Topics off the Week.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXV, Issue IX, 1 September 1900, Page 386

Topics off the Week.

Drilling the Girls.

Our august legislators are apparently determined that New Zealand shall not want for defenders in the days to come. When the Bill providing for the compulsory instruction of our public school boys in military drill was before the House last week the members, by an overwhelming majority, decided that the provisions of the measure should apply to girls as well as boys. These are to be instructed in martial exercises if the Bill gets into the statute book and have, I presume, their warlike instincts developed along with their muscles. So in the years to come, when the jealous nations rise up against the Empire New Zealand will have an army of Amazons left to defend her shores should all the boys have gone to the war. It is related that in the Indian mutiny when the relieving force of Highlanders drew near to Lucknow the natives concluded that England had exhausted her supply of men and was sending her women. A little experience convinced the Hindoo mind that the British women in that case were a tougher lot to deal with than the British men. I can fancy some future invader of these islands, should an invader get a footing here making good his escape with a scarcely less high an opinion of the prowess of New Zealand’s daughters. But after all we are looking to very remote possibilities, and it is more pertinent to ask how this new arrangement is likely to affect the community, in the present and in the immediate future. Now, so far as the proposed drilling of the girls will develop them in a. healthy way and give them a good upright carriage one can have nothing but commendation for it, but to give the training a military character in the case of the girls is surely not what we want. We want women not to defend us, but to be defended by us. Your masculine woman never appeals to a masculine man, and everything that tends to develop the masculine side of the character at the expense of its' feminine charact-ristics is no gain to womankind. You may easily go top far in this drilling business, and may repent too late when our maidens have lost beyond recovery all their willowy grace and tripping step and acquired in their place the ramrod rigidity of carriage of a sergeant and his martial stride. Tell me, would you exchange the winsomeness of that shy, side-long glance for the bold “ eyes front ” of the soldier ? And then again, have you considered the irksomeness to the feminine mind of exercises which are so natural to the boys? Fancy the indignity of the pretty little creatures being addressed in the harsh language of the barrack yard, their dainty feet, meant, as I think Richter says, to dance, compelled to master the ludicrous complexity of the goose step; and perchance afterwards it might come that they would be expected to perplex their brains working out problems in military strategy. I don’t believe in the thing at all.

Cheap Postage and Love Letters.

In an after-dinner speech the other evening in alluding to the penny postage reform, Mr Ward alluded humorously to the increase in lovers correspondence which might be expected when the new rate comes into effect. Who knows, amongst the many benefits likely to spring from penny postage may not this prove indirectly the greatest. All agree that the decrease or stationary state of the birthrate is the most serious problem of our day. May not the penny post bring together kindred souls from one end of the world to another—souls that, twopence halfpenny might for ever have kept apart. And when souls are brought together there is usually matrimony and matrimony—oh well, the whole thing is so obvious, explanation is clearly superfluous. At the same time one cannot but regret that if Mr Ward is right, and the difference of a Id per half ounce has cheeked lovers’ correspondence, one cannot 1 say but deplore the commercial side which characterises modern courtship. If indeed one be-

lieved that the objection of Edwin to spend twopence on a letter to his Angelina was purely mercenary, faith in true love would indeed sink to a low ebb. I decline, however, to take this view. If we examine Edwin’s feelings with sympathy, we shall discover that his disinclination to spend twopence on a letter is that twopence is really, when once you think about it, practically threepence, and that threepence will .either purchase provender for Angelina when she is present, or will, converted into “half a pint,” do something to console those anguished hours he spends apart from her. Well do I remember in the days of early adolescence in England incurring the wrath of an associate of humbler birth, by buying for his sister, with whom I was desperately in love, a sixpenny bunch of violets. “She won’t think much of them,” he said vindictively. “Now a penn'oth of cheese, a penn’oth of biscuits, and the rest in pickled onions (his taste inclined to savories rather than sweets it will lie observed), and we would all have enjoyed ourselves.” Precisely how the violets were received I forget, but subsequent experiments led. me to believe her brother was right, and that something substantial often succeeds where lighter offerings fail to please. A general recognition of this principle is, I think, at the root of disinclination to spend money on love letters. Now that a cheaper rate has come in, we may see a change. A penny i after all little enough, and even a perfect debauch of letter writing can now cause but little financial difficulty. It may even turn to the advantage of poor scribblers. Men have, we know, made quite good incomes by writing love letters for Cupid tormented swains, and maidens who were disinclined to attempt the task for themselves. What has been may be, and should the practice come again into fashion I shall certainly hang forth my sign and beg a share of your pat- ■ nonage.

The Tariff.

The reductions and remissions of duties in the tariff are the best conceivable avdertisement of the surplus, that jewel in the head Of Mr Seddon’s Budget. What did the man in the ■street or the woman in the house really bother about the surpluses of the past, which glittered for a moment in the Financial Statement, and then disappeared into the bottomless abyss of publie works or some other fund. The surplus of the past was a thing as remote from us as the sovereign the deft conjuror palms, and we often doubted whether it was a real thing at all, and not a clever illusion. But there is no mistaking the reality of a surplus that puts money directly in our pockets, as does the one this year; a surplus into which we are allowed one and all to dip our fingers and take a share. For that is what the changes in the tariff mean. There is no shorter cut to popularity for a Government than by cutting down the duties on those articles which the great mass of the people use. That twopence a pound off tea, and that four shillings a case off kerosene, to say nothing of the other reductions, and total remissions of duty, will fix the Administration more firmly in power than if it had devised the most farsighted legislation. Every time we lift to our lips the cup that cheers but does not inebriate, the comfort it brings will surely be somewhat accentuated by the thought that the divine bohea is twopence a pound cheaper than of old time. Thus a certain political influence favourable to the Government and more subtle than the aroma of the beverage itself, may steal over even the most conservative of social circles; and every afternoon tea become a centre of Liberalism. Consider, too, what additional light may be brought into our homes, and our days thus lengthened, by the substantial reduction on kerosene. The general cheerfulness of our lives is more affected by such small things as warmth and light than by larger matters. A fire that will not give heat and a lamp that refuses to give light, would make a

CMumist of even Mark Tapley. Yew ve probably never thought Of kerosene as a political factor, but of course you see it at oaee now. From the Bluff to the North Cape the countless lamps which have nightly burned low under a-high duty will brighten under the new tariff, and be as it were little beacons of Liberalism throughout the land. By bread and games the rulers of old bought the popular favour. You can do the same thing and much more easily if you ean get control of a tariff. Mr Gladstone did it, and Mr Seddon is doing it. If I wanted to be king indeed for a brief year or so, I think I would want only the tariff; and what a glorious time I would give the community—for a year. Your tobacco, my friend, on which you now- pay 3/6 a lb, and your whisky on which you pay 16/ a gallon, would know neither customs officer nor bond, and you would, of course, drink my health, and smoke it, and cry "Long Live the King.” Mr Seddon has touched neither tobacco nor spirits—in regard to his tariff proposals I mean—and consequently neither the devotees of Lady Nicotine nor those who take their glass feel specially beholden to him. Some .of these I am told are even disposed to complain of his want of consideration for them, as compared with what be has shown for the tea, coffee and cocoa drinkers. But to examine their claim would lead me too far afield now.

The “Strike” Danger.

The strike as an offensive and defensive weapon in the hands of Labour is being used with such rapidity increasing frequence, and the machine itself is acquiring such mammoth proportions, that no person who gives the matter a moment's thought ean fail to be struck with the new danger which threatens not only those against whom it is directed, but the army possessing it, who will infallibly find that it is far more easy to set a vast force in motion, than to control it when once' started. The danger will, perhaps, to tome extent lessen with the advance of education, but is by no means certain to do so. It will need, indeed, several decades of education before individual thought will take the place of general impulse, and when men will do what is right because they feel it to be right, in place of doing as they do now what they are told, by a few dominant minds, and perhaps an inflammatory press, whose sole object in agitation is the commercial one of “making a living.” If the councils of those who give the word of command to the army of labour were always wise, if it were always conscientiously considered, and the suffering and loss entailed on the rank and file by a declaration of hostility were duly considered, the case would be different. If those papers which keep the passion at boiling point were always disinterested, and no question of circulation ever entered into the matter, one would feel more confidence. But this in the Old Country is far from being the case. Those of us who have liveil some years in London and in the colliery districts, those of us who have seen great strikes; have seen the men who rashly order and the men who blindly obey; have seen the wan, weary-faced wives and the suffering, pinched children; those who have seen the inner working of the world of half penny journalism, which incites and supports strikes—we have something approaching a horror of strikes, for we cannot help but be profoundly distrustful of their necessity or the wisdom or uprightness of those who order them. Two terrible strikes were reported last week: one from England, the other from New South Wales. Both were declared for the sake of a. single Workman. Now, if one could be certain that a single great wave of universal indignation had swept over the 35,000 persons affected in New South Wales, and made them willing to sacrifice everything in order to compel restitution for an injustice done by employers, one could feel nothing but admiration for such a strike, desperate as must be the suffering entailed. But though it is possible this was the case, it is not probable. It may be—l personally have seen such things—that one strong, indomitable, misguided mind is at the bottom of the whole affair. The men are ordered out on strike by a council. Often they are bitterly unwilling to go; they have frequently not the smallest sympathy for th*

•bjeet of the strike, hot they dare not brave the penalty. The council may be, is usually, practically controlled by one man. He may be, as John Bums was in the great Ixmdon dock strike of ten or eleven years ago, a wise leader, or he may be, as others one eould name, utterly vain and unscrupulous, willing to lead Bien to strike for nothing, for the mere notoriety of leading them. There may have been good and weighty reasons why 35,000 men should be obliged to strike for the sake of one, bnt it is terrible even to consider the bare possibility of so mighty an engine being put into use, unless it was positively necessary. And that the tendency is to attempt to terrorise masters by threatening to strike, and to strike for insufficient causes, is evidenced by the number of abortive strikes of which we have heard recently. If the cause is manifestly just, it usually, like the first great dock strike, already spoken of, succeeds, for the public generously support the same. If, like the reeent imitation of that famous struggle, it is unnecessary, the public hold aloof, and utter needless suffering the strike collapses. Asan instance' of the “terrorist" strike notice an instance reported from England in the very latest papers. A new workman refused to “pay' his footing’ in beer. 500 fellow employees threatened to leave unless he were discharged. work was plentiful, orders had to to be fulfilled or lost, and the employer was coerced into this monstrous injustice. O o o O o

Clubs—Are They Good or Bad?

Most of Kipling’s opinions of this colony and its people, the great novelist and ballad writer kept discreetly to himself. Whether he wished to spare us, whether he was struck dumb with amazement and delight; orif,and this is most likely, he found nothing very worthy of remark, we cannot tell. The fact remains that save for a brief stanza, usually much misquoted. Kipling has said or written little of New Zealand. He was here too short a time, probably, though this has not always proved a deterrent to literary globe-trotters. But there was one point that struck his fancy, and which was duly recorded. He professed profound amazement that cities like Auckland and Wellington could support two or more large clubs, substantially housed and expensively conducted. One of half the size would be said to have been considered sufficient in other communities. The same thing has struck others besides Kipling, and one wonders what would be his remark if he were set down in so moderate a sized city as Wanganui, and found established there a new club, yclept the Cosmopolitan, with an opening membership of some 800 souls. Exactly what 800 is to the adult male population of Wanganui I am too lazy to work out at this moment, but it must be considerable, and the event has naturally opened a discussion on the question as to whether clubs are a good thing or a bad, whether the useful purposes they claim to serve outweigh the evils they are alleged to cause, or vice versa. And, as is almost invariably the case in arguments over this subject, both sides rather lose weight by “trop de zele.” Those who do not believe clubs are desirable insist that they are mere gambling and drinking dens, where gluttony, gambling and intemperance can be indulged in without the restrictions and risks imposed on those who frequent hotel bars. For example, one bitter critic of the Wanganui Club objects to grace having been said before the inaugural banquet, and, with the gratuitous insolence of a certain type of temperance man, “wonders bow many were fit to return thanks after it was over.” lie contends that the only persons who will derive benefit from the club are the brewers, and upholds the view that the club man’s wife is invariably stinted, and that his children have to go lacking. Chlidish and exaggerated as such statements are, they do undoubtedly prejudice some folk. As a matter of fact, of course, there is less drinking and less temptation to drink in a club than in an hotel. A member who habitually exceeded would soon become so offensive that any well-regulated club would soon intimate that he must either pull up or resign. On the other hand, the idiotic habit, still prevalent in several of our larger towns, of wandering round from hotel to hotel, taking a dr>nk at each, is much more eou<|ueive to intemperance than calling al a club, where a man can order a whisky and soda, and ait down in comfort and smoke or read while he is enjoy-

ing it. The principle at the bottom of this theory is universally admitted by social reformers at Home, who insist that once you force a publican to supply satisfactory seating accommodation you reduce drunkenness 50 per cent. It is what is termed perpendicular drinking—“standing round a bar,” that is—that causes the mlseffiief. Club men in their turn not infrequently injure their own cause by protesting too much. They are prone to claim for the elub intellectual and social advantages, which it does not as a faet possess, and the absence of which is sufficiently obvious to any person of average penetration. Though not now a member of any club, I am personally in favour of the same. It seems to me that they are advantageous mainly for the reasons already spoken of, and as providing a refuge for the man detained in town on business.

Sing, Maritana, Sing.

Recently, in Napier, a husband charged with assaulting his wife, pleaded, I understand, as an extenuating circumstance, that the lady had locked him into a room and threatened him with a poker if lie would not sing. Of all devices to evoke melody, this is certainly one of the strangest, and. I should think, the least likely to be effective. To sing under compulsion, particularly if it took the shape of a steel poker posed threateningly, like Damocles’ sword above one’s head, would be a test even Patti herself must find trying 1 . And it is difficult to conceive a reason for the lady’s adopting such measures. One could easily have understood her menacing her lord and master if he had been obstreperously vocal, but precisely the opposite was the ease. Compulsion of a more moderate character plays a not inconsiderable part in the divine art of music. Few of us lisp in numbers, because the numbers come naturally, and the art of .singing and playing the piano, especially the latter, is in the vast majority of cases, painfuly acquired by the pupil under divers threats. How many of our lady friends have arrived at a doubtful proficiency under a tutelage as strict in a sense as that of the poker? Oh, the weary hours that I can look back on which mamma persisted in making Jane spend at the piano keys—poor Jane, whom the Gods had no more made musical than Audrey was poetical. And how many thousand Janes are there not? You cannot go out for an evening without meeting one or more, of them. Conscious of their slim accomplishment, they would fain be silent and leave the piano alone, but when asked to play or sing, the presence of a proud mamma, or the mental vision of one, compels them to accede. They tremble before the maternal poker. Or, if it is not the maternal poker, it is the poker of social opinion that drives them to what is a sorry task for them, and no pleasure to those who listen to them. Why will mammas insist on their daughters learning singing when the girls have no voice, or to play on a piano when they have no ear? Why is it considered necessary that they should be made musical when Nature never meant them io be anything- of the kind? But lam thankful to think that better- counsels are beginning to prevail nowadays. Perhaps it has been brought about by the diffusion of a truer musical artistic sense that folks recognise the musician, particularly the singer, is, like the poet, born, and not made. If there is one thing certain, it is that no art of the high arts is to be" acquired under compulsion. The born painter will depict nature with a burnt stick for a pencil should you withhold from him every other tool. The born singer will carol to the birds in solitude should you impose silence on him elsewhere. And just as you cannot by force drive out the inborn capacity, so neither i..n you drive in by force a capacity that is not already there. That is true more or less of all things, but of none so much as the artistic faculty in all its many forms.