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Press, Volume LVII, Issue 17120, 15 April 1921, Page 6

It is so seldom that a, golfer forsakes the game as long.as eye and wind and muscle serve Ihim ■ that one instance of the -kind, whjch occurred not long ago in America, is worth .notice. One Georgo P. Brett, the head of a publishing firm, has heen telling the readers of the "Atlantic Monthly" why, in spite of the Admitted good features of golf, he gave it up. "To- pursue a golf ball over hill and dale and through streams and across bunkers," seemed to him a "somewhat idle pastime." 'There was a lack of usefulness in it. a waste of time whidh before long made it appear to me as a not altogether creditable performance for a man of able body and energetic habits." So be bought an abandoned farm of 160 acres, with the idea of making it a summer homo for his family, and spent the time hitherto devoted to golf in cutting tracks through the woods, pulling up weeds, and putting in trees. During the war he cultivated the land, and in the first year took from it crops worth 7000 dollars, finding hoeing potatoes or planting pnmpkins "just as interesting and enjoyable as tflie finest strokes on the links." So now he moralises. When ho sees the city dweller "go forth with his bundle of golf Btickß," and reflects on the waste of his time and the uselessne.l3 of his energy, (he feels as if it were his duty to tell him "how much pleasure and' delight he is depriving himself of." He would talk to deaf ears. Mr Brett's little sermoft suggests that he was but a half-hoarted golfer, probably a poor playef discouraged by inability to reduce (his handicap. It is impossible otherwise to account for his incredible assertion tnat he got as much pleasure from hoeing potatoes as from making a fine drive. The possibility of growing cotton in Australia, a question 1 which has just been the subject of investigation by a delegation of the British Cottongrowers' Association, has been proved, bo far as Queensland is concerned, for many years, ever since the occurrence of the great cotton shortage caused by tho American civil war in the sixties. Latterly the production has developed on j account of the high, price, and this year, | nocording to a statement by one of the delegates, enough seed has been distributed by.the Queensland Government to sow 6000 acres. Tho Government has guaranteed the growers 5Jd per lb for tho raw unginnod cotton for the next' three seasons. Irrigation -6 not necessary for the production of the crop in Queensland, but would be required in other parts of the Commonwealth. But if, as is tho cose. Amori- , can growers find it profitable to grow cotton under irrigation, paying at leaab as high wages as were paid ia Australia, it should be equally profitable to do so in the latter country. Labour would be the big problem, but cotton-picking is not badly paid in the States. Tho delegates' visit is the outcome of a movement strongly supported by several organisations at Home and by the British Government,- to promote cottongrowing within the Empire. Much development work has been done in Africa and elsewhere, and though it is too early to say that cotton-p.rowing will become one of Australia's big primary, industries, the visitors seem satisfied with the prospects. ♦ An extraordinary statement comes from Sydney, on the authority of the Trades Hal} in that city, to the effect that a number of unemployed skilled artisans are going to Russia, "where engineers, fitters, and others are in great demand." There may be great need for such men in Russia, but all accounts of the condition of affairs in that country make it seem most improbable that Australian workmen could find employment at wages which would enable them to live in the comfort to which they are accustomed. Russia, of all countries in the world, with compulsory labour in force, and the cost of living so high that many articles of food are out of the worker's reach, is the laat place to which one would expect Australian artisans to

emigrate, and the statement by Sydney Trades Hall requires to be proved before it can be accepted. If, however, the report is correct, it is possible that thi» movement towards Russia is due to representations by a person stvling himself Paul Freeman, formerly a resident of Australia, but deported during the war, because he was found to be a German, and an "undesirable" on other grounds, Freeman, it will bo remembered, was the individual who made two or three trips between Australia, and America, after being deported, because the American authorities refused to allow him to land, the sympathetic Sydney watersiders making some trouble on his account. Eventually be was got rid of, and the next heard about him was that ho was in Moscow, whence a few weeks ago a letter from him was received by a Broken Hill Labour organisation, in which he stated that a world's conference of trades unions would bo held in Moscow at the end of April, and that ho had the authority of the Soviet Congress to invite any industrial organisation in Australia to send a delegate, On the strength of this invitation the Australasian Goal and Shale Miners' Federation despatched secretly to Moscow two delegates holding extreme views. In order to escape attention the men left as members of a steamer's crew. The Australian Prime Minister probably took the right view of their visit and its purpose. "If," ho said, "these gentlemen wont to Moscow I do not think they would oome back such perfprvid advocates of Bolshevism as they went away."