Untitled

Press, Volume LV, Issue 16420, 14 January 1919, Page 6

The people occasionally met with whose inclinations lead them to profess disbelief in the cabled reports of Bolshevism in Russia, mayj perhaps, givo more credence to a statement by an exAustralian Socialist, who for more than a year has had first-hand experience of the workings of Bolshevism. The person referred to is a Mr Michael Zadorosky, a former resident of Queensland, of Russian parentage, who left Australia for Russia after the Russian revolution. We fancy that in Australia lie had Socialistic leanings, but if this is 60, a letter written from Chita, Siberia, in September, but only just received in Australia, indicates that he has suffered sad disillusionment.

Explaining his delay in writing, Mr Zadorosky says lie has been cut off from tho world for Bix months, the postal officials were too busy securing for themselves the right to do nothing and got big wages, to do any work, and "anyone suspected of belonging to the class not strictly proletariat was debarred from leaving, and had to live, or die, as best he could —that is, if he was not butchered by tho blood-thirsty lovers of liberty and brotherhood." He himself had been robbed of his stock, lands, and woods, h'&d to leave his native district because his life was not safe, and wander over the country, doing "all sorts of jobs, from selling newspapers to teaching Latin and Greek," with a good deal of starving thrown in. Poor as "Russia was under the Czar, "it will take years before she is restored to the possossion of what she had then." He compares the Russian Socialists with the Labourites in Queensland, who wanted to "put down meat kings, wool kings, and other kings, and benefit the 'have-nots,' " and says that like them, the .Bolshevists "have dealt the 'havenots' such a blow as capitalists could never have dealt." It seoms rather a pity that some of the sympathisers with Bolshevism in Sydney and Brisbane, and wo might even add Now Zealand, should not have had an opportunity of making acquaintance with that savago political system at close quarters.

If all accounts are true, and there is no ground for disbelieving some of them, the menace of an epidemic of pneumonic influenza has proved a blessing to many semi-invalids in Australia. Among the measures taken by the authorities to defeat tho disease if it did break through the barriers of tho was the preparation of an enormous number of doses of vaccine, and the opening of depots where the public could be inoculated with this vaccine. The latest Sydney papers state that people are calling at these depots for second inoculations, candidly explaining that they want them, not for tho purpose of warding off pneumonic influenza, but because the vaccine has cured them of rheumatism, neuritis, chronic catarrh, and several other complaints of long standing.

Some of the stories of these "cures" —such as that of the man who awok© tho morning after he had Leon inoculated to find tha;t all his corns had disappeared—have no doubt gained a good deal in the telling. But there are numbers of which medical men are prepared to guarantee the accuracy. "Wo have evidence," said one of the doctors engaged at an inoculation depot, "that the vaccine has been the means of either definitely or curing chronic rheumatism, chronic neuritis, sclerosis of long standing, and chronic catarrh." He told of a lady to whom )a second dose of vaccine had brought back her long-lost senses of smell and taste, of a railway employee who had i lost facial neuralgia after fifteen months of suffering, of a man who had had no more attacks of chronic asthma since inoculation. Another doctor cited the case of a middle-aged man who had regained the use of a hand previously crippled with rheumatism, while a third mentioned that anyone suffering from boils would probably benefit from inoculation. It is no wonder that these depots have become very popular, and that there is some talk of opening a clinic for dealing by inoculation with those diseases which had yielded to the treatment, more espocially as it is tho j chronic form of rheumatism, whose vietims usually regard their cure as hopeless, that have benefited bv the process. Christchurch playgoers, especially those of the older generation, will re-

grot to hear of tho death of Frank Thornton. It somo thirty years ago since he used to make our sides ache with laughing at his inimitable representation of the Rev. Robert Spalding in "The Private Secretary." with his fondness for Bath buns and acid drops, and his exaggerated "Oxford bleat." In "Charley's Aunt,'' a later success, he was hardly less amusing, and later still we had him in another laughable comedy, "When Knights were Bold," "Who that saw him can ever forget the figure he made in the suit cf armour? But as with other goo.l comedians, he did not always try to set the house rocking with irresistible laughter, and as I>ick Phenyl, In that charming play "Sweet Lavender," he showed how closely pathos can be allied to mirth.

Frank Thornton, if wo remember rightly, was only seen in New Zealand in comedy, but his earliest years on the stage —to which he drifted from tho ranks of amateur entertainers—wero given to comic opera. D'Oyly Carte is said to have given him lib chance by engaging him to play the part of the foreman of the jury in '"Trial by Jury" at the Savoy. Later on he stage-man-aged tho production, at the same famous theatre, of "lolanthe." His ability is said to have led D-'Oyly Carte to offer, after' the first performance, to give him a blank cheque, to fill up as he chose!. Thornton, however, preferred a souvenir, and received a fine diamond ring. A Sydney paper says that in 1885 Thornton came out to Australia under engagement to the great "Triumvirate" of those golden days of the colonial stage, to play in Gilbert and' Sullivan operas. Subsequently, and we fancy at no long interval, he returned to England, and gave up comic opera in favour of the succession of comedies with which his name will always be associated in tho memories of the playgoers of the eighties and nineties.