The Manawatu Herald. Thursday, January 21, 1915. NOTES AND COMMENTS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVII, Issue 1350, 21 January 1915, Page 2

The Manawatu Herald. Thursday, January 21, 1915. NOTES AND COMMENTS.

Every State school should be equipped with a swimming bath, and swimming should be part and parcel of the school curriculum. The money so expended by the Department would confer untold benefit on the physical well-being the rising generation, and result in a falling percentage of drowning fatalities. Secondary schools are assisted in this direction by the Department, but primary schools lor some reason or another, are not considered ! The necessity for swimming baths at the local school has exercised the minds of those concerned for some time past. It has been urged that the subject be postponed until the town has installed a water supply. But goodness knows how long that will be. Already the proposal has been twice rejected, and with the present unsettled state of affairs, at least three years must elapse before such a scheme, if favoured, could be accomplished. Why not use the river and construct a bath on the bank, say, at the north side of Messrs Devin and Co.’s shed ? We believe the Harbour Board and Railway Department would meet the proposition fairly, and there is no doubt the Borough Council would give practical assistance. The ground at present is waste land—a raupo swamp. The erection of concrete walls and bottom for the bath, dressing shed and river fence should not exceed ,£350, and an effort to raise this amount should not be a grave obstacle. The water would be brackish, but quite suitable for bathing purposes, and bathing could be indulged in with the utmost safety. This suggestion appears to us to be the most practical if it is taken up enthusiastically. It is scandalous to think that with water so near and plentiful, Foxton is so backward in this respect.

Thk local Racing Club’s annual two days’ meeting commences tomorrow, and provided the weather holds line, should attract a large gathering from far and near. The course is centrally situated, and is sheltered by belts of pine, where group picnics can be held for those who do not care to mingle with the crowd on the lawns. The Club officials have gone to great expense in catering for the comfort of patrons in the matter of appointments, and the gathering is very popular with visitors. The meeting is Foxton’s gala day, and while the Club endeavours to provide a good time, it cannot strip the gathering of the evil associations which go hand in hand with the ‘‘sport ot kings.” Race meetings, like animate beings, have their parasites—immoral humous to whom clean sport does not appeal. They do not attend for the love of the sport, but to prey on their fellows for the greed of gain. This is the black side of racing, which repels and sickens honourable men. While sport lasts, the parasite of evil will cling to it in spite of stringent regulations and honourable club officialdom. The Club's desire is to give the local and district public a good outing and an opportunity for reunion. Everything points to a successful gathering.

Colonel Fevler, the distinguished Swiss military critic, in the Journal deals with the question of the duration of the war. He does,not venture on any date, but confines himself to an extremely interesting estimate and comparison ot the resources, material and moral of the two contending groups oi Powers. He begins by the pronouncement that in a war the end can only come through the conviction forced by one belligerent on the other that further effort would be useless. Everything points, he says, to this exhaustion point being reached first by the Austro - German coalition. The vital centres of the three principal allied armies are each capable of a long resistance. Further, as the Powers have sworn not to conclude a separate peace, before their enemies can hope for a victorious issue w r e must assume that the allies have in France been driven south of the Loire, that England is threatened at home (an assumption which involves the destruction of her fleet), and that the Russian armies have been annihilated before Petrograd or Moscow. Nothing less than this incredible task must be accomplished by Germany before her arms can be victorious. The very statement of this hypothesis is, considers Colonel Feyler, already a reductio ad absurdum. The victory of the allies, then, is

not open to question ; only its date is in doubt. Colonel Feyler’s conclusion is that the war will not end before the allies have invaded German soil, and will last even after such invasion, till the moial of the German people can no longer stand out against the disillusionment of a defeat which it has never so far judged, and does not even now judge possible. In other words, the duration of the war depends on psychological conditions, which are always ticklish and elusive things to deal with. Colonel Feyler being no prophet, but a sound and cautious military critic, does not, therefore, commit himself to any pre-construction of the calendar of 19x5.

“The Responsibility for the War,” is the title of one of the Oxford pamphlets, written by Professor W. G. S. Adams, Gladstone Professor of Political Theory and Institutions. It is, he says, because the Germans have, despite their great efficiency and wild culture, never realised that full sense of political freedom and self-government, best expressed in the common law of England and in its responsible Parliamentary and local institutions, that men who have known what such freedom means are determined at all costs not to let the domination of Germany spread. "And closely connected with this,” he goes on to say, “is the question of the rights of the smaller nations. The sense of nationality has always been deep in England, and men have felt the strongest sympathy with the small nations of Europe in their struggle for independence and their right to live their own life and make their contribution to civilisation. The greatness of a nation is not measured by its size, but by its spirit, and one of the desires of England to cay—quickened powerfully by recent events —is to see the smaller nations of Europe secure from domination by the larger Powers. This war is one for the liberty of the smaller States—Belgium, Holland, Denmark—as well as the States of south-east Europe. Nations must be free to enter into alliance or union, but the end of such alliance or union must be national self-realisation. And where, as in the Scandinavian States, in Holland, Belgium, and Switzerland, the democratic spirit is strongly developed, there men have freedom and the desire for peace and culture. Every additional such State is a guarantee of peace, and England sees in such States nations which have with her a great bond of common interest. There is a third ground which played a large part at the outbreak of the controversy, and which is no minor issue— the maintenance of international obligations. If a matter such as the neutrality of Belgium are to be treated as ‘a scrap of paper,’ there is an end to the security of international agreements. What guarantee can there be that any agreement will be found of value if the plea of ‘necessity’ can be put forward to justify its disregard ? It is perlectly true that circumstances may arise which justify the denunciation of an agreement. But if a country ceases to regard an agreement as binding upon it, it must give full and proper notice. So, again, if there has to be war, at least some progress has been made by the conventions of civilised nations to conduct war on lines which mitigate as far as can be the sufferings of non-combatants and neutrals. But by German methods on land and sea both noncombatants and neutrals have suffered. The war must puuish the breaking of agreements, and establish on a firmer basis than before the sanctity o( international regulations. . . . The main objects in view must be that of requiring disputes between sovereign States to be the subject of arbitration before there is recourse to war, and of securing international action to punish the disregard of arbitration.