GENERAL ITEMS.

Waipa Post, Volume XXI, Issue 1279, 10 August 1922, Page 2

GENERAL ITEMS.

A great fault of our primary school system is that we make no allowance for the individual. We are trying to fit the square peg into the round hole. And that is why a large percentage of our children never reach the sixth standard (said the Hon. C. J. Parr, Minister of Education, speaking at Wellington the ether night).

“ It is time the best brains of this country gave more consideration to securing more permanent work on the waterfront. The uncertainty of. employment is the bane of the watersider’s life,” said Mr W. J. Rogers at the Arbitration Court in Wanganui, when discussing employment conditions on the waterfront. He went on to say that when one or two men possessed the labour power of over a hundred it placed them in positions of petty czars, and perhaps compelled the men to sink their manhood, and ask them what they had done that they were not getting a fair spin.

The atmosphere has been very clear in New Zealand lately according 'to an Ashburton resident who has just returned from Taranaki. In the North Island a few evenings ago, Mount Egmont could be seen from Te Horo, a i ‘tation on the » Manawatu railway south of Otaki. It resembled one of the Egyptian Pyramid's, and appeared to be standing up out of the Tasman Ocean. Egmont has been seen from that distance only on very rare occasions.

“ The time has come when a farmer should be allowed a recognised wage to meet ordinary household expenses,” said a creditor at a bankruptcy meeting in Masterton when advocatirig that the bankrupt should be made an allowance in this connection. “ If he had a manager he would have to pay him a salary.” The suggestion was not taken advantage of by the meeting, the Deputy-official assignee explaining that it was not within their province.

It has been said of New Zealand by many a visitor that here -Rugby football is a religion. Certainly it is taken very seriously, and now the language of the football field is coming into the House of Reresentatives. Speaking the other day, Mr G. Mitchell (Wellington South) said a certain matter was far too. important for personalities. ‘ One is apt to think,” he added, “ that we play the man far more than we play the ball.”

“With, their homes destroyed, their fathers, husbands, and brothers massacred, their bodies lean and emaciated through the ravages of famine and pestilence, and they themselves subjected, to every conceivable insult, the lot of the Armenan women is a particularly unhappy one. But there is one person to whom they could turn with absolute trust for friendship and protection—that person was the British ‘ Tommy,’ ” said Dr Lincoln Wirt, speaking at Wellington.

It is stated that in a '-central Hawkes Bay town recently a youth sold two suppose’d raibbits to a local resident (says the Napier Telegraph), and they subsequently found their way through the process of cooking to t)he family table. Later the'‘vendor asked the man how the family enjoyed the rabbits. “ One was very nice,” came the answer, “ but the • other was rather tough.” The lad responded with all gravity that “ the tough one must have been the cat.” Rabbit is now “ off ” in that family.

According to -the Wanganui Herald there are s-igns of an improved inquiry for land. A Waikato farmer had three separate farms which he advertised for slale early in June in the Auckland, Hamilton, and Taranaki papers (says the Herald), and he received only three inquiries. Recently he agfain advertised in the same papers with much better results having received 17 inquiries.

A Palmerston North resident who learned the art of growing tobacco and making the very bedt cigars in South America still follows the occupation as a hobby (states the Manawatu Times). He grows and manufactures a very fine quality of plug tobacco and good cigars for his own consumption. His friendsi appreciate them, and were it not for the restrictions he could make money out of the industry. He says the climate is admirably suited for growing highgrade tobacco.

The King of Spain has, with rather grim humour, formed a collection of relics of the various 'attempts—happily fewer as the years go on—to cut short his career. They range from the teat of a feeding-bottle used in an attempt to poison him at the age of eight months, to pieces of the Barcelona bomb and the skeleton of one of the horses' killed by another bomb. The collection also includes a fragment of the landau in which he was driving with President Loubet a:t the time of the attempt on fhis life in the Rue de Rivoli, Paris.