GENERAL NEWS

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 150, 12 November 1912, Page 3

GENERAL NEWS

The Spartan spirit that dominated the will of the \vyman who passed through the hardships of pioneering times in this Dominion is occasionally exemplified in these days of comparative luxury. A woman carrying a heavy swag pafesed through Dannevirke the other day. En route she called on. a local dealer and purchased a billy can. In the course of conversation she informed the storekeeper that she was going to join her husband in a wood-cutting contract. His health was somewhat indifferent, and in ( addition to being able to assist in crossj cutting the logs, she would be in a posi-, tion to see that her husband got regular and sufficient meals. ■ • ■ One would think that such strategy and such ferocious bearing in battle would impress even New Zealanders, but apparently it is not so (writes a critic of the Bulgarians' work at the battle of Luleburgas). In a Wellington pie-shop on Saturday night last there were eight patriots and one Territorial, and the Territorial. said: "Look here, they can talk j as they like, but let 'em send the whole I Japanese Army to New Zealand, and they'll get all the fight they're looking for." One of the patriots capped this with the following:—"Japanese! Yes, let 'em send Japs and G,ermans together, and we'll 'eave 'em into the sea." Unfortunately for our nation, this phase of the valor of ignorane is fairly general. Operative bakers (states the Melbourne Age) are demanding day labor, as opposed to night labor, and the public, with even greater insistence, is demand' ing fresh-baked bread for breakfast. These two demands constitute the horns of a dilemma, between which is the master baker. Obviously lie cannot satisfy botlj, and the eighth annual convention of Federal master bakers expressed its unanimous opinion that, in present conditions, day labor is impracticable. 'Master bakers, as much as operatives, would welcome day labor from a personal point of view, but they recognise that they have a "boss" in the public. Still, there 'are 'hopes of a. settlement which will satisfy all parties. Mr. E. Bobbins, a Melbourne baker, has been experimenting for some time, with a view to 1 preserving the freshness of bread, and he claims to have discovered a solution (whether chemical or not he did not say) which, if a loaf is dipped into it, will achieve the desired result, so that an expert cannot tell the difference between a newlybaked loaf and one which is three or four days old. At present the cost of the preparation bars its commercial success, but the inventor, who declines at present to disclose any details, has hopes of making his idea practicable in a few months." The Rev. E. H. Hobday appears in the Otago Daily Times as a defender of billiard rooms in Y.M.C.A.'s, which wiis the subject of strong criticism by asother delegate at the recent conference. Mr. Hobday is engaged in a mild newspaper controversy with a Mr. Jones, and he defines their differences of opinion as follows:—"Mr. Jones holds that a game, however innocent in itself, should, ( if it has contracted evil associations, be renounced. I hold that a game should be redeemed from such associations." On the same grounds, as he points out, Mr. Jones should oppose boxing, and even writing, because a man who knows how to write may become a forger; or reading, because a boy who pan read might well fill his- mind with prurient rubbish. Mr. Hobday declares that the churches will be doing incalculable harm by creating the impression that young men cannot become genuinely religious without renouncing legitimate Tecreation. Christianity, as he says, is not negative, but essentially positive. "I am," he says, "jealous for the honor of the Church and the purity of the Christian life, but it is my conviction, based upon observation, that the strictness of many homes and severity of many creeds, which go toy the name of Christian, have produced a false impression of religion upon children, who, so soon as they have got beyond parental control, have gone to the other extreme, turned their newly-acquir-ed liberty into license, and ended by making moral shipwreck."