CURRENT TOPICS

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 219, 23 December 1916, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS

All who appreciate the advantages of swimming will have read with great interest lately oi' the explQitsjfef Lieut Colonel Freyburg, V.C., in France, and previously of his wonderful swimming feats performed at the Dardanelles. Before the war Freyburg was well known in New Zealand as a swimmer, and on reading the ether day of his heroic actions we are reminded of

some observations contained in the introduction to a chapter o n diving in a text book by an English swimming instructor, A. G. Seammell. He: says: "The art of diving . . when carefully studied and gradually brought into* practice will inspire great mental nerve and confidence likely to affcrd valuable service in many departments of life. The nerve power developed by the practice of diving cam best Deestimated by those who have made

j swimming and diving a life-long study and practice, and are thereby able to ] testify to the valuable and exhilarating influence upon body and m s nd' liy the forces brought into play. Jf Many timid youths Avho have been persuaded to learn swimming, and as an incidental result diving, have uncbnsciously bee n inspired by capable instructors and exponents of diving, whereby nerve power and self-confid-ence have been developed to a surprising extent-." * * * :t? A few months ago, Mr. Archibald Hurd, commenting on Sir Hugh Bell's, frank advocacy of Anglo-Germa n trade after the war, dealt with these insidious tendencies in vehement and scathing language. "The British people are to wipe clean the slate, obliterating all the bitter memories of thestruggle, and are to make political and commercial treaties with the nation, which tore up the instrument guaranteeing the neutrality of Belgium. The Lusitania, with her twelve hundred victims, as well as all the other vessels with their human freight - which have been destroyed by dastardly acts contrary to the dictates of our common humanity, are to be forgotten; we are to think no more of Nurse Cavell and the martyrs of Belgium; we are never to recall the sufferings of the men assassinated', in unspeakable agony by poison gas; we are to hide away the graves of the men, women and children butchered in our joy/fist by bombs dropped blindly in the darkness of the night from Zeppelins; weare to give no further thought, to the hideous joy which Germans of all' classes have exhibited as- one excess of savagery has given place to another yet more fiendish. All' these manifestations of the diseased heart and' brain of Germany are to be buried in oblivion." * * * * Taking it for granted that the Germans really hate the British to-day. when we are really the cause of all the Kaiser's troubles, trials, and terrors, how much more will the Hun hate us after the war, because the German is no sport—he can neither forgive nor forget. Just how the people in that distressful country, the Fatherland, are being fed up and misled by their journals, here is evidence in an extract from a recent editoriar article which appeared in the Frankfurter Zeitung: "The Englishman

wants to destroy you, your work and your welfare, for he hates you with the hatred of his master, Satan, because he hates everything and everybody stronger than himself, and German work and production strong for him. Think not that your ardent and understandable longing for peace, you give way now that he will spare you. He will paralyse you, mentally and spiritually, and reduce you to what you were in 1813. Germans, be ye too proud to grumble because your dinner talbes are meagre! Would you eat the bread of charity flung to you by the English, who will allow you and your children just so much as-will keep you from actual starvation, and not a crumb more? "Would you rather dis-

perse yourselves over the earth's surface to beg for work among foreigners, as was done by so many of our best prior to 1870? If not, complain not, whine not, clench not your impotent fists; but prepare yourselves for the final and severest exertions. Hard en yourselves into the hardness of flint against yourselves and against the whole world. Give up your last remaining earthly possessions, your last grain of strength and mental power to your country's needs."