The Manawatu Herald. Thursday, May 28, 1914. NOTES AND COMMENTS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVI, Issue 1251, 28 May 1914, Page 2

The Manawatu Herald. Thursday, May 28, 1914. NOTES AND COMMENTS.

A stranger, wearing a large felt hat and long hair streaming on his shoulders and a flowing beard, has been attracting some local attention of late. He entered our sanctum yesterday and at first sight we conjured up a Red Fed doing penance with justifiable humility. Anyhow, we were disillusioned on this point, for he informed us that he was an Israelite preacher and that his headquarters were Sydney. He was on a preaching tour. His sect, he stated, do not believe in cutting the hair or shaving the beard. We asked, with Presbyterian inquisitiveness, for scripture authority for his strange custom. His reply was ; “We keep the law Jesus kept —the Nazarite law —which provides that ‘no razor come upon thy beard.’ ’’ (.Nurn. VI., 5.) The object of the tour, we were informed, was the ingathering of the lost sheep of the House of Israel scattered among the Gentiles or Christian people who will recognise the call: “Come out of her ray people and be not partakers of her sins that ye be not partakers of her plagues.’’ The stranger quoted other portions of scripture in support of his movements and said his mission was to preach in the streets and distribute literature. He is accompanied by a fellow missionary throughout the Dominion. A few generations ago these missionaries would have been harshly treated by our forefathers, but thank heaven the world has become more enlightened since then. Anyhow, their mission is one of peace and they are more welcome to these shores than the parasites of industrial unrest who, of late, have succeeded in running the country into debt to the tune of thousands, dislocating industry and severing the mutual confidence and good feeling which should exist between employer and employed.

We desire to pay a tribute to the excellent manner in which our municipal pictures are screened. We do so with confidence after visiting some of the leading picture houses in the large centres of the south. The “movies’’ depicted locally are well up-to-date and Foxton has no reason to complain of being behind the times in this respect and they are more carefully screened here due, no doubt, to the time limit placed on the programmes elsewhere. Of course, the public appointments of the places of amusement visited are more comfortable, attractive and ornate and the night orchestral accompaniments very fine. But the pictures are not better screened elsewhere. We cannot understand, however, why picture houses in the metropolitan centres are not fitted with some apparatus for spraying suitable vapour disinfectant to counteract disease germs which float about the crowded auditoriums. Ample ventilation is, of course, provided, but it does not carry off or counteract the germs and peculiar odours which hang about the interior of the places visited. Anyhow, our tribute of praise is to the local citizens’ picture enterprise.

The Home Rule Bill has been passed by the British House of Commons and whatever amendments may or may not be made in the House of Lords it will, by reason of the Parliament Act, become an established fact. There is no doubt that Ulster will have to be permanently excluded if civil war is to be avoided and from what can be gathered from the cables the Government and Nationalists will make the necessary sacrifice to avoid an upheaval which would be felt to the uttermost parts of the Empire. The second reading of the Bill in the Lords will be taken on June 22nd.