TOPICS OF THE DAY.

Waikato Times, Volume 116, Issue 19461, 28 December 1934, Page 4

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

Royal Visit Curtailed.

In the circumstances which have rendered it necessary for him to curtail the duration of his visit to the Waikato, Prince Henry will haVo the sincere sympathy of the people of this district. The fact that the previous arrangements have had to he drastically modified and altered is very regrettable, but it will he readily understood that His Royal Highness had no option but to study his health and consent to a period of rest before continuing on a tour which is known to be very strenuous.

It can be taken for granted that the alteration in the itinerary was agreed to most reluctantly by Prince Henry.. Since his arrival in New Zealand he has shown the liveliest interest in every phase of life in this country, and like the other members of the British Royal Family, he is actuated by the keenest sense of public duty. The necessity for the change of plans must therefore have been a bitter disappointment to him. Residents of this district will be ready to forget their own disappointment in their sympathy with him in his inability to carry out his scheduled programme, but their welcome will be none the less exuberant when he arrives here to-morrow.

A Better World

“ Let us look at the record of the working class for the last fifteen years and see how far the signs point to a movement of civilisation,” writes Miss A. M. Cameron in the London Daify Herald. “ First there is the fact of the striking decrease in crimes and personal violence, and, with certain exceptions, of crime in general. Again there is the marked decrease in drunkenness. Even allowing for modern methods of probation the closing of twelve prisons in the last decade or two is significant.

“ Where New York owns to over three hundred murders in a year, London tho same size, shows only ten. A Labour M.P. said to me, ‘Twenty years ago a worker leaving work on Saturday midday would drop into a public-house and stand there in his dirty clot lies swilling drink till late in (be afternoon when he went home and subsided into a torpid -slumber. Nowadays lie races home, washes, shaves, and lakes his wife and the children to the cinema, or for a walk, or a bus ride.’ “Unfortunately Ihc worker has no chance of training his taste in good cinema. lie has to take what the manager provides, but • pictures with a geographical or technical rather than merely romantic interest appeal most widely. The worker regards love stories on the cinema as in literature, as ‘ soft ’ and fit only for young women.”