CURRENT TOPICS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 330, 17 June 1911, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS.

WHISKERS. Somebody laughed when hu read that the local Territorial soldiers had been ordered to grow moustaches. Time was when the public would have laughed heartily' at a bare-faced man not noticing the natural signs of his manhood. Nature is a quaint person. The modern man lights his whiskers day in and day out, year after year, but Nature persists in saying that lie ought to wear a beard. Jn time, of course, if she tind.s man Ims no use for whiskers, she will leave off producing them, and will probably remove other evidences of masculinity, such as the deep voice, the angular frame, and so on. Whiskers are the only natural appendage man cares to fight He never cxperimente with his nose or his eyes or his ears, but he will start life with '•Dundreary" whiskers, going through the stages of "sideboards," monkey-shaves, full beard, moustache only, and so on to utter and complete, aridity. Somebody lately suggested that as the King wore a full beard all his men subjects should follow suit, but while the ordinary man believes he is a more beautiful animal when he lias demolished his whiskers, lie will refuse to appear kingly. As for the moustache ordered !>y the Defence Department—why not? It is merely a matter of securing uniformity. Soldiers in every otner part of the world obey orders aa to hair and board cleanliness and so forth, so why not New Zealanders '! Take the Navy. You nave never seen a man-of-war sailor with a lone moustache. The Navy order is "all or none." The idea that New Zealand «oldiers will disobey the order is a, very poor compliment to them. There is no reason why the spirit of emulation sho.ild not enter in this moustache growing. Perhaps some patriotic citizen might offer a cup for the best local Territorial moustache of the year, and it could be shown, together with its parent, at the next winter show! Seriously, however, throat and chest troubles are much commoner among barefaced men than their bearded brothers, and a time will Inevitably come when whiskers will again become fashionable and the mail who can't produce them will have to join the suffragettes, BAIL UP! The Prince of Wales does not know wliat trouble he is causing to New Zealand by being bom. He, has set the Labor Department to work contriving red-tape hurdles for the public to jump over. It is unfortunate that his father did not know what a quaint people inhabit these islands and how dearly they lovo a wrangle about small things, or he might have put off his crowning for a month or two. The employers desire to lump the two holidays and in putting up their shutters for the King to rejoice for the Prince of Wales in one act. The Employers' Federation approached the Minister of LaW to this end. He could do nothing, of course. Between him and employer, employee and public, there is the Arbitration Court and its diverse and mystifying awards. Coronation Day is a special holiday and must bo observed. Hut under awards governing some trades the Prince of Wales' Birthday is also a statutory holiday. If in the trades for which the Prince of Wales' Birthday is a statutory holiday, the ma.sters keep the workers working on Coronation Day, full wages must be paid during the whole of the hybrid holiday period. So the situation is hotch-potch. Some trader will work on Coronation Day and some on the Prince of Wales' Birthday. The Government servant will work on Prince of Waies' Birthday, but the Ciovernnient j servant is under no award. It is not a question, therefore, of using either Coronation Day or the following day as a festival occasion in honor of Royalties, but of making thaw Imperial occasions fit in with various awards of the .New Zealand Arbitration Court. The reply of the Minister to the Employers' Association is to the effect that Coronation Day "is an event of national importance." It is so important that some trades will bo forced into non-ol>servance of it. Presumably, too. the Prince of Wales' Birthday is an event of national importance, and therefore ihc Government will not recogniso it. Instead of tactfully adjusting the matter to the needs of the situation, the Labor Department sets Labor at sixes and sevens until the average person "dunno w'ere. 'e are." The poor little Prince of Wales (who has just recovered from measles) wouldn't mind his holiday being bunched with his father's crowning if it would do his father's New Zealand subjects any good. As for the employer who is ordered to desist from making a living, or to pay heavily for work undone, he probably feels very like tho gentleman who was ordered to "bail up and shell-out!" by the bushranger, the Ned Kelly of this particular tragi-comedy being the Labor Department sheltering behind nn impenetrable wall of Law. THE HANGMAN. A Maori boy is to )*• hanged shortly in New Zealand, and the point was discussed whether it would 1 )( » possible to obtain the services of a man to carry out the legalised barbarity. It is now stated that several men competed for the casual position. In olden timrs there was some grisly romance surrounding the blackmasked axeman whose services were so frequent that he became shuddcringlv admired. It i.s even historically recorded that in England, when the 'heads of jrentlo and simple full like saplings before the legal stiver, son followed father, and pnu-tNeu the parent's art in order to prepare for his calling. Doing a man to death at the bidding of the law revolted people but slowly. There are British people alive to-day who remember public executions, and an aged man who died but a few years ago told us he had seen three men hanging from the gallows at Laimecslon (Cornwall) Castle. Their crime was sheep-stealing! While oilier countries have used the guillotine or electrocution, British countries have retained the hangmen's noose, this being prolwihly as barbarous a method as is possible to conceive. We may take it as a truth that no normally decent man would perform th<. duties of a hangman. He must have qualifications that make him an unpleasant person anywhere and under any circnms'tanccH. The late hangman was a ca«e in point. He was not guided by any ethical standard of duty to his country. lie had to be shepherded by the police in order that he might be kept sober to [perform the most solemn and horrid task a man could be set. The hangman must be an undesirable, a callous citizen, a general menace, shunned by his fellows. Dickens inimitably jKirtrayed a. ha.iip.pian who gloried in his work, but in teaching his lesson be brought the hangman to the gallows—a frantic, cowardly, de.vpiea.bln thing, howling for the mercy he had never shown to others 'J lie men who are now •'rushing the job" of killing this Maori boy need careful watching. Granting that it is necessary to kill him for the sake of humanity, will the hangman perform his wretched duty from a sense of duty to his fellow man or because of other consideration!'-.?