The Daily News SATURDAY, JANUARY 12. CURRENT COMMENT.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XLVIII, Issue 81916, 12 January 1907, Page 2

The Daily News SATURDAY, JANUARY 12. CURRENT COMMENT.

Sunday, apart from religious sentiment or sanctity, is a blessed day. Regarded merely as a rest (lav, it is a boon, and it is comforting to know that religionists at Home are agived without imputing sin to "Sabbathbreakers," that everything possible should be done to preserve the Sabbath as a holy day. We iu New Zealand have not yet begun to treat Sunday as do many continental nations. We do not hold race meetings or decide all the great athletic events, as they do iu France on Sunday, but we are very naturally disposed to be at 'least gay and liglitliearted, 1 when the week-end rest time arrives. The trouble in the Old Country and here is .that where peoplie go in ltj/rgery. for recreation, 'however harmless, on the Sabbath, a very large proportion oi people have no rest in order that they may give the holiday makers a good time. We emphatically subscribe to that part of the Fourth Commandment which says, "in it thou slialt do no manner of work, thou nor thy eon nor thy daughter, thy man servant, thy maid servant, thy cattle and the stranger within thy gates."

The fine old command doesn't, exempt engine-driver*! or stokers, coaches or tiremeu on boats or sailors or the drivers of Sunday coaches or anybody or anything, even the clergy. The command doesn't say that everybody should sit round and look gloomy, neither does it say anything against recreation, but it is clear on the work item, and it means all the people we have mentioned and even includes the hack you fill up with grass all the week and gallop it hard on Sunday. We believe that Sunday should he literally a Sunday and not a Glum-day or anything of the kind. There is no chance, onp may hope, Uiat New Zealanders will be allowed to trade 011 the Holy-day as the people in many Christian lands do. Sunday is a blessed institution and it should be religiously preserved as a small brake upon the work-wheel and a rejuvenating interlude to the everyday grind. Wo may say that as usual we bar cows. .Nature quaiutjy provides the calf with milk seven days a w.eek, and man still has to rob the calf to keep our London tredit good.

This is tlic time of the year when one turns up Hie paper day alter day and reads the gloomy heading, "Drowning eases." it is n particularly pathetic circumstance that most of the drown ing eases luqipen during the holiday season of the year. when, us general thing, tiie .skies are bluest, people happiest, and pleasure-seeking prevalent. So doubt the majority of eases are due to the inability of tile victims to swim, an art that is really quite natural but which wo Who are unnaturally clad, unnaturally reared—and therefore "civilised"—have to learn all over again. The savage mother throws her infant into the'sea or the lake, or the river before it can walk. It instinctively swims. A child ill the lilenheim drowning accident a leuweeks ago swam ashore. The child was not two years old.

Wince civilised folk do not swim naturally like uncivilised folk (anil every animal from a snake to a pig), li, is essential that swimming should be mole general. Jn one of the big towns, we learn, one man is so convinced of the absolute necessity of swimming, that he deiutrs the whole of the spare lime of the bu.sj- business man to freely instructing the &ehool ehiidivn in re-learning Nature's forgoti'.ei' lesson, bwiniming is the Yery best of all e£erciscs. ll is conducive to the best health, it exercises all the muscles natural,ly, gently and fully, and it conduces to clean ;uorals, lack of prudery, self-eonlidenee and longevity. Nearly every New Zcalamlcr /las the opportunity of learning swimming, and parents who do not urge their children to learn swimming are neglecting a duty as great as that of them to have enough food or enough school instruction." The patltutic ici'op <(r frowning accidents chronicled in the New Zealand papers during the past few weeks is the best evidence that swimming lessons should be made compulsory in every school whose pupils have access to a sheet of water.

Tiiuaru is an example of what a port can do for a district. A few years' back the revenue of the port was little or -nothing. t| M . year j'isfc ended the total figures in each section are the largest in the history ol the port. 'J-.'je revenue from wharfage, ships' dues, fete., for 1900, totalled .X2ii.-iUI, compared wijli _C25,805 ill 1905. The imports i'pr li)l)l> totalled 70,153 tons, compared with 70,901 tons in 1905, The exports in 11-'Oli amounted to 77,012 tons, against 78,920 tons in 1905. Imports ami exports in 1900 thus aggregated ]S(UOS tons, against 155,827 tons ijj 1905, o,f frozen mutton there were 789.09} earcases exported last year, Uiis being 13!,490 carcases in excess of the previous record.. The'value of imports and ei-jiorts (foreign meat and intercolonial) in the year llimi was XI,couipa«.,| with .c 1.209.057 in 1905. llie total tonnage of shipping visiting tin- j w rt in 1900 was 34,90S tons in excess uf that ot 1905.

Till' islands known as the three | Kings—tin: lirst Jan.l siuJit.ti li V vessels saibng N.vcliK-y' t„ Auckland Fovcd disastrous to l, »l Hi "ii'- in 51,,,,,.,.. when ll„. waft wn-ckcd. mud) ln*> of lit,. 1 resulted. 'Jli. latest wreck in I.lmt locality occunvd on December 2!)ili wlici.ih« bar,,,,,. Ijjwrhuu! «trnek the ,*« ~"'K tlur'ng •' fog and /(linjd/'rcd " afU'i-mirds, Imt forti"iatoly in I Ills nisi;,ncc i lie weather was ralni and no .fatalities resulted. The j s . lands have ),arreu aspect, ami tlicv • lr " "1 I'"'"!''" -tape and of considerable height. 1 lie principal island having an aII itude o| !/<).■in (),, ~ e | ( ,. u !l \'. v lliis is vis,,, i( ot 'l:i miles. The group is ujljnliiib. ilcl, and (lie landing is dangerous The li,|e races around 1 In- islands nr. very swill, and make navigation ,lif limit close into the land even in cnln weather. The Three Kings, m theii |iresent condition, are a menace it I shipping. I herefnre the smigostioi | tlinnvn onl l,y Caplain Jloiidlett,-. i "i"' l Sierra, should b< denned worthy ol consideration. Ji reporting on I ],,. currents at I lie Tlire, lie stated that when sleaiuin; into Auckland shortly after tiie wrccl' of the IClinganiKe. lie found hiinsel only 7 1 /, miles south „f the Km," when lie believed his vessel lo h fully W/.. miles lo the .soutii. -JI, weather w;,s clear al- the time, In, . Cnjitain llondlelte made out a si run ease for the establishment of a. fo s.vren on the King.-, as in thick wea thcr t.tn' islands and the treaeherou ••nrrenls ha' il sonri-o ot greul dange to navigators. This is only many marine ilis,\sUTs that have he,, narrowly averted al the islands, an Willi tile wreck of the Klverlan Fresh iii the public; mind probably Hi authorities will feel inHinod it> sic upon the suggestion madu by Ua< (still lloudlette.