LOCAL AND GENERAL.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 137, 28 October 1912, Page 4

LOCAL AND GENERAL.

To-day being Labor Day, the lettercarriers will make only one delivery of letters, commencing at 8 a.m. The tender of Mr. W. J. Cleland, of Fitzroy, at £l4B, has been accepted by the Taranaki Jockey Club for the erection of three additional loose boxes and ten additional stalls in time for the Christmas meeting.

Up to Saturday afternoon, the following gentlemen had placed their motor cars at the disposal of the committee for the purpose of showing the New Zealand Cadets around on Wednesday next. Dr. Leatham and Messrs. Arrowsmith, E. Griffiths, C. Ward, W. C. Phillips and R. Deare.

Now that the High School Old Boys' Association, has been definitely launched, it is to be hoped that all ex-pupils of the institution will rally round its standard. With such associations a lot depends upon numerical strength. The annual subscription (2s fid) should not stand in the way of any old boys joining.

In view of the diversity among the political opinions held by our civic fathers, some amusement is anticipated at the next meeting of the Borough Council, when the list of the suggested alterations to the names of a number of our streets will be tabled. The suggestions, which have been drawn up by the Works Committee, include the proposal to rename Watson street, Dartmoor, "Massey street."

A special meeting of the Taranaki Garrison Band was held in the Bandroom yesterday morning. There was a full attendance of members, who entered upon a lengthy discussion of the 'band's financial position. It was decided to request the Mayor (Mr. G. W. Browne) to call a public meeting on Wednesday, November 6, with the object of placing the whole position before the public, on whom 'will practically devolve the onus of deciding whether New Plymouth is to remain in possessor of a band. A massed bands' sacred concert will be held at Aotea (Messrs. Sole Bros.' grounds), in which the Inglewood and Waitara bands are to be asked to take part, on Sunday. November 17.

A grand military and spectacular display in connection with the school carnival is going to be held in the Recreation Grounds on November 2,lst. Several committees have been at work for some time and a meeting was held in the Town Hall on Thursday evening to make full arrangements, the following being ■present:—Messrs. Tabor (in the chair). Box, Mills, Carter, Dempsey, Elliot, McLeod, Flanagan, Fifth, Dineen, Jonas, Jones, Green, McLeod, Moon and Mcllroy. Apologies were received from Messrs. i?. Webster, Lints, Gray, Brooks, Sullivan, and Captain Rogers. A very comprehensive programme iwae made out including some items which will be quite new to New Plymouth, and as they arc in the hands of gentlemen who are well-known to be enthusiasts tlie public may rely on a splendid afternoon's entertainment'. A committee of ladies will be formed next week to assist in various departments of the display, which is in aid of the Central School funds. The next committee meeting will he held on Friday evening. The connoisseur calls for CAMROC DRY GINGER ALB. Its purity and excellence please the most exacting palate. It is a beneficial drink and a thirst-quencher of the highest order. All hotels and stores. 12

. .A mail charged at Invercargill with resisting the police and damaging a uniform, called evidence to show that he was of good character under normal circumstances, and was leaving Invercargill ".to get away from the drink." And Invercargill is a No-License township. Dr. Lazarus Barrow, director of the Cancer Research Laboratories on London, says that in the not very far distant future radium will be utilised, not only to combat cancer, but also for the treatment of bacterial diseases. It is uncertain at present whether its use is entirely destructive of flesh tissues. Large doses might destroy where smaller doßes would stimulate.

Between the hours of seven and ten last evening, says Saturday's* Eltham Argus, a burglary took place at a cottage in King Edward street, in which Messrs. Thompson and Wellham are ''"batching." The thief, who apparently gained entrance through the doors not being locked, succeeded in getting away with a sum of £2 in cash and a pair of silver-backed hair brushes and comb. It is considered that the miscreant was disturbed, as he dropped a pocket book in the course of what would evkiently appear to be a hurried flight. The police have been communicated with but nothing further has transpired. Mr. R. McNab spent his two months' visit to Sydney in re-writing and bringing up-to-date his work destroyed by the recent fire at Whitcombe and Tombs' establishment in Wellington. Before leaving, Mr. McNab expressed himself as particularly satisfied with the result of his labors, and said he hoped this time to outdo all former efforts in supplying fresh historical matter for New Zealand readers. The work for the press this time will deal with that portion of Nevy Zealand which was the home of the bay whaling trade—Cook Strait and to the south—and will cover the period from 1830 to the proclamation of the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840. For the first time will be read from French sources of information what were the French plans regarding the Akaroa settlement. A former resident of New Zealand, now settled in Ireland, writes to a Christchurch friend as follows:—"This country is in an awful state. Rain has been ceaseless all the summer. The halfmade hay has rotted in the fields; the oats still green, are laid flush by the storms; I never saw the disease so bad in the potatoes. The foot-and-mouth disease has now come within six miles of me; the district is proclaimed so that I cannot move a beast or a sheep across a high road; fairs arc stopped, and the ports are closed so that no cattle can be sent to England. But these troubles are light compared with the political cloud that is hanging over our heads. If Home Rule come 3 about, civil war is inevitable. I do not now enter into the question of whether Ulster is right or wrong; I merely state what will happen—and what would happen whether Bonar Law and Carson had spoken out or not." The intending tourist will find much of interest in the '"Tourists Vade Meeurn," a handbook issued by the Union steamship Company of New Zealand, for a copy of which we have to thank the New Plymouth manager of the Company. The little booklet contains a vast fund of information concerning the. various ports in New Zealand, Australia, and the South Sea Islands at which the company's steamers touch and the places of interest adjacent to those ports. Two pages are devoted to New Plymouth, and to show that the publication is nothing if not iip-to-date in an excellent epitome of the attractions of Mt. Egpront reference is made to the Accommodation House recently erected. A short account is also given of the routes followed by the company's steamers, which carry on the Royal Mail services between Australia, New Zealand and Great Britain, via Vancouver and Canada and also via San •Francisco and the United States. The booklet contains a mine of information and is one that should prove a great convenience to those contemplating a trip either through New Zealand or abroad. The comic opera, "The Geisha," which is to be produced in the Theatre Royal on November fi and 7, was first put on at Daly's Theatre in London some sixteen years ago, when it achieved an instantaneous success, and since then its popularity has never waned. It is brimful of captivating musical numbers, all of which have had a long and.,.po]>\ilar run. They include, to mentfm a few, "The Amorus Goldfish," "Jack'lihe Boy," "Star of My Soul," "Chin Clm Chinaman," and '"The Interfering ParroV' The eccentric quartette, "Oh, What Will the Marquis Do?" is particularly catchy. The plot of the play is cleverly conceived and worked out, and is familiar with -most'; theatre-goers. Suffice-it to say -for the benefit of the unititiated that it is delightfully quaint and piqtiant, its peculiar Eastern setting being all in' its favour in this connection. It has to do with the frolics and involved amours of a group of English •officers- in the gay Japan of a generation :ago, before the gathering tide of Westernisnr had swept away much its quaintness and simplic'ilky, then so dear to the heart of the tourist. A feature of its production in New Plymouth will be .the gorgeous nature of the scenery. In his book, "The Valor, of Ignorance," General Homer Lea proved the vulnerability of the United States to attack. In his new book, "The Day of. the Saxon," he discusses the question of the permanency and safety of the British Empire. In this he says:—"The security of Australasia rests entirely on one condition—the integrity and continuance of the British Empire. Concomitant with its defeat and disintegration Saxon dominion in the South Pacific comes to an end. With the loss of India through revolt or conquest, the Empire is shattered and Saxon Australasia Will at that time, or in the final political and military readjustment of the Pacific, pass under the tenure of another race. The first principle of Australasian defence is the defence of India." He considers that if war does come it will come because of the oversea possessions. It will come because the existence of the Empire is a check to the expansion of the other nations. "There can be no retention of present British sovereignty," he says, "without a repression of the territorial and political expansion of other nations —a condition that must culminate in war, one war if the Empire is destroyed, a series if it is victorious. The intensity of these conditions increases with each year of added population; each year of augmented arts and sciences that open up to mankind new wants, while at the same time diminishing the source of their supply; each year of new invention that shatters time and space and crowds the greater nations, bv irresistible and uncontrollable expansion, against the circle of the British Empire." He says: If the Saxon race is to survive it can do so only as a whole: (1) Through the military and naval unification of the Empire; (2) the complete separation of the military and naval systems from the civil government of the dominions and colonies; (3) the introduction of universal and compulsory military service among the Saxons throughout the Empire; (4) all armies to be organised on the basis of expeditionary forces.

One cow !s nothing much to the number—more or less?—in Taranaki. One cow off your herd is something to you —if you lose it. Many a fanner has lost one through neglecting some small ailment. Are you neglecting nny ailment with your h<?rd* V see SYKES. THK FARMERS' C-HEM'KT.—Advfc

Quite the most important personage—in his own mind at any rate—at the football match between Bay of Islands and Hokiauga at Kaikohe recently was a Maori armed, with a stockwhip, who took upon himself the duty of preventing dusky spectators from encroaching on the field of play (says the Northern Mail). He was a man of action and few words. The appearance of fifty pairs of brown bare feet over the sacred boundary line was an immediate invitation to execute a movement with the whip that a cowboy might have envied. There would be a whirling motion in the air, a sharp hissing crack, and next moment a group of bare-legged enthusiasts with one accord would jump convulsively into the air and yell in unison. The Maori with the whip was most impartial in the carrying out of his self-imposed duty, and as the game went on he became a person who commanded great respect from his brown brethren. Speaking to a surveyor regarding the rush for land, a representative of the Auckland Star was informed that on the East Coast, about seventy miles from Opotiki, there are 200 applicants for every section cut up. "We are surveying land on which the Maoris lived for a long while," said the surveyor, "so you can tell it is good. They, however, abandoned it because thev came to the conclusion that two of thi*ir chiefs had been killed on it by evil spirits. The Maoris are still so afraid of that land that we could not get them to work for us on the survey. Evidently the palcehas have no fear of the evil spirits, for they are just rushing it. §ome men are making a lot of money out of the land on the East Coast. 1 know a man down there who took up a Government lease of 2800 acres at 3'/ 2 d per acre rent per annum. There was a purchasing clause at 20s per acre at the end of twenty-one years. He took it up three years ago, and while I was down there recently he refused £l2 per acre cash for 1000 acres. I think the Government makes a mistake in letting the land go in such big areas. Smaller holdings would be far better."

The days of the "sporting parson" are not over (says the Melbourne Age). This was made certain at the sitting of the general assembly of the Presbyterian Church recently. Rev. John Flynn was speaking to a report made by himself in regard to mission work in the Northern Territory and Central Australia. "It is a terrible mistake," he said, "for ministers to lose their sporting instincts when they join the Church." Many Presbyterian "fathers" held their breath and evidently wondered what was coming next. But it transpired that the "sport" to which the reverend gentleman alluded was of a mild kind. "When you are out fishing." he explained, "and the fish become troublesome, you give him more line. That is what you have to do with sinners in the Northern Territory. There are some men in that place just as bad as the worst of your Melbourne examples. Like the fish, it is troublesome sometimes to catch them. My advice to the. Church is: 'Take care of your tackle.' Don't worry about the fish. We are fishers of men, and we shall catch them in good time." This sentiment was received with applause.