CURRENT TOPICS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 243, 4 March 1913, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS.

THE ANTI -MILITARISTS. Letters which have appeared recently in some of the Home newspapers contain appeals for funds on behalf of the anti-militarist organisations of New Zealand and Australia. It appears that "through the generous help of friends at Home the colonial funds have been greatly helped," but as a "general campaign" is going to entail very heavy expenditure "substantial and sustained as sistance is wanted at once." The appeal is supported in the London Nation by a correspondent who makes the strange assertion that the Federal election to be held in Australia in April will be "the first opportunity the electors have had of expressing their opinion on this retrograde law." The proposal to introduce universal service was before the people at the election of 1910, of course, and, as a matter of fact, the parties which are struggling for supremacy in the Commonwealth this year are at one in their support of the defence law. AUSTRALIAN FAMILIES. Some remarkable facts concerning Australian families are contained in the returns which have been prepared from the information collected at the census of 1011. When the census was taken the. Commonwealth contained eighteen wives who were not more than fourteen years of age and five of them were mothers. Ninety-two wives were fifteen years of age, twenty-five being mothers, and 338 were sixteen years old, 149 having borne one child each, and ten two children each. There were four wives aged seventeen years who had given birth to three children each, while one mother of eighteen years had presented her husband with no fewer than five babies. A woman who was placed in the age-group "thirty to forty years" had borne sixteen children. The young fathers included seven lads of seventeen years whose wives had given birth to two babies each, and a young man of twenty years was the parent of six children. There was a girl of eighteen years, married to a man of eighty years, and three Victorian women had found husbands from Peru. The census returns are full of surprises for people who care to study them. CENTENARIANS AND MTLK. Most people have heard that the Bulgarians, wlio use sour milk as an article of food, have an astonishingly large proportion of centenarians among them. Professor MetchnikofT, who states that the bacilli of sour milk destroy the organisms which shorten human life, believes that most people could live to be a hundred years old if they adopted the Bulgarian diet. One of the secretaries to the peace delegation in London was M. AnglelotT. whose grandfather died in 1907 at the age of 132 years and was blessed with twenty-six children, two of them borne during his tenth decade. '"Of all the centenarians in Europe." said M. Angeloff, "Bulgaria provides 75 per cent, and the other '25 per cent are divided amongst the other countries. I attribute our position to the sobriety of the nation in general. We are a very temperate people, and, being largely engaged in agricultural pursuits, we live in the open air. That is a great asset, and there is also the fact that we are not great consumers of meat. 'Wo are great vegetarians, and some of our poorer people live practically on vegetables and sour milk." M. AngolotT's grandfather was more than fifty years of age when the battle of Waterloo was fought. JAPANESE SPIES. The Japanese spies whose rumored existence has caused much perturbation of spirit in Australia recently appear to go out of their way in order to alarm the white population of the Commonwealth. Tn Sydney a week or so ago two Japanese man-o'-warsmen climbed on to the glass roof of the Queen Victoria Markets, and then proceeded to spy out the land with the usual stage equipment of "tiield glasses and notebooks" in full view of several thousand eitizens. One of them, in attempting to gain a better coign of vantage! for his investigations, trod on a glass plate in mistake for a wooden panel, and crashed through the roof, falling into some wire netting hospitably strung below. ITo drew himself to the roof again, and at once lost his footing, and rolled down the stoop side of the roof, being saved only by the spouting. His companion oxtriciited him, and the pair resumed their survey. Their performance on the roof had attracted considerable attention, and an attempt, was made to guard all avenues of egress from

the building, but the sailors waited on the roof till dark, and then mysteriously disappeared. Next weeks' mail should bring the story of an airship having picked them up during the night. THE YOUXd KiNU Ob 1 SPATX. The young King of Spain, who entered upon his reign with every prospect of a most turbulent and unpleasantly eventful regime, has surprised his many enemies and his own friends Jky attaining in a comparatively few years a personal popularity quite unprecedented in the last few decades of Spanish history. Alfonso has kept himself steadily in the public eye, and has lost no opportunity of getting into touch with the prejudices and aspirations of every section of his people. A bright smile, a winsome manner, and an almost total absence of the, haughtiness which should conventionally clothe a ruler in "Proud Castile" have won the hearts of even the most ardent Republicans. But Alfonso does not presume upon his popularity. He walks carefully the path set before him, and his attitude towards his people is apologetic rather than patronising. Last month he astonished Spain by inviting Senor Azcarate. leader of the Republicans, to the palace and asking that gentleman if it would be advisable, in the event of a ministerial crisis, for a conference of the anti-dynastic, parties to be held. Senor Azcarate, of course, replied in the affirmative, and the King gave him reason to believe that he would accept the advice given him, should occasion arise.