The Stratford Evening Post. WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 1912. ISOLATED PEOPLES.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXIV, Issue 22, 19 September 1912, Page 4

The Stratford Evening Post. WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 1912. ISOLATED PEOPLES.

FORETELLING THE RAINFALL,

In August, 1914, Australia is to be ' isited by a party of British scientists numbering, with ladies and unofficial delegates, over three hundred persons. '1 he Commonwealth Government has generously promised £15,000 towards the expenses of the visit, and at a recent meeting in Sydney in connection with the event, the chairman, Lord Chelmsford, remarked that if there was one fact more than another which struck the visitor to their shores it was the isolation of Australia and Now Zealand. It was a fact which he knew had struck Mr Bryce very forcibly, and he did not think the general public realised the value of personal contact in the relations of men and in the relations of nations. It was personal contact which inspired, which gave the sense of proportion, and a true understanding one with another, and with all the postal and telegraphic facilities nowadays, they gave nothing which compensated for the want of personal contact caused by Australasians being so many thousands of miles away from everybody else. He added that he thought it inevitable that the abridgment of cable communication made misunderstanding, and not true understanding. They all welcomed this visit which was coming in 1914. Since lie had been out in Australia he thought one of the most remarkable facts in the life of that country had been the number of these visits that had been taking place, and the growing appreciation of their value. He had only to remind them of the frequent visits made of recent years to the Old Country by Premiers and Prime Ministers, and not long ago there had been the visit by Chambers of Commerce delegates, and

more recently the very interesting visit of the Scottish Comnvssioners. .He thought Australian statesmen were beginning to realise to the full, even though the general public did not, the value to Australia of these visits.

THE DEFENCE ACT

Recently at the Conference of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union in Dunedin, a Christchurch lady—Miss L. M. Smith—read a paper on compulsory training under the New Zealand Defence Act, in the course of widen the following very sensible view of the position is expressed: “First and foremost, 1 would place the idea of service. The age is essentially a young people’s age. Never before was such provision made for and thought expended upon young life; and this not only by parents and philanthropists, but by the State—and rightly so. But there is a danger of the young folk accepting all and giving nothing. It will be a wholesome lesson for them to learn that each individual owes a duty, not only to parents and home, but also to the country. Further, the present age is not notable for family discipline, and there are thousands of young men to whom the yearly fortnight’s training in prompt attention to duty and in healthful modes of living will be of incalculable benefit. The fact, too, that the possession of money or station will not exempt from service must tend to prevent in this new country the growth of class privilege and of snobbishness, which operate so banefully in the Motherland.”

The Director of the British Rainfall Organisation, Dr. H. R. Mill, writing in Symons’ “Meteorological Magazine’* of July, 1912, says;—We have so frequently to assure the representatives of newspapers that we have no data for foretelling the rainfall of the coming week-end, month or season, that we have been strongly impressed with the human craving for knowledge of the future in this respect. It seems to he an immemorial craving of humanity to seek for signs and portents of the coming of rain, and the following note from “The Times” of July 10th, 1912, carries us very far back: “The British Museum has acquired a collection of animal bones inscribed with archaic Chinese characters of a more primitive type than any yet found, oven on the ancient bronzes. These bones were purchased some months ago by the authorities of the Museum. Owing to their extreme antiquity, the characters have been deciphered only in part. Many of them, indeed, are far more primitive than any characters yet identified. It is clear, however, that these’ writings are the records or notes of inquiries made mostly by the king. The bones, having been inscribed with questions, were seared with hot irons, arid the cracks which then appeared in the bones were Interpreted according to certain rules of divination., . The process of interrogation by professional diviners. The inquiries relate to such things as the prospects of rainfall, harvests, the fate of prisoners, hunting expeditions, change of residence, and so forth. One eminent authority inclines to assign the date of the inscriptions to the middle and early part of the Chou dynasty, which lasted from B.C. 1122 to B.C. 2249; but two modern Chinese cr'iCcs attribute them to the Bhang dynasty, which lasted' from B.C. 1766 to B.C. 1122. In any case they are the oldest forms of Chinese writing that have survived.”