CURRENT TOPICS

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 182, 3 July 1937, Page 8

CURRENT TOPICS

(By “Wayfarer.”)

A high school principal said recently that the high schools are spending too much time on an attempt to educate “duffers.” It is a peculiar word, observes a commentator. It used to mean a peddier, a hawker of sham jewellery. Then it came to be used for Human shams, and thus lor stupid persons. | * * I England’s first “Flying School lor Birds” lias been opened by tile Society .lor the Prevention of Cruelty' to Ani- ! male, at Thames Ditton. The object is to take care of birds which have been injured or ill-used, including wild birds, which have been unlawfully cageu. Percnes and ladders are provided so that they can exercise until flight is again possible. British birds 'will be released when they have recovered. Foreign birds will be perniaj nently eared for, and so will those ! which are unable to fly again. The school has room for 1060 “pupils.”

At festive gatherings in the north of France, when “giants” are paraded through the town, or archers, or pigeon fanciers meet, the day nearly always onus in song. The uninformed visitor might think that the town was full of English visitors having a very good time, all singing the old war songs. “Tipperary,” “Mademoiselle from Arinentieres,” are favourites, and the original English words are 6ung to them. The singers are all French and few know the meaning of the words they sing. When questioned, they will tell you that these songs were learned when they were children from the English soldiers in Flanders. At Cassel, in Germany, “Two Lovely Black Eyes” is a great favourite, and nobody seems to know why.

Playing the role of spectator at an important football match ill Scotland is a serious business. It means preparedness to stand for hours and to be as comfortable as unhelpful surroundings will permit; it means laying iu a supply of comforts of various sorts. When the recent match between Queen’s Park,and Partick Thistle was played at the famous Hampden ground aii amazing litter was left by the huge crowd, leading one columnist to inquire who had walked home in his stockinged feet. An inventory of the “discoveries” includes the following interesting items: Thirty frying pans (mostly 7 new) to assist the “applause”; 500 beer and lemonade ‘bottles; 50 sardine tins, 200 canned beer tins; 24 umbrellas, 30 white tammies; 50 handkerchiefs, 3 tons of orange andbanana skin ; 145 wooden stools and boxes (some of them wrapped ill brown paper), one set of top dentures, one pair of boots, and hundreds of potato crisp hags. In all there was 35 tons of litter I

A non-stop seaplane express from Paris to New York is the ambitious project presently under construction by. the French Ministry of Air. France is determined not to permit the United States, Engand and Germany to dominate aerial traffic. “W e nursed aviation in its infancy, we blazed the first trans-ocean passenger route— Paris to Buenos Aires —and now we are determined to build a direct ParisNew York line,” an official of AirFrance said recently. French officials have decided to build a gigantic seaplane base almost in the heart of Paris. “It is probable that an aeroplane field will also be constructed alongside the river at the same spot,” the official stated. “We have a clear river run of nearly 5000 yards — enough for even unplanned future seaplanes of 50 and 100 tons to take off in safety 7 —and nearly 1000 acres of land belonging to the Government. French pioneer aviators have already charted a rough course across the North Atlantic via the Azores hut practical estimates have only recently been submitted to the authorities.

There are fashions in everything, it would seem ; the custom lias spread to the railways at Home, where ticket agents have noticed certain interesting trends. Five and ten-pound notes are the vogue on the business men’s expresses to London. Passengers from Ireland, transferring at Fishguard, invariably offer currency notes of the Irish Free State, which have the same face value as those of Great Britain. The, threepenny hit is the most popular coin in Wales, the agents at Welsh stations handling hundreds of them each day. English ticket offices, however, may not see one in a month. Every third person in Wales saves threepenny bits for heydays and holidays. Sometimes the tickets for entire Sunday school outings from South Wales towns are paid for in threepenny bits. Of the 7,500,000 threepenny bits minted annually, 5,000,000 go to Scotland, 2,000.000 to Wales, and only 500,000 for distribution in England. The sixpence and the shilling are the most popular coins of England, although the half-crown is rapidly increasing in favour. Double florins, massive crowns, coins minted in the reigns of the early Georges still are presented for a ticket on one of the lines of the British railways.

Few who read of Lord's Cricket Ground, in London, where the New Zealand team drew with (he M.C.C., this week, would even imagine that there is some connection between this historic area and Bonnie Prince Charlie. Yet, according to an English commentator, such a connection does exist.

Oceans of ink. he says, have been spilt over the origins of cricket without getting back with certainty to a founder whose name could be celebrated with proper reverence. Nevertheless, one might venture to acclaim Bonnie Prince Charlie as the originator of the M.C.C. and of Lord’s cricket ground. Not that we know of the Prince as a player; but here is the claim of the Young Pretender to have associations with the game. When he came over in the ’46 there was in the county of York at Tkirsk a well-to-do yeoman farmer or small landowner, named Lord. Lord was an enthusiastic Jacobite and raised, it is said, a large troop of horse for the cause at his own expense. However that may he, the ’45 ruined him and he had to go to work on the land which he had

farmed. i His son Thomas, horn in 1753, who might have grown up to farm his own land in peace and plenty in Yorkshire aml (no doubt) 1 to play cricket with the locals, had to make his way in the world and became a professional cricketer: lie learnt the game apparently at Diss, in Norfolk, becoming a useful player, hut never a great, one. though on one occasion lie howled so fast against Notts as a to rout the county decisively. The Earl of Wineliilsea and a future Duke of Richmond suggested to him that it would he a good speculation to lay out, a private ground of his own. 'and at the end of May. 1787. the first game was played on the first “Lord’s.” Thus it is pretty clear that there would have been no “Lord’s” without Prince Charlie.