Topics of the Day.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLIII, Issue 13, 29 September 1909, Page 47

Topics of the Day.

By Our London Correspondent.

' HEAT WAVE IN LONDON. MID-SUMMER JOYS AND TRIBULATIONS OF A CROWDED CITY. b/ f FEW daya of sunshine work / | wonders in London. Two weeks J | ago people were shivering over fires and gazinz gloomily out of window at overcast and wintry looking skies. Mackintoshes were the popular wear, and four people out of five carried umbrellas. Then came the transformation scene. The sun appeared, and summer came up with a rush. London is broiling under a heat wave as I write, and the change from a few days back is astonishing. It may

be glorious weather for the seaside, but mid-summer in the Empire’s metropolis is more than a little trying. A temperature of 79 degrees in the shade does not Bound much, perhaps, to an Aucklander, hut let him try it amid the noise and Stuffy atmosphere of a London street, and he will find it far too warm to be pleasant. The saving grace of London in mideummer is its abundance of pai-ka and commons. In almost any part of the metropolis it is possible to escape from the sweltering streets to some expanse of cool green turf, where beneath the shade of the trees you may sit at ease and listen any afternoon or evening to the music from an excellent band. London has music for the million in its parks—good music, too. One hears Wagner, Tschaikovsky, Mendelssohn, Rossini, and many other famous composers interpreted for the benefit of the multitude by the municipal and County Council bands. For a penny you can get a seat in the reserved enclosure round the band-stand, and for another penny a printed programme of the music. Pleasant it is on these fine Bummer evenings in August to saunter into Hyde Park, and sit for an hour or bo to listen to the open-air concert under the elm-trees. In the lake in St. James’s Park the Stickleback season is at its height. Crowds of urchins assemble daily, and fish patiently for hours. Their nets are home-made, their catch goes into tincans or jam jars; competition is so keen that to capture a couple of score of the tiny creatures is regarded as something phenomena], and yet the little bare-legged fishers obtain as much delight as any scientific angler with a. ten-guinea rod, files of all shades and sizes, and Izaak Walton in his pocket. lor the children of the well-to-do, Kensington Gardens are a famous play-

ground. Hundreds of them are to be seen romping on the beautiful green lawns in front of the palace, with whitecapped nurse-maids looking on. It is no bad fate for a child to have to remain in the West End of London during August. DRIVEN MAD BY HEAT. The heat wave in Paris appears to be even worse than in London. From being down to about 50deg., the thermometer has reached the neighbourhood of 100 degrees. The heat drove one daughter of Eve to the roof of her house, where she tried to imitate the garb of her ancestral mother, but neighbours thought she was mad, and had her shut up. A man, likewise driven to extremities by the heat, had the reasonable idea of throwing himself into the river, and also was thought insane.

A restaurant chef in the Boulevard Voltaire, in his effort to get cool, placed a large lump of ice on his head, and immediately fell dead. At one of the railway stations a passenger, getting into an open cab in the heat of the sun, fell back dead. A gentleman hurrying home to luneh, fell dead as he reached the door of his house. A policeman, while attending to a carriage accident, fell dead in the street. The heat has driven several persons mad, among them the driver of a train. His train left Argenteuil for Paris, and to the passengers’ surprise did not stop at any intermediary stations, while the train began to gather great speed. The stoker saw the driver had gone mad. He made a desperate attempt to get possession of the throttles, and ultimately prevailed upon the mad driver to stop at Bois Colombes, where another driver was procured and the madman forcibly removed. » A manufacturer in the Boulevard Magenta suddenly went mad through the heat, and began firing at passers-by from his windows, happily without hurting anybody. The central districts of Paris are invaded by a number of enormous wasps. Such are the pains and penalties of mid-summer in the “ temperate” zone of the Northern Hemisphere. BABES AND BEER. INFANTILE DRINKERS’ CENSUS. Times have indeed changed since the much-lauded ‘'good old days” when sheepstealing wag a capital offence in the Old Country, and the national drink from breakfast to supper was “nut brown ale." In England, a matter of two or three hundred years ago, the announcement of the fact that 40 per cent of the child-

ren of people of moderate means nnd the poor knew the flavour of beer before the age of eight would have created no sensation whatever, for beer was then the staple drink of old and young of both sexes. Three hundred years ago the child of eight who did not know’ the flavour of ale was the exception; to-day, we have fondly imagined the child of that age possessing such knowledge must be the offspring of people either actually in the “submerged tenth” or only a step or so removed from a condition of life warranting inclusion in that category. For, though doctors—and other people—may differ as to the value of alcohol as a beverage for adults, sane and informed opinion is decided upon the point that alcohol in any form is, save in very exceptional cases, bad for the young. So when so staid and serious a journal as the “Lancet” deliberately sets forth in its sober pages that 40 per cent of the infants under eight years of age in our elementary schools are familiar with the use and effects of alcoholic liquor in their own small persons, it gives one quite a shock. But the data on which this statement is based seems fairly well proven, so far,

at all events, as London is concerned. A census w T as taken in two entirely different districts of London—not districts where poverty and vice are marked features of the neighbourhood, but in suburbs fairly representative of the whole L.C.C. School Board area. The first school is in a district where the majority of mothers who drink use the public-house; the other is in sur-

roundings which are rather more genteel, for the mothers deal with the grocers, or obtain crates of beer from brewers. In the former school it was found that nearly 12 per cent of infants drink alcoholic liquor daily, and a further 34 per cent occasionally; while 54 ]>er cent are “Band of Hope.” a comprehensive term for teetotal. The. exact figures in a school of 296 are: Daily 35, occasionally 101, Band of Hope 160. In a letter accompanying the census the teaeher remarks that some of the babies speak affectionately of public-houses by name. Older children say “Drinks isn't *alf nice,” which means in plain English that it is much to their liking. In the other school—with 318 pupils—careful inquiries elicited the fact that only five infants could be set down as regular drinkers, but of the others 127, or 40 per cent, were occasionally given liquor by their parents. Curiously enough, in this school, in spite of its superior virtues, only 46 children belonged to the Band of Hope, and, horrible to relate, one of these “white hens” confessed to being a regular imbiber of bitter beer! In view of the facts disclosed by this inquiry it might be supposed that “poor old England” was lagging far behind in the temperance race. As a matter of fact, recent investigations on the Continent have shown that in Holland, Germany, and Austria child-drinking is at least quite as much in evidence as in the Old Country. To take only one example. Inquiries in Vienna disclosed the fact that in that city more than 53,000, or over 32 per cent of the whole number of school children, regularly drank beer; nearly 20,000, or over II per cent, wine; and nearly 6000, or 31 per cent, spirits.