TOPICS OF THE WEEK.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XVI, Issue XI, 14 March 1896, Page 293

TOPICS OF THE WEEK.

THE Australasian Medical Congress, which has just concluded its session in Dunedin, must assuredly be attended by good results. The assembling together of the leading members of the medical fraternity of Australasia, the interchanging of ideas that must necessarily take place, and the strengthening of that spirit of comradeship that should exist, will eventually be for the benefit of the public in general and suffering humanity in particular. The syllabus prepared embraced a variety of subjects, and, albeit some of the papers were a trifle heavy for the laymen (mayhap even beyond the comprehension of the younger members of the Congress) they contained much valuable information, and were listened to with rapt attention.

The Congress was opened by His Excellency Lord Glasgow, who at this and the other functions in connection with the Conference which he attended, spoke in a particularly happy vein. The Premier was also present, and the judicial and civic dignitaries of Dunedin gave ample evidence of their interest in what has proved to be one of the most useful and enjoyable gatherings held by the medical gentlemen of this and the neighbouring colonies. The address of the President (Dr. Batchelor) was in every way worthy of that gentleman, and interested medicos and the general public alike.

Some of the younger members of the Congress expressed to a representative of the Graphic, the opinion

that many of the subjects treated upon dealt with the peculiarities and treatment of cases of the rarest type, while not sufficient prominence was given to subjects frequently met with, information regarding which would have proved much more acceptable to them. ‘lt must, however, be remembered,’ said one of Australia’s leading surgeons, to whom the objection was mentioned by our representative during the Conference, * that there are specialists present, and as such they naturally devote their attention to the particular subjects they have made a special study of. We have so arranged our business that not only the rank and file, but the leaders in the profession, derive information from, and are therefore attracted to, our Conference.’

From a social point of view the members voted the Congress a decided success. Balls, receptions, garden fetes, and visits to various places of interest in and around Dunedin combined to add to the variety of the proceedings. The mild dissipation indulged in by the members was such as to render it probable that at the present time they are undergoing a course of treatment of such a nature that at least one aspect of the Aus-

tralasian Medical Congress of 1896 will long be present in their minds. Our illustration is from a photograph taken by Messrs Burton Bros., Dunedin.

/ CHRISTCHURCH has apparently not forgotten the teachings of its late member, now our AgentGeneral. Though absent from her in the flesh, his spirit still exercises a potent influence over the citizens, and the socialistic ideas he so carefully nurtured are now strong enough in the City of the Plains to run about on their own legs. At least I gather so much from the fact that a Fabian Society has been started there, with the Rev. O’Bryen Hoare as secretary, and that one of its objects is to run socialistic candidates at the next general election. That of all forms of socialism the Fabian is probably the least harmiul even the most Conservative mortal will be quite ready to admit, and if the Christchurch Society confines its propaganda to the mild methods of the home Fabians it may do a great deal of good. At the same time I confess that I can see no good reason for any such organisation in New Zealand, unless it is to give opportunities to blatant orators and agitators. Mr Reeves gave us quite enough socialism for a little time to come, and it will be time enough for us to ask for more when we have digested his dose thoroughly. To a young country like this an overdose of socialistic panaceas is just as dangerous as an indiscriminate diet of patent medicine or chemical food is for agrowing child. Besides, there is really not the least danger of our becoming fossilised in the lower strata of Conservatism. We have shown that if anything we are inclined to go ahead too fast, and to be liberal in advance of our time. At any rate, there is little

need for any constituency to send red-hot socialists to Parliament to egg on their fellow members. The members that are already in the House are sufficiently open to advanced ideas as it is. The House is noisy enough already in all conscience, and we certainly do not want Socialist representatives if they are anything of the kind of men we hear addressing the crowd in Cathedral Square or on the Wellington Wharf. And I fear they would be very much of that character —enthusiastic spouters of crudely formulated theories for the regeneration of mankind.

IT is very touching to see the solicitude which the New South Wales authorities profess for the moral welfare of Norfolk Island. They have evidently told the secretary for the colonies that their sole object in wishing to administer the place was to improve the tone of the isolated community, and Mr Chamberlain has told the House of Commons the same story, and the House, reflecting on the past history of New South Wales, has doubtless pondered on the improved tone in that colony as evidenced by its wish to embark in missionary enterprise. I really wonder if things are so bad in Nor-

folk Island as I understand the commission appointed to report on the place will make out. Is juvenile depravity worse than in the streets of Sydney ? Or is it that New South Wales would like to extend her borders 1 Our Government evidently did not swallow the moral welfare yarn, and were honest enough not to spin it. They bluntly showed their hand and asked that New Zealand might have the administration of the Island since it was closer to our colony, and our Anglican Church included it in their sphere of work. I understand that New South Wales considered this last reason a very weak and foolish one, but I fail to see that it is. If her intention is to improve the morality of the islanders, surely we have a better claim to the place on the same ground, seeing that we have made some effort already in that direction.

IT' VERYBODY seems to sympathise with the terrible IL reverse the Italians have suffered in Abyssinia, but their defeat is a lesson to Europe that she must not rely too much on her trained troops and engines of death. It is said that you can do anything with bayonets except sit on them, but our experiences in the Soudan showed that bayonets were not invincible even against naked savages when the latter were in sufficient numbers. Fuzzy wuzzy, though ‘a poor benighted ’eathen’ managed to break chat almost unbreakable formation —a British square—with nothing but his bare body and a skin shield. In the same way it was thought that a machine gun pouring out ropes of lead would keep ba c k any army King Menelek could raise, but though the Maxims ploughed furrows through the Abyssinians, the living ridges advanced all the disabled a third

of their enemies. Ten thousand Italians dead or wounded ! One can hardly conceive a horde of tribesmen making such havoc in an army of trained European soldiers armed with all the most modern weapons of at tack. It proves that science has not yet succeeded in getting the better of brute force in war, whatever it may have done in peace.

PROFESSOR KENNEDY was in Auckland last week, and sent bis man to sleep from Tuesday to Friday. During the day the sleeper lay in his crib—a thing like a glass case—and was gazed at by the curious multitude, and in the evening his bed was slung up to the top of the proscenium, where it remained suspended like Mahomet’s coffin while the entertainment went on down below. lam constitutionally of a sceptical turn of mind, and was inclined to question the genuineness of the slumber, but my doubts fled when the doctor tickled the soles of the man’s feet and punched his ribs. Human nature can counterfeit a good deal, and in this ageof shams, as Carlyle called it, why should there not be shams in the sleeping business as there are in all others ? but it would require a man without a nerve

in his body, or with a skin like a rhinocerous to remain immovable while a feather was being skilfully applied to the under cuticle of his foot. The tickling convinced me, and if I have after all been deceived, I shall feel that I have seen quite as great a wonder as if doubting Thomases who were not even convinced by the the man had actually been in a trance. There were tickling experiments. They would have liked to have had the sleeper bastinadoed, and then put on the rack for a few hours, and finally operated on with red hot pincers. If he had stood all these tests there would still have been sceptics who would not have believed till they saw him hanged, drawn, and quartered ; and even the believers would feel more satisfied if they were allowed to carry away a bit of the man as a memento. I would not like to be the subject the Professor selected. I would be afraid that when I awoke I would find that some enthusiastic idiot had carried off my foot or a morsel of my ear.

IT looks as if the people of the United States believed they had a divine mission to worry Europe. Only a few weeks ago they were amusing themselves by twisting the British Eion’s tail, and they only desisted when that good-natured animal, instead of getting furious, firmly rebuked them. Now they have turned their attention to Spain, and are bent on giving that country a short time of it. Spain has been maintaining a very unsatisfactory war with her subjects in the West Indian island of Cuba, because they do not wish to remain her subjects any longer. There is really very little chance of the Mother Country bringing the colonists to their knees, but she goes on trying to do it all the same, like a mother with her unruly boy. It is certainly very aggravating when she is exercising her maternal rights to have U ncle Sam looking over the fence and saying to rebel Cuba, ‘ Go it, my boy ; don’t mind the old woman. I’ll stand by you. I did it myself once.’ Spain feels she has very good cause to complain of the action of Uncle Sam. Quite true that he ‘ cheeked ’ his mother and cut the apron strings in his young days, but really he should have arrived at years of discretion by this time, and understand that however wild he may have been as a boy, it is a very reprehensible thing to encourage youngsters round about him in unfilial acts. This is Spain’s way of looking at the matter. Cuba and the United States regard it somewhat differently, and I confess that I am very much inclined to take their side when I remember what an unnatural mother Spain has been to Cuba, and how she has mismanaged the affairs and squandered the resources of the Queen of the Antilles. Cuba is a magnificently fertile island about one-third the size of New Zealand, and in proper hands might be made a wonderfully prosperous place. It is a significant fact that during the ten months the English held Cuba

more than a thousand vessels visited Havana, as against a dozen, which was the yearly average before.

Mr Cecii. Rhodes may be as innocent as a sucking dove of any complicity in Dr. Jameson’s raid into the Transvaal. He has persuaded a good many people in the Old Country that he is, but I have my doubts still. Jameson’s trial may bring many things to light as to the part the Colossus of Rhodes played in the unfortunate adventure, and it may reveal nothing, for the doctor and his men are loyal souls, and will not implicate their friends if they know it, but it is pretty loudly whispered that Jameson's expedition—however little is made public of its private history—has been a very nasty thing for the Napoleon of South Africa. Before that event he

had many accusers, and curiously enough among the most vehement of them has been a woman. Miss Olive Schreiner—to call the author of ‘The Story of an African Farm ’ by her maiden name —has waged war on Rhodes with all the fervour of which she is capable. She writes against him, speaks against him, and has banded the women of South Africa together to keep him out of the Government. He has, she declares, made money the god of South Africa, and has during his regime introduced and intensified all those evils and appalling inequalities of station which the lust of gold has been responsible for in old communities. The witty, outspoken editor of Truth, Mr Labouchere, was another of those who denounced Mr Rhodes and applied some rather uncomplimentary, though not unromantic, epithets to him and his followers. Now both Olive Schreiner and Labby have cause for extra jubilation, for I see by a recent telegram that Mr Hofmeyer, who was associated with the late Premier, has brought a series of the gravest charges against him. He declaresthat Rhodes was quite cognisant of Jameson’s movements, and kept the start of the expedition secret for 36 hours when he might easily, by opening his mouth, have prevented the advance. The situation looks serious for Napoleon.

A SYDNEY politician has just been telling his audience that New Zealand has treated the question of Australasian Federation ‘with icy coldness.’ I fancy he is quite right in the main, although he has, I am sure, exaggerated the degree of cold. That, however, is excusable in a man who has been accustomed to the Sydney standard of heat. We have kept aloof from the movement to join all these colonies into one, and perhaps it is not to be wondered at that our neighbours should construe our indifference to their overtures into a hauteur worthy of Poo-Bah. One must be careful how one treats a colony like New South Wales. It is naturally touchy, and very sensitive to anything that may have the appearance of a slight We should be the same if we had a disagreeable past like theirs. If our great grandfathers had been s and s and so forth, we

should always be suspicious if a highly respectable neighbour, as our colony is to New South Wales threw cold water on our attempts at a closer friendship.

I wonder whether we shall one day join our fortunes to those of Australia ! I suppose we shall. But there are some of our colonists who have dreamt of a much more important future for the colony. They resent the idea of our burying our individuality in Australia, which would simply swallow us up. They want to see Zealandia standing alone on her island throne, emulating the ‘ glorious isolation ’ of the Mother Country, and shaping her own destinies without being encumbered with the interference of our bulky neighbour. It seems to them that it would be criminal folly for this rising young country to embarrass itself with poor relations, of whom it might be ashamed, or to form connections that could in any way detract from the brilliancy of its career. If we want Australia afterwards, say these enthusiasts, we shall conquer it for ourselves as our great prototype in the Northern Hemisphere once conquered France. To enter into a confederacy with the Continent now would be to deprive our descendants of one of the finest chances they will have of adding to the lustre and the possessions of New Zealand. Althoueh a loyal colonist, I own I have no desire that the colony should grow great in this way. lam domesticated in my ideas, and would rather see New Zealand one of a happy family gathered round the Australasian hearth than standing coldly alone like Mount Cook.

T'HE ladies are making their way steadily to the front, and jostling and elbowing in their own bewitching fashion the men into the street. The latest triumph of the sex has been the appearance in Auckland of a rea] lady stockbroker, who has actually opened her office, and invites her clients, be they men or be they women, to tempt fortune under her guidance. The Stock Exchange is almost the last place where I would have looked to see a lady plying her business. The proverbial lamb among wolves would not be a stranger sight. But there is no gauging the intrepid spirit of the sex. When they once take an idea into their pretty heads they usually can put it into practice. That stupid word ‘ impossible ’is not in their vocabulary. lam anxious to know what effect this innovation will have on the Stock market. Will it create a boom such as we have never heard of before, or will the changeableness which has—rightly or wrongly I know not—been ascribed to womankind react on the shares and cause an instability that will drive us all crazy ? I am afraid the entrance of a lady on the scene may confuse the brokers or lead them to neglect their business, and even if they should not lose their heads, they will often find it a trying matter to talk business with or in the presence of a lady. At the same time that I have these apprehensions I must confess a sincere admiration for the lady who has had the courage to strike out a new path for herself, and I hope that there will be others equally enterprising. Given a bevy of lady stockbrokers, and the present Exchange would not hold a tenth of those who would seek entrance to it, and the mines would go ahead as they have never done before in any part of the world.

IT has generally been believed that it Was only the ladies who missed the * matrimonial coach,’ as the French say. If a man failed to take a seat on it, it was understood that he preferred to walk along the road of life bv himself; but it is hardly ever supposed that a woman should elect such a solitary promenade. The popular idea is that every girl would jump at the offer of a seat on the step of the "chicle if there was no chance o( a comfortable place inside. In the name of the sex I protest against this exceedingly low and vulgar estimate of women. No doubt a very large proportion of girls look on marriage as the end and aim of a woman's life, and some would give their hands to Tom, Dick, or Harry and commit their lives to the least desirable of males rather than remain single. But lam certain that the majority of girls do not belong to this category. It would be a poor lookout for the men if they did. Very many young women—and the number is increasing every year as new avenues for female labour are thrown open —look at the marriage question exactly as men do, and are just as particular in their choice. They will not rise to every fly, and have plans for life as independent of marriage as the most pronounced misogynist that ever lived.

Here is an interesting diagram showing a woman's chances of matrimony. It will be seen that the marriage microbe is most prevalent between the ages of 20 and 24 : —

The desperate struggles which a woman is supposed to make to secure a husband, especially when she has passed the age at which she is a most attractive bait to the lords of creation, have formed the foundation of many a joke. The picture might occasionally be reversed to show how men behave in their search for a

wife. They are not always the noble and chivalrous creatures they would have the women believe, but are actuated by the meanest of motives—far meaner, indeed, than those of the women. The investigations which the Home police have been making intoa company called the World’s Great Marriage Association, throw some light on the amusing side of this question, and show that a very comfortable income could be made by anyone who went into the match-making business on a big scale. The number of persons of both sexes who are tired of single blessedness is a guarantee that a marriage agent would not lack clients. The registration receipts of the World’s Great Marriage Agency for nine months was ,£3,307, and the receipts in the free marriage department during the same period .£2,095.