ft is the most valuable in the colony. The seams are from three to twenty feet thick. An engineer is at once to be sent up to survey it. A branch railway, three miles in length, will be constructed to convey it to the main line. It is expected that the coal will be sold at Dunedin for twelve shillings a ton.

A LTHOUGH New Zealand women were " among the first in the world to gain the franchise, they waited a long time before exercising the right to send one of their sex to the House cf Representatives. Women in other parts of the world were not so backward, however, once they had received the right to vote, and the latest franchise data secured by the National Council of Women show's that women now sit in the Parliaments of thirty countries. Last year, both New Zealand and Brazil elected their first women legislators, and Mrs E. R. M’Combs shares the honour with Dr Carlotta Pereira de Queirez. The year 1933 was a pleasant one for women’s suffrage organisations, since Germany, Burma, Denmark. Hungary and South Africa also elected women to the legislature. Hitler’s opinion that women’s place is in the home finds expression in the fact that the thirty women who were elected to the Reichstag in April last year have been forced to resign <2? r FHE INFORMATION secured by the A National Council of Women show's that foreign countries have been more progressive than the British Empire in electing women members of Parliament. In Czechoslovakia, eleven women sit in the Chamber, and four in the Senate. Denmark had four women in the Folketing, and six in the Landsting last year, these corresponding to the House of Representatives and the Legislative Council respectively. Poland elected fourteen women to the Chamber and four to the Senate in 1930. Great Britain and the Dominions now make quite a respectable show'ing, however, for South Africa elected two women last year. New Zealand one, while three sit in the Free State Parliament, and one in the Parliament of Northern Ireland. No woman has ever sat in the Federal Parliament of Australia, but New South Wales, Victoria and Western Australia each have one representative. Fifteen women sit in the British Parliament, while even the Isle of Man can boast of a woman representative in its Parliament, which has the quaint title of the House of Keys.