DAY BY DAY.

Waikato Times, Volume 88, Issue 13475, 4 May 1917, Page 4

DAY BY DAY.

Since the "Saucy Arethusa" raced into Heligoland Bight, rakUpholding ing, as she rushed, two the enemy ships at once; Traditions, and the 4th, lith, and 12th destroyer flotillas Hung themselves in the darkness on the whole German Fleet, no story the Admiralty has yet released surpasses in thrills the recent encounter off Dover (remarks the Christchurch Sun). Two vessels attacked six—and battered and dispersed them. A brace of destroyers engaged as patrols, instead

:f confining themselves to reconnaissance and distant fire, rushed in lionlike upon their prey, and mauled and throttled, and shook. The thing sends a flush to every British cheek. It is Nelson again at the Nile, Blake off the Goodwins, Baleigh and Drake 011 the flanks of the monsters of Spain. Hold and smash—smash and hold! It is the ancient and still unassailable tradition where circumstances even momentarily permit. Outrange your enemy? }'es. Build bigger guns and faster shipsthen bear right in and pound! It .was Beatty's plan in the first naval brush of the war. He followed .it. again in the Skager Rack, and von Hipper knows with what dire effect. True, the Sydney held off from the Emden, battering he" wtf* longer guns. Sturdee went cr'ml,) to work with the hopelessly out-gunned von Spee. But in both cases the risk of escape hardly existed. It was a question merely of ending an enemy without wasting precious British lives. It was 110 departure from our heroic and hoary traditions. An offensive fight is a fight defensive as well; only—prudence at times stays your hand. You can't smash cruisers with light destroyers, but unless you.are matched with the utterly impossible, you do what Peck and Evans did in the darkness off Dover cliffs. As the Admiralty told us baldly at tiie time, our losses were twentythree men. What the Admiralty did not teil us was that the action began al COO yards, and ended rail by rail; that a bleeding and half-blinded midshipman swept a boarding crew into the sea; that —but some day Newbolt or Kipling or Xoyes will mark in every Hash.

The announcement that scientists at the

The Food of The GocJs.

University of California have discovered the substance which produces growth in the human body has boon received by Brit'sh scientists with interest, but they do not apprehend that it will work miracles. Pro'essor Arthur Keith, of the Royal Culloge of Surgeons, said recently to a Daily Express representative: "It has been known for 30 years that in the case of giants the pituitary gland is veiy much enlarged, and that enlargement of this gland gives rise to a curi.us fo'm of giantism called acromegaly. Out of a number of form s of dwarfhood—and there are 20 different sorts of dwarfs—one has been proved to be due to the lack of secretion in the pituitary gland. AY hat the Californian scientists claim, is that they have iso'ated the substance which regulars growth. This is possible. What th •> re nils may lie one cannot say. It is about 2o years since Sir Edward Schafer, physiological professor of Hd in burg University, isolated from the pituitary gland a substance which ( a used contraction of the blood vessels. Babies of stunted growth begin to shoot up when fed on the thyroid glands of sheep." An eminent West End surgeon said: "There is no occasion to ridicule or discredit the claim. The relation of the pituitary gland to the stature of human being has been recognised for generations. But whether the q-lleged discovery of the substance of that mysterious gland'carries with it the ability to reproduce the substance in quality is another matter. I do not believe that tethelin will work any

miracles cr ever become as precious or as dear as radium. The human frame is hardly likely to acquire the characteristics of a concertina by the assimilation of tethelin, or any other food of the sods. I also very much doubt whether any benefits would result from, men becoming like trees walking."