CURRENT TOPICS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 159, 4 January 1912, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS.

HOLIDAY FATALITIES. As usual, there is a big list of accidents and fatalities for the end of the year holidays, It is exceedingly depressing that at a time when the whole of Christendom is. doing its best to be festive that the hand of fate should be the heaviest. The reason for the long list of fatalities during the holidays is not far to seek. People of all classes do unaccustomed thing's. Quite naturally, they break away from routine. The man who is penned in a town for a year likes to get in a boat be may know nothing about; people unaccustomed to horses find their relaxation in horsedrawn vehicles; folks wander into new places, under unfttmiliar circumstances, and so are easier prey to accident. The list of Christmas fatalities seems as inevitable as Christmas itself. We are used enough to the recital of deaths by drowning of those people whose business lcads< them to the sea, of the maiming of bushmen by falling trees, of tht deaths of miners by falls of rock, premature explosions or foul gases. We know that country workers take their lives in their hands everyday in crossing swollen rivers in the mere performance of their accustomed duties, and we almost get used to the injury of wharfside workers or men engaged on high buildings. Although the recital of the Christmas list of fatalities becomes an • annual affair, there is always the thought fhat most of the fatalities or accidents would not have occrred if the people who sustained them had not gladly got out of the ruck. To the sorrowing relatives whose dear ones are killed or maimed at Christmas time, the season of joy becomes one of sad thought for ever after.

A MIGHTY SLAYER. Mr. Theodore Boosevelt as a mightyslayer of any kind of animal and a lover of peace will live in history—for several years. He invaded the African wilderness and gave the animals a stirring time and probably robbed a large number of natives of very neeessary meat. With King George, who is playing havoc with the animals in India, it is different. King George is not a typical hunter io appearance, though he is considered a fine shot, one of the best, in fact, in Britain. The terrific hunting news we are getting from India relative to the Royal shooter suggests many things, but chiefly that persons possessing private menageries and pet tigers or bears should be doing a big trade. For the King to bowl over eighteen rhinos seems to be a fair morning's work for a gentleman of a retiring disposition, and we must assume that no one in the party, from rajah to "shikkari," was allowed to help him with the 'coup de grace." The King seems to have wallowed in gore, and the next jungle census will be a disappointing affair. One imagines King George getting up early in order to go out and slay those four bears, and coming back with the scalps in his pikau. He may have had a little difficulty with the thirty-nine tigers, for however carefully a tiger is brought up be is an unreliable beast, and unless he has been taught in his youth to discriminate between Royal flesh and mere human meat, he might easily hasten another coronation. Perhaps the finest feat the King performed in Xepaul was to bowl over a bear and a tiger with a right and left barrel. It is one of the primary facts of natural history that bcP.r,- and tigers stroll about together, especially when they know they are going to have I he honor of being shot by a king. There is no mention in the story of Mr. Carl Hagenbeck, the great menagerie man, of Sangcrs Brothers, or Bostock, or even of. Wirth Brothers. The whole affair is a re narkable example of the perfect stage raaaiagement native princes are capable of. /