Topics of the Week.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXVIII, Issue XVIII, 3 May 1902, Page 826

Topics of the Week.

The Rational Sunday. There will be a good deal of diversity of opinion as to the necessity for the Rational Sunday Observance League, which has been started in New South Wales. The League is anxious for an alteration in the laws which at present limit the sale of refreshments, temperance drinks and so forth on Sunday, contending that the advantages of the day of rest are greatly lessened by such restrictions. My own experience of Sydney is that there are few cities in the Empire where Sunday is less puritanically observed than there. So far as one could judge the opportunities for getting fruit and temperance drinks were ample and there seemed no occasion for a League pledged to do what it could to extend them. One cannot help thinking that though the League ostensibly limits its objects to Sunday bananas, ginger pop, etc., it has in its mind’s eye other refreshments of a less innocent kind. You generally find that the man who clamours for a rational observance of Sunday in the colonies is the individual who would like to have all the bars open, the theatres in full swing, and the public conveyances running, turning the day into one of pleasure as far as one half of the community is concerned, and, as a consequence, into one of work so far as the other half is concerned. There is nothing rational in such an object. By ail means let the day be partly devoted to rest or innocent recreation, as may be judged fit and proper, according to one’s ideas on the subject—rest or recreation that in no way encroaches on the rest and recreation of others, but from that complete secularisation and vulgarisation of the day, which some hanker after, may heaven defend us.

Educating the Maori. The very picturesqueness of the Government’s new scheme for the education of the Maoris must alone commend the proposal to most folks. There on the banks of the Wanganui, the Rhine of New Zealand, at the classic Koriniti, a special settlement is to be formed of Maoris educated to live according- to European ideals. In a great many instances, in almost all, in fact, our attempts to educate the natives have failed to achieve the results we anticipated. As children and youths the young Maoris proved apt scholars, absorbing and even assimilating European knowledge in quite a wonderful way; but when the school days came to an end their culture seemed to come to an end too. Indeed, they almost invariably retrograded from the time they left school. The old associations and the old friendships asserted themselves, and boys and girls went back to the lazy life of the pa. It is nothing uncommon to find hanging about some Maori village youths who speak English fluently and who might if they had cared have won for themselves distinction in our University Colleges. Now they are confirmed loafers, with no ambition to emerge from the miserable conditions of the pa, and with a deep contempt for these. They are worse than useless. They infect their uneducated fellows with the same spirit of discontent that they themselves cherish, and they too often set up low standards of morality which invite imitation simply because they are of pakeha origin. Yet one cannot but feel a certain pity for these backsliders from civilisation, for they are not entirely to blame. We do not comprehend the difficulty of cutting the old pa connections which are rooted in the very flesh, of turning one’s back on the house of one’s fathers, and renouncing or seeming-to renounce one's people. But it is clear that before any permanent educational amelioration of the native race is possible the educated Maoris must come out. from the tribe; and the Government’s idea of establishing native communities which shall be conducted by the Maoris themselves on the

model of European, villages seems quite worth experimenting with. Only we must not be too sanguine of its success, and we must not expect too much at first. It will take time to make even a model Borough Councillor of the young Maori. Meanwhile, let us look forward to the day when tourists on that lovely river will find a greater surprise to them than even its scenic beauties in a thriving township successfully run entirely by natives oil the most modern principles. And if the experiment proves a success in the one instance there is no reason why it should not be tried elsewhere in the colony, until it comes to be the exception instead of the rule, as now, to find such a stalwart and intelligent people as the Maoris living in a state of savagery. London Bridge and St. Paul’s will have to make haste or they will not be in anything like dilapidation for Macaulay’s sable artist from New Zealand.

The Last Post. The Commonwealth has at last consented to accept and deliver our letters with the penny stamp on them. Sir Joseph Ward received a cable message last week to that effect. That Australia should have been so tardy to acquiesce in an arrangement to which all other countries we correspond with raised no objection is scarcely to her credit, at>d seeing that consent has been wrung from her orfly by Sir Joseph agreeing to the reduced terminal rate for Pacific cables on the one condition that she agreed to accept our penny paid letters, she hag not very much improved her reputation in our eyes. Her capitulation is a testimony to the interdependence of Australasia—a fact the proud Commonwealth has been disposed to ignore. Great and self-con-tained as she is she must often find, as she has found in this instance, that even so small a neighbour as New Zealand has it in her power to help or to harm. However, it is satisfactory to know that the twopenny Australian rate need vex us no longer, and that the penny stamp which sufficed to carry our greetings and love to distant England will also take them across the Tasman Sea, as it ought to have done from the first. The irritation which one felt every time he sent a letter to Australia was out of all proportion to the value of the extra penny it had to bear as compared with one sent half-way round the world, but it arose from something more than a grudging of the extra expense. It was tedious to remember every time you wrote Australia on the envelope that you must stick a twopenny stamp on the same; and even the least logical mind carped at the illogicality of paying- for sending letters to the neighbouring but unneighbourly continent double what you paid for sending to faraway countries neither kith nor kin to us. Once again the nimble penny has triumphed.

Adisu the Golden Age. The war found Australia a peaceful land, and it is safe to predict that the peace when it conies will find her a warlike one. The Federal Minister of Defence last week brought down General Hutton's minute dealing' with the defence of the Commonwealth, and it is most probable that if the precise proposals therein made are not adopted something will be done in the direction of increasing the military strength of tiie continent. At present the peace footing of the Commonwealth consists of 15,470 garrison troops, and 14,101 of a field force. General Hutton advises to increase the field force to 28,748, on a war footing with 120 guns, making the total garrison and field forces 44,218. He also favours the development of rifle clubs and cadet corps, and the gradual establishment of a small arms, ammunition, shell and cordite factory and gun foundry. So

it is evident that Australia can say good-bye to her golden age of peace, and the same is true of ua. I had onee sanguinely hoped that this part of the world would never know the iron age of war, but that by the time our young limbs were fit for armour the old world would be putting it off. But alas fond hope! The fashion in steel shows not the least sign of going out. aud we who had hoped never to follow it must obey its dictates. Well, let the arrogant trumpets blow. We are ready as our fathers were before us. Perhaps it is well that the call to arms should come now if it is to come at all. A generation or two of peace might make unfit for the call when it came.

Germany’s Soiled Linen. • British matrondom throughout the Empire has been holding up its hands in holier horror at the recent revelations of German uncleanliness than ever it did at the stories of Boer atrocities. Just think of it, that consignment of unwashed, left-off clothing, soiled in Germany, which was received at Bloemfontein the other day, and represented the Father-, land’s contribution to the comfort of the refugees; and think, too, of the poor ladies engaged in unpacking the consignment, eight of whom were taken seriously ill. The soap-loving soul of the British housewife rises in righteous wrath at the filthy charity of the Teuton. It has been suggested by those who fear the Germans, even when they bring gifts, that the clothes in question may have been, intentionally infected before they were dispatched from Germany, so that those engaged in unpacking them —presumably British — might catch the liberated germs and spread disease. Na doubt pro-Boerism is not incapable of even so diabolical a device as that. But as the refugees have ultimately to wear the clothes it would be a questionable method of taking vengeance on the hated Britisher. And to those who know anything about German housekeeping no such tragic explanation of this occurrence is at all necessary. The weekly wash, at once the delight and the affliction of the Anglo-Saxon household, is quite unknown in Germany, or at least in a very large part oi the Empire. The German backyards are not “ dressed ” twice or four times a month with the family linen, a sight so familiar to us. Once in the six months, and in some cases once in the twelve months only, are the coppers alight and the tubs asteam; but, then, it is a washing, and no mistake. The common British house-cleaning is a trifle to it. It is far and away the most important event in the family calendar, a thing that lasts a week, and requires a certain amount of strategic genius to carry through without a hitch. The feminine heart of Germany bled for the half-naked Boers—hence these clothes —and gave of its male ami female cast-off garments with no niggard hand, perhaps. But it would have seemed to that heart a Quixotic folly to wash the vestments before they were packed. Soiled they might be, but w’hat about the stories of Boer filth? Besides, it is just probable that the family washing-day was four months off, and if they did not hasten it by one week for themselves, was it likely they would do it for the unwashed sons and daughters of the veldt?

Family Affection in the Colonies. It is, perhaps, a little late to refer to the shocking case of filial ingratitude and callous cruelty reported from Wellington the other day, where two girls deliberately tried to desert their aged mother in a strange city, but it is almost worth while, as it is a very striking case, of the exception which proves the rule. Nothing in colonial society (of every grade) strikes the Britisher more strongly than the intensity of family affection in colonial families, and the closeness of all ties of relationship. Family affection exists, of course, in Eng-' land, and is doubtless in its own undemonstrative fashion as strong as that of the emotional Frenchman, who weeps at the mention of his

mother, or the sentimental German, but it cannot compare in the remotest degree with the intensity of colonial feeling. When a young couple marry in England, they usually drift apart from either one side of the family or the other almost instantaneously, and it is far from uncommon to see them take their own line apart from both. They are glad to see each other at times, they are affectionate, but even when they live near each other they are comparatively seldom in each other’s houses, whereas in New Zealand the kindred families who reside near each other practically live in each other’s houses. The old saying, "My son’s my son till he gets him a wife,” is not V ue the colonies. He remains the son, and merely brings another daughter into the family. The custom is amiable and lovable, but it occasionally has its disadvantages, and unquestionably the disinclination to leave home and relatives is responsible for keeping back many a young fellow, otherwise ambitious to get on. The cause of the greater intensity of family affection in the colonies is to be found in the early training. Children in the colonies see much more of their parents, and find themselves on a very different footing in the home to that to which English children are accustomed. The colonial child is practically admitted to an equality with the “grown-ups” of the household. Schoolroom, dinner, and nursery tea, with their plainer fare, under repressive discipline of nurse or governess, are unknown institutions in the colonies. The children have their meals with their parents, and either join in or monopolise the conversation, as inclination directs. This greater freedom, while breeding a certain amount of lack of respect for elders, sometimes condemned, certainly also encourages greater interchange of confidence, and as a consequence stronger love.

What Will the End Ba?

Concerning combines generally, but particularly the corner in eggs, and the 45,000,000 thereof stored in New Jersey, what are they coming to in the States? And what is going to be the position of Britain? It’s all very well to speak of the unity and amity of Britain and the States, hut with her control of our shipping and her vast combines, it looks as if the amity would be of the lady and the tiger order, and that there will be unity because the greater will swallow and contain the less. I do not like to advocate lawlessness, but there are circumstances which justify it. Bet us hope that the good folk of New Jersey will lie low till those eggs have—say matured—let the chilling rooms be warmed for the purpose —and then let them rise, and marching in a body let the members of the trust enjoy their fortyfive million. A millionaire, with one “ripe” egg well planted on his waistcoat, would probably feel uncomfortable, but imagine a few of them with 45,000,000 odoriferous ovulae distributed amongst them. It would be a grand—a worthy—sight, especially to those whom the greed of these millionaires had robbed of food. Seriously, however, it is to be hoped the Government of the States will hurry on its action against these food combines. The men concerned therein are unquestionably guilty of a conspiracy to defraud the public. The Armour gang in the dock would be a lesson to other gentry of the same stamp. One thing is certain—if the Government don’t put a stop to such monstrous transactions, the public eventually will, and probably by very peramp£or.y and painful methods.