The Daily News. MONDAY, JANUARY 13. 1013. CLEAN FOOD.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 200, 13 January 1913, Page 4

The Daily News. MONDAY, JANUARY 13. 1013. CLEAN FOOD.

\\V can heartily appreciate the new iemulation- that have boon put into force in Itrisiiunu with regard to safeguarding the sale of meat. They are particularly apropos just now, when the summer is on us, and the festive housefly is making himself particularly obnoxious, along with his myriad sisters and cousins and aunts. The regulations are certainly drastic, but they are certainly just as necessary. They provide that butchers' shops must have all their external openings covered with wire gauze. and the doors must bo kept closed except for entry and exit. All meat must fee wrapped in clean paper, and not

come in contact with writing or print- i ing. Inspectors arc empowered to order stone or concrete floors to he laid, with a view to preventing the entrance of rats. Nobody is allowed to hold in his mouth any implement used in the preparation of meat, any label or article used in wrapping or addressing meat. Nobody is permitted to sell meat returned by customers; and spitting in shops is prohibited. There is really nothing here to which the trade can object, and there is much that the public will appreciate. We should, in the interests of public health, dearly like to sec a similar set of regulations brought into force in New Zealand. They would be just as much in the interests Ultimately of the vendors of meat as they would be to the general public. It is easy to say that "what the eye does not see the heart does not grieve for," but the eye sees a good deal too much this weather to make the heart very hungry for a meat diet. Our shops—and this does not refer only to the butchers—arc open to the four winds of heaven. The microbe-laden dust bloweth where it listeth, the rats and cockroaches ...ave free passes everywhere, and | the average Ily displays a übiquity that J is worse than that of a politician. Seriously speaking, our food supplies, both in the shops and in the distributing vej hides, arc not protected as they ought I to be. With the progress of science the § world seems to be cultivating new disI eases annually, and the pharmacopoeia B has swelled measurably during the last i decade, when we have added appendil citis and other quaint affections to the i original housemaid's knee and zymosis, a which did duty for most medical diagI noses. Much of this is, no doubt, at- | tributable to the treatment of our food. | and the strict necessity for absolute | cleanliness cannot be too strongly im- | pressed upon the public. Science can I preach, but it cannot prevent, and it I really rests with the individual to accept J its teachings in the spirit' in which they | are given, and to take measures to | apply them. In this respect Queensland I has given us a very useful lead, and f there would be fewer vegetarians and " more carnivorous folk in our midst it simKar regulations were adopted here.

CAUSES OP TURKEY'S DEFEATS. The Berlin correspondent of the London Daily Telegraph writes:—Two German officers, who possibly know more than any other foreigner'about the Turkish army, have now given us some of their impressions as to the causes of its defeats. Field-Marshal von der Goltz, who supervised the work of military organisation in the Ottoman Empire from 1883 to 1805, dealt with the matter cautiously and tentatively, in a few words, in introducing the lecturer at a meeting of the Oriental Society. He said that the fact had been disregarded that up till 1908 Turkey had no army. There had, it was true, been an organised levy, in the organisation of which he had for many years co-operated, but it was only in 1908 that Turkey had set about creating an army in the modern sense, which had a trained peace establishment and behind it a long series of reserves. This work had been inaugurated with great industry and zeal, but possibly not with the right understanding, for after thirty years of lethargy the necessary instructive forces were lacking. How was it possible suddenly to communicate to people a knowledge of modern tactics, of shooting, of a proper use of the features of the country, when there was no one to act as instructor? Possibly there had been too much de'.ay in procuring a staff of instructors. As in this country, the Reserve officers had been called in, hut the formation of a uniform officers' corps reuired a number of years. The first set of Reserves still •belonged to the Hamidian epoch, and had never been allowed to practise field service. In the hour of need it was necessary to call in all the available men, in order to be aide to fill up the units. There was no time to consider whether they had been trained for war. What had succumbed in the Ba.kans was an army of recruits and nothing more. The experience of any other Power in a similar condition would have been the same against an army which had been preparing for war for twenty-seven years. He must repudiate the idea that Turkey was done for. In the past her national forces had been overtaxed to maintain the European provinces and to suppress continual risings fomented in them from outside. The national Ottoman strength m Anatolia had always had to make sacrifices for Turkey's European possessions, and had thus become exhausted He believed that by getting rid of Macedonia, Turkey would be rather strengthened than weakened, and anyone who wa.s acquainted witli Anatolia and its Asiatic, hinterland would agree with him that Turkey had bv no means been destroyed.