CURRENT TOPICS

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 75, 7 July 1910, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS

SHE GOVERNOR AND CLOTHES, j Frill and ceremony have their uses, out they do not make the country progress. Many plain, ordinary, everyday persons would enjoy social functions much better if the worship of clothes was .iot the dominating feature of them. ihe Governor is a very exalted person, and his oil ice is surrounded with' conventional frill and much ceremony, We have become used to attaching vast importance to conventional metliods and gauging the opulence and utility of persons by the clothes they wear. The ; farmer is not a better farmer because | he wears evening dress or a fur motor coat. ,No man ever became brainier by Wearing gloves or :>. flowered waistcoat, and King George was the Prince of Wales just as surely when he ' wore 'greasy overalls in the stokehold oi a warship as he is King when he wears ermine and the Crown of England. So that Lord Islington, when he asks the farmers to meet him at a levee in Auckland, wearing their ordinary clothes, is not condescending, but merely .sensible. He says he is an agriculturist himself, and this is true, if the •size of his estate is any criterion, and • applied personal labor is left out of the question. It is unfortunately a vice-regal custom in some countries to suggest that the only persons worth ate the persons wno are the least productive, "but who are carefully gvoomeU and nicely dressed. Indeed, it is an offence in soice circles to appear at func'tons mot conventionally habited. Happily, this idea is (lying, al thought it ■takes a great deal of killing. Many colonials are greater, sticklers for what is believed to he "correct" than the people they imitate. A photograph of some New Zealand legislators, a prince, a governor, two admirals and some otter personages is remembered. All the JKew Zealand legislators were uncomfortably attired in the conventional horror oi "bell-toppers" and frock coats. 'llie prince ®mcf those other fellows wore 'the ( kind of clothes they wanted to wear. It is gladdening to know that Lord Islington will "shake hands" with farmers), who do not wear either .evening or morning dress, for quite likely he understands that neither form of adornment has, helped in the slightest degree to make New Zealand fit for him to become governor ot

RACIAL FIGHTING IN AMERICA. The most obvious conclusion one could come to in regard to the JohnsonJeffries fight was that "the last nad not been heard of it." While a ne«ro with a very swelled head is retreating with a huge Bum of money, and Jeffries is retiring to his summer camp, also with much cash, white and black are hammering each other wherever they meet. There is only one comfort to be gained from the facte In the United States for many years there has been a section of white folks who, in their misunderstanding of racial distinction and difference, have advocated equality for negroes and whites. When America is sane it is very sane; when it goes off its head it is phenomenally silly. The people who advocated the intermixing of the races were fools, pure and simple. If the absorption, of the negroes was a small matter, the process of "whitewashing" might be feasible. But the fact is that although every halfbLood, every q"adroon and every octoroon is proud of his or her dash of white blood, neither the full-blooded negro nor the full-blooded white loves him. It is not a surface matter that can be wiped out by the invitation of Brooker Washington to White House, or the reception of a negro celebrity by a notable white man. The white people do' not 'know why it is an 1 abomination for the races to intermix, and the negroes do not know why they hate the pfeople whose forefathers - were their owners. The instinct of both races is to be antagonistic to each other. So if a useful purpose is to be served by the present riots and murders in the United States, it is that for onee and all the relative positions for the two races will be assigned. It is impossible that the negroes shall dominate. They are entitled .to retaliate on attack, they are entitled to progress, to increase, to become opulent, but there is no question that the line of color must be strictly drawn if there is to be peace among the two races. One thing is certain. America will revolt like one man- if a negro is ever again placed in the same ring as a white man. Johnson is said to be the finest fighter who ever fought, and possibly he is. Neither Johnson'nor Jeffries is really to blamd for making money in a country that is commercial and avaricious to the core. To be quite frank, Mr. Thomas Burns is the cause; of all the disturbance. If he had not fought the negro for dollars —out of America, he being quite a far-seeing man—Jeffries would not have attempted repossession of the; championship for the white race.