CURRENT TOPICS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 234, 21 February 1913, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS.

A DRASTIC SUtiCESTION. A correspondent who signs himself "A I'arsi," lias written to the Times of India" suggesting siutable punishments for "anarchists," wivh particular reference to the man who threw the bomb at .Lord Hardinge. "The anarchist," he says, "should be daily rolled down a hill at least one hour a day, packed in an ordinary wooden cask litted with sharp pointed nails on all the sides of the cask. (2) At least sis severe stripes should be given early hi the morning, and salt water spread on the spot of stripes given. (3) For the rest of the day the coward should be bent down with his devil black face on the ground and a heavy load should be laid on his shoulder from morning till evening. (4) Sleep should be given in a very dark room, and the room must be full of bugs and other sorts of harassing small living creatures. (5) Food and water of very inferior quality should be" offered to the coward once a day only." The correspondent adds that the treatment should be continued for a year and then the i victim should be "brutally hanged." One j is inclined to ask what would be the ; matter with simple hanging as a substitute for till these barbarities?

RAILWAY SIGNALLING. "Mr. Edward Tyer, whose death occurred on Christmas night, did more perhaps than any man now living to ensure by ellicient signalling the safety of railway passengers," says the London Times, "and also first gave to the people of London the facilities of telegraphic intercommunication, lie was attracted in his boyhood to the subject oi electricity, and constructed machines out of any material within schoolboy reach. Later he entered the city oftice of his uncle, afterwards Sir John Musgrove, but the routine was distasteful, and he soon returned to his electrical appliances. In 1852 Tyer patented a system of electrical signals which reduced greatly the danger of railway travel. Before 1859 the inhabitants of London could not communicate with each other by telegram, and if they wanted to use trunk lines or cables had to go to the terminal offices. Tyer saw the. possibility of linking up these offices and of establishing subsidiary offices throughout London. The London District Telegraph Company was formed, and Tver was given the post of electrical engineer. Thus was established the foundation of what afterwards became the postal telegraph service in London."

A NOTABLE FIGURE. The Duke of Abercorn, who died last month, was a typical figure in British aristocratic life. Closely connected by marriage and through his brothers and sisters with nearly all the highest families of the nobility, he held a string of subordinate titles, and owned, as he said of himself in "Who's Who," "about 20,01)0 acres"—the only distinction, except rank, which he there claimed. Though of purely Scottish descent from the house of Hamilton, the great occupation of his political life lay in attempts to frustrate Ireland's demand for Home Rule. This ambition first nude him prominent about IS8(i, and whenever there seemed a chance of Treland obtaining her freedom since that date, lie suddenly became prominent again. The latest occasion was during Sir Edward Carson's mock-royal progress through Ulster last September, when he took the chair at some of the meetings, and whs greeted as tlie original founder of the Trisli Unionist Alliance. To him is attributed, the waning battlecry. "We will not have Home Rule;' and lie was among the promoters of that peculiar "'Civilian Force," created last year for purposes not vet fully divulged. Otherwise, he may be remembered as the man who took up the chairmanship of the British South Africa Company after (lie crash of the Jameson Raid, and, certainly, no one will deny him a kind of courage for such an action. SrFXTAL TEACHING. Children attending school in eountry districts are necessarily deprived of many advantages enjoyed by town children (says a London correspondent), The country teacher, dealing with somewhat denser mental materia] than his town rival, can do little n*>re than equip his charges in the ordinary school course, lie cannot do much in teaching special subjects, and where elaborate apparatus is required for demonstrations and practical instruction, the country school must obviously ignore many of the advanced aims of modern education. Seeing that the teaching of domestic economy to girls is an essential part of the new curriculum, it is important that country school girls should have the same opportunity of learning the rudiments and mysteries of the culinary art as those within easy reach of a cooking centre. This idea has been forcibly presented to education authorities in Wales, and the

latest development of special teaching for all elementary scholars, irrespective of remoteness from population, is the provision, of a caravan fitted as a cooking school, which will tour country districts to impart instruction in the preparation of food and kitchen management. The perambulating cuisine is provided with stoves and all the furniture needed for giving practical lessons in domestic cookery, and will be in charge of au expert instructress. Something of the kind is already in operation iu the North Riding of Yorkshire, and other school committees are contemplating a similar departure. The van will travel round from school to school, spending two or three weeks at each in turn, and during the period of. its stay the girls will receive dailv lessons in cooking.

REMARKABLE TUFT TO POSTERITY. The city of Evansville, in Indiana, has been promised a really princely gift. It is to receive the sum of 90.955.400 dollars and 13 cents, or a trifle under £18,200,000. The only condition attached to the gift is that Evansville will have to wait some considerable time for it—24!) vears to be precise. On October 20. lull', Mr. Adolph Melzer deposited with the City National Bank of Evansville the sum of I'OOO dollars, to be held by the bank, its successors and assigns, under the following conditions:—''lnterest upon the sum.deposited is to be credited and added to the principal at the rate of 4 per cent, per annum every six months for the period of 250 years, during the whole of which period the interest will be compounded. At the expiration of the period the whole amount accrued is to be paid over to the city of Evansville as a gift from Adolph Melzer." The gift has aroused considerable interest in the city' which is to benefit under this unusual bequest, and the Evansville Journal News speculates as to whether Evansville will be in existence in the year 2101 to receive the gift. The Evansville newspaper takes comfort from the fact that in old countries there are many eities in whose histories 250 years is but as one chapter in a book. There are cities on the eastern coast of the United States which have existed for ?.50 years with 'comparatively few changes beyond the change of natural growth,. But though Evansville, may continue its corporate" existence long enough to benefit, by the gift, the question still remains to worry the good folk of the city as,to whether wealth of this particular description will be as potent in the remote future as it is today; whether, indeed, the present social system with its currency and its compound interest will not, in 2101, be. merely a memory of a barbaric age. For the present, however. Mr. Melzer's 1000 dollars is in its first slow stages of growth, and there seems to be no immediate danger of his designs for the future failing of accomplishment.