PRESS COMMENT

Hokitika Guardian, 17 April 1929, Page 2

PRESS COMMENT

WOMEN AND FASHION.

I have been reading the lament of one of the most famous of Kreach dress designers. Women, lie says, are tired of fashion, and there has been nothing really new for the last six years. It is an essentially practical age which governs even our clothes —and so forth. That, perhaps, is going rather far; but I have never believed that women could be easily induced in these days to surrender the freedom of the short skirt and the general comfort of the modes of to-day. Over and over again 1 have read that a decree has gone forth that skirts are to he long again; but no one has taken the slightest notice. The. new fashion has got little further than the mannequins, and calves—-latted or slimmed—are as much in evidence as ever. Yet that is not to say that women have given up interest in dress. When the sales open you will find as many women as keenly interested in looking their best at an outlay proportionate to their respective means. Post.”

KEEPING DIARIES

On the whole, great man and women have seldom been good diarists, lhey have dealt with events which have disturbed their perspective, whereas many a liver of quiet days has left a diary filled with atmosphere and human interest, Be in no way concerned with the fate of your pages ; only resist lifetime. If eventual publication is your motive in writing, the value of your record will be at once destroyed. Be as punctual in writing as you can. The steady soquonce of successive days, the accumulating dust on the traveller’s dress the ignorance of what is round the corner of the road, the eternal mystery of to-morrow can appear in the lives of the humblest of us by a scribbled note between sunrise and night, by the whispered confidence to

a dumb confessor. If'you go oil your volumes will, mount up, your other sel'i will grow in your locked box or your bolted cupboard. In remorse, in tear at your indiscretions, in annoyance at the false picture of a self, which has grown wiser, you may stretch out your hand intent on destruction. But you will stay your hand and hesitate at what will seem an act of self-mutila-tion, and you will turn the next page and write again.—Mr. Arthur Poitsonby in the “Liverpool Daily Post.”

NEW UNIVERSITIES

Our new Universities., have been born of the business world, and thougu of course, we do not uiuler-estimate. the necessary work of the learned men who, as professors and teachers, have served the cause; so fruitfully, the early life of the modern Universities and their sustenance came Irom white may he called the educational laymon of our towns. From (this has arisen a mode of University government very unlike that prevailing at Oxford and Cambridge.. The layman lias had the chief power, and in law retains the chief power, of determining what a University shall be and become. It was the great good fortune of this new movement the importance of which it would not bo easy’ to exaggerate, that it fell into the hands of public men of the finest tvue.—The “Yorkshire Post”

AN OPEN MARKET.

Unless the British iron and steel industry has recovered sharply by tho time the Government goes to the conn try the great majority of its leaders will unite in asking to be safeguarded against foreign competition. They have a good case, many points in which have not yet been put thoroughly before the public. For example how many people understand that the conversations- initiated many months ago between British and German steel makers had no result because the British steel industry was not safeguarded? Alter tho advantages of an agreement had boon discussed and had been recognised by both sides the Germans frankly said: “But what have you to offer us that we cannot take for ourselves? We have free access to your markets now, and can do all the business wo desire there, and you (un’t stop us so long as your country maintains free trade in steel.”—The “Sheffield Daily Telegraph.”

A WISE WILL

There is a distinct novelty in the clause in the will of one Mr Samuel Gluckstein, in which he refuses to leave money directly to his children. If every child were to lie treated generously according to its “moral worth” the world would be a different place. But if that ideal is incapable of fulfilment, at least it is a welcome step in the right direction for rich parents to make the inheritage of the wealth they leave conditional upon some attempt to deserve it. Unearned wealth is too frequently, as Mr Glunkstein suggests, the impuse to extravagance; but it is interesting to find the recognition of this sequel in such a quarter. Perhaps the fact that Mr Gluckstein secured his wealth by hard work and initative is responsible if or the value lie rightly places upon these qualities rather than upon their reward I. —The “Daily News.”