POINTS OF VIEW.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXVIII, Issue 8106, 28 March 1906, Page 3

POINTS OF VIEW.

Incredulity and disbelief are not really scientific attributes: inquiry and scepticism axe.—Sir Oliver Lodge. Germans well know and are proud of the fact that they have many sincere" friends in the moat cultured circles of the English nation.—Post, Berlin. Why should woman be expected to play the part of an indoor-grown cabbage, while we men aTe free, but-ter-fly like, to roam the world's garden on wings?—Mr Coulson Kernafaas, in Ideas. Edmund Burke was wont to say that when he crossed the threshold of his own home every care vanished. That is what one wishes for.—Bishop of Ripon. I notice wherever I go that the English girl is stronger than were the English girls of my .boyhood; and I believe this due in no slight degree to the girl joining her brother in outdoor games.—Bishop Ghavasse.

The Victorian woman did ;tine work in her time, and we may claim that she was ahead of public opinion on many social questions, and was a pioneer in the van of progress.—Mrs Frederic Harrison, in the Nineteenth Century. Electricity is absolutely the only ; safe means of lighting a railway i train. We look forward to the i time when the Government will; make its adoption compulsory, and thereby, improve the lighting, reduce the cost, and abolish danger.— Electrical Review. I don't know that there is anything more boring on earth than the screaming patriot—the woman who, hideously dressed, and generally frightful to look at, says:—"Fall down and worship me; I a truly British."—John Strange Winter, in Lady of Fashion. No land could talk to its Colonies of Imperial Federation and community of. trading interests when Ireland was demanding separate diplomatic and consular representatives on the Norwegian model, or agitating for Irish words of command in nominally Irish regiments. —Guardian. Smart women are now to be found in their boudoirs surrounded by serious and heavy books of all kinds, trying to acquire th« knowledge and understand the burning questions of the day. The fashion is likely to make their pretty heads ache. But who would not suffer in a good cause?— Lady Violet Grevllle, in the Graphic.

England imports between twenty-1 five-million and thirty million birds I a year. One Liondon dealer received from the East Indies alone 400,000 hamming birds, 6,000 birds of para dise, and 400,000 miscellaneous birds. Altogether it is estimated that between 200 and 300 million birds perish each .year to trim the bats of the women of the world. —Animals' Friend. ! The old ramshackle Thames wharves, the faideouß mad-shows, the river traffic devoid of all smartness, oontlnae for century after century almost unchanged; and, forming so important an aspect of life in the greatest city of the world, cannot have been without influence on its general tone and feeling. [ln this aspeot the 'lbames is siu ply a disgrace to civilisation. —Shipping World. The German people are a great people and a good people, and have, we are convinced, a future before them full of prosperity and power. When once they are able to abate the spirit of restlessness and ag gression which inspires their present rulers, and become a self-gov-erning nation in the true sense, they will, we are sure, find that they have no siocerer friends than the British people.—Spectator. Count Metternich is perhaps justified in using every opportunity that presents itself of influencing British opinion in the way most comformabje to German interests; but no one can fail to remember that the British Ambassador in Berlin ia debarred from adopting similar tactics, and that any appeal he might make to German opinion would be wholly without influence on German policy.—Outlook.