CURRENT TOPICS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 277, 13 April 1911, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS.

PLAY UP, TARANAKI! It is vital to the commercial interests 1 of Taranaki that she shall retain her pre-eminence as a producer of butter and cheese. The prosperity of the whole province is based on these two commodities. It is therefore not too early to remind Taranaki butter and cheese peopeople who intend to exhibit at the jTaranaki Metropolitan. Agricultural Show on June 7, 8, 9 and 10 that outsiders arc seeking premier honors. It is creditable that the Rangitikei butter and cheese makers and people from the Wairarapa should seek to capture the Shaw-Savill Cup, to be held by the successful dairy factory putting in the box of butter most suitable for export. It will also be of use to the two industries that outsiders will endeavor to obtain the New Zealand Shipping Company's Chip for the best crate of two cream cheeses. Thert is no doubt that the factories winning these cups will receive valuable advertisements, and that, apart from the mere value of the trophies, the winning of them will be most helpful to the district obtaining them. Keen competition should be gladly welcomed, for in every case it spurs endeavor. To the London buyer New Zealand butter or cheese is not distinguished by the locality from which it hails, but there is no doubt that specific brands which have obtained honorable awards will appeal to the buyer than those which remain "in the ruck." Taranaki has a reputation of which it is justly proud, and will, it is certain, do everything in her power to maintain it in friendly rivalry with other provinces, the whole having the ultimate good of | New Zealand always in view.

IS ILL-HEALTH DISGRACEFULMany old people remember the time when "delicacy" was considered to be a sign of "good-breeding," when the aristocratic miss who dared to have red cheeks and sparkling eyes was spoken of as being in "vulgar health," and when women flopped about in more or less dead faints several times a day. Good) health has become more fashionable since then, and the physicians of the old school who prescribed "carriage exercise" for her ladyship Avlio was merely suffering from an attack of laziness would have to vary their prescriptions nowaday-. There is a medical school arising on the bones of the old and stuffy one which proclaims loudly that it is not only unnecessary to be ill, but that it is a disgrace. A medical man in London the other day said that all disease is prevcntible, that in fifty years consumption had been reduced by one-half, cholera and typhoid and smallpox mastered. Here is a bright paragraph on the subject from the pen of Arnold White:—"lf ill-health were only count-j ed disgraceful by a strong social convention, we might in a generation recover those conditions which for four hundred years made the ancient Greeks the healthiest, the happiest, the most beautiful, and the most artistic people who ever lived on earth. For four hundred years the name of no Greek physician was sufficiently famous to have defended to our time. Presumably there were no apothecaries' shops in the city of the Violet Crown, where the health and beauty of children comprised the religion of parents. The majority of the immigrants who favor us with their presence in Britain come from countries where the shut window and the closed door are regarded as essential to comfort. Jt is scarcely too much to say that common colds can be absolutely j avoided by sleeping well under open windows summer and winter. For the first i day or two it seems strange when one is sleeping in the open to wake in the morning with a sense of vehement elation and vitality which nothing on this earth can give except the free and open air. To obtain good national health we must hunt down disease in the same way as the police follow the tracks of 'Peter the Painter.' The original instincts of the cavemen from whom we are descended teach us to isolate where they would have bludgeoned. Already we recognise that a case of virulent smallpox in a tramcar is an outrage on the community; but it is no more an outrage than the feeble-minded, the tuberculous, or polluted bridegroom or bride who taints prosperity without sense of shame."