A PIT BOY TORTURED

Taihape Daily Times, Volume 7, Issue 263, 12 August 1915, Page 7

A PIT BOY TORTURED

' Remarkable evidenc e was given at J Leigh during a long hearing of a ' change against young miners of assaulting John Cowley, aged 15, pit boy. The prosecution said that Cowley had been treated cruelly for months by defendants. H e was held on the rail s before moving tubs and snatched away at the last moment, held suspended over th e 'shaft 900 fee,t deep, stripped naked and smeared all over with thick filthy oil, and otherwise eruC'llv used. Defendants, who denied the alleged offences, wore fined 37/ each. BERNARD SHAW CRITICISED. M. Abel Hermant, the eminent • .Frenph writer and critic, treated a play of Bernard Shaw's performed in Paris last year as 'rritßilag, tiresome, and insupportable, tie now has something to say on "Common Sonse About the War," which he. qualifies as 'an inconvenance," although aware ' that the author will take such a reproach as a delightful compliment. The ideal of Bernard Shaw, he tells us, is "l'incmvenance"; it is his "raison d'etre"; ; aD his humour and "esprit" are made { of nothing else. His cleverness consists in saying what ought to be kept ' silent. The great thing is N> shoe";. "Assuredly, a free, man ought v.i.f to be tied down or prevented frcm writing what he thinks, whether it shocks or not; but to be continually on the alert to scandalise people is about the most miserable kind of puerility I know of. 3 It is the basest of 'metiers.' unworthy of a free man. 'C'est Ja marqiv.' !a plus certaine d'un genie mesquiti.' Abel Hermant is content to leave i' "local quarrel" in the hands 'if Mr. Blatchford, but he cannot help a last fling at the man whose pleasure \i is to deny evident truths, to exalt his own r personality at all times and seasons, and whose "eommonsense " is i pain-., ful example of human folly: J