CURRENT TOPICS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 309, 22 May 1913, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS.

WASTAGE OF HUMAN FORCE. The Bishop of Southwark, in a recent speech at a conference in England on the care of little children, said that in his teeming diocese of 2,700,000 the thing that impressed him most was the enormous amount of human material that was misused or was not being used at all. The movement for schools for mothers and baby clinics was one of the most serious and practical attempts to deal with the problem of the economy of the human force of England . It was quite certain that in its earliest stages the work would be exposed tQ criticism and misunderstanding, but he welcomed it very heartily indeed. It was not a movement of faddists, but it was a growing movement, recognised by public bodies as one of the most important contributions to our national system. Dr.. Ethel Bentham said that the bad conditions of housing had a lot to do with the ill-health of mothers and babies. Chronic starvation and malnutrition were often not only a question of food, but a want of fresh air and sunshine. She believed she was quite justified in saying that a large majority of the defective children came from those families which lived in sunken rooms. It was a reflection on our ways of life that hardly one child under five came to their clinic with sound teeth. A lot of the complaints which grown-up people suffered from would not exist if provision were made so that minor operations could be performed on children in special places near at hand, and where the mothers did not have to waste so much time as in a large hospital. For instance, a great deal of deafness was quite preventable if the matter had been attended to in infancy. NEW WORDS. On May 17, 1900, the relief of Mafeking brought a new word into the English language. The inelegant term, "mafficking," lias had a well-defined meaning ever since the very boisterous 1 celebrations which followed the announcement that a relief force had reached Colonel Baden-Powell's devoted little garrison. Words come and go and some of them endure, but it is unlikely that "mafficking" will be among the survivors. The death of Lord Wolseley a few weeks ago reminded many people of an almost forgotten term. The boys of ten or fifteen years ago used to use "'all cigarnee" or something like that as an expression of approval, and even their fathers scarcely knew that the proper form was "all Sir Garnet," an allusion to the popular, conception of the f, .vnious field-marshal as a model of military perfection.

CRITICS IX THE CAR. The car was on an up gradij. Most of the passengers had got out and were pushing. Many, with their coats off, were toiling and sweating bravely. And slowly but surely they were getting ahead. Some, however, remained in the car. Part of them said there was no use in pushing since the hill was so steep they could never get up, anyway. Others said they would help when all those pretending to push were really pushing as they ought to. l?ut the toilers toiled on, pushing the ear and those it constantly up the hill. The world is on an up-grade. Most of her passengers are pushing faithfully, and every year finds her steadily going forward and upward. The pessimists, however, and the cynics remain seated in the ear. The former say that the problems are so hopeless, and human greed so entrenched, that we are already beaten. The latter say that when the Church and those who profess to be trying to do right begin to practise what they preach, when the "hypocrites" are eliminated, they will help. Meanwhile, the workers are pulling and pushing, and the world is going up the hill. Hut did you ever see a complainer who was helping?—E. R. Smith, in the Outlook.

CHINA'S FIRST PARLIAMENT. "At eleven o'clock on Tuesday morning T witnessed from the densely crowded galleries an epoch-making event in the historv of modern China, for at that hour her first Parliament was declared open," says the London Telegraph's Pekin correspondent. "Within the House were assembled 500 representatives, out of a

total membership of 500, and also 177 .Senators out of 274. Nearly all wore frock coats. They were men of maturcr years than the members of the Provisional Assembly. The public galleries were crowded almost to suffocation with Chinese and foreign visitors. At 11 o'clock the assembled bands played the National Anthein, and the members stood up in their places as the senior member of the House of Representatives, on behalf of both Houses, formally declared Parliament open."

TAXATION IN GERMANY. Writing to the Examiner from the Continent, Mr. Victor Lindaner, a former resident of Woodville, says of Germany:— "It is not only that food is dear and wages low, but the taxes imposed on one arc very severe. An idea will be gained of this when I mention that in Bavaria, which is by no means the worst example, servant girls, earning a meagre 12s per month, pay an income tax of 12s annually, i.e., a month's salary. Saxony, the most crowded and most highlytaxed part of Germany, a real manufacturing world, with a dense population of badly nourished people, with naturally a surprisingly large proportion of infantile deaths, is bowing down year after year under the heavy tolls of military expense, and the population yearly grows feebler and more immoral as the chances in life, and the hopes of earning a livelihood and coming out all right grow fainter. No wonder the Germans flock to America, to England, or so long as they may commence a new life with brighter tliances. To live in Europe for the poor is one continual struggle; few can get together a smhll sum of savings, and when once they get a billet they generally stick to it. *