CURRENT TOPICS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVI, Issue 172, 20 January 1914, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS.

THE TEACHER. Year by year the extension ef popular education in various direction.-! is making increasing demands upon tdio public resources. A great majority of the members of the Institute recognise tlmt there is Jin need to exchange their present elastic and adaptable organisation for the more hard-and-fast limitation* of an industrial union. At present they can make their view.-, known throughout, the country and can exert ji real influence upon public opinion. Their cause is not likely to want advocates in Parliament or in the other bodies which are concerned in the administration of education.---Dominion.

A SOUTILUIIX y'/ARl'r'U. , Newspaper writers in Dunedin and I'nvercargill art' busy cpiarrelling over the respective merits of their towns as tourist centres. Invereargill journalists and correspondents accuse Diincdin 01 taking the bread out, of Southland's month, so to speak, by 'beguiling (he AuMraiian holiday-maker past flu UlnlT and persuading him to make Unncdjn the starting plane for his tour of the Cold Lakes and the tuordland National Park. They point out Unit Invereargill is really nearer the great lakes of the West than Dunedin is, and that it is in all respects the most convenient point of departure for Hie inland pleasuring tracks and waters. Duuedin retorts with caustic remarks upon the uninviting apppcarancc ( of .Southland's chief town. A party of Australian tourists lias now entered the lists, and the Otago Daily Times niibli-hus a. letter in I which "A h'ew Australians*' protest against Invrreargill's assumption of superiority as a traveller;;' town. The sting of the Australians' epistle is in its fail. '•'luverearg'l!, unfortunately." the letter concludes, "is a 'dry' town, and in every party travelling there arc some who like a glass of wine at times, and simply object to staying at board- i in't-liouses, when better accommodation and en interesting trip lasting only a few hours ia the alternative. IJiiti.

restores license, rleniiri n;> l'lini Geek, provides more interesting gardens and iv museum worthy of the naiiii>, it can never hope, to licjjuilc tlio tourist to spend any coiihideraide time or money in that 'dry' town, famous only for its water tower."

THE -CASUAL LABOR L'IiOULKM. The community by ihe popular humanitarian code havu to support all who arc in it, ami it is one of the anomalies of civilisation that some of the least lit and tho least worthy -have the least worry about their .livelihood. Wo have already suggested that the proposed commissions should org.ipise good Uibor Exchanges, a system of rapid sharing of information among all employers of casual labor, so that the waste of labor power may lie reduced to a minimum. Charges added to make up minimum wages (which the receivers have not boon able to earn fully) are a burden on the public. It is time for n forward move. The holidays arc over for workaday folk. The serious business of the new year is Mm-riii;; the happy memories of Christmas. ('usual workers at the waterfronts are entitled to look for some performance by those who made promises a few weeks ago Wellington Post.

LESS EDUCATION, MORE TUITIOX. What is obviously wanted is less education for the average child and move tutoring for the exceptional lad. If cliildreu were all taught to read common English freely, to write fairly, and to figure accurately, however slowly, there would be an immense advance upon existing conditions; and if little children were turned away from primary schools when obviously bettor at play, they would grow to happier, more intelligent and more useful lives, even i though they failed to pass standards and never attained to proficiency certificates.—Auckland Herald.

THE GOD WITIIIX l\S. I Writes Mr. William Archer in the [.on- I don Daily Xews:—Assuredly it is the fioil within lis who has achieved what- i ever of good there is in the world, and who has still 11 huge task before him i if life is ever to reaeh its highest potentialities. He has tremendous successes to his credit, lie has led us out of the jungle where blind appetite reigned supremo, into a cleared and cultivated region whence, every now and then, at dawn or in the transfiguring refraction of sunset, we can see the Himalayas \ye may one day hope to attain. Xor is it tlquhtful that the God within us is for ever at war with Hie ape and the tiger, who also survive in lis from our jungly days. Whether "we" can intervene in this contest—whether there is i oiiy "1" who is free to take sides either with God or with the tiger—is an unsolved problem of philosophy. But we, certainly feel as if we had the power of choice. As for the question of a possible mistake or misUkes in the ordering of the universe, there is such an old. old story that really there ought, to be a Statute of Limitations forbidding us to rake, si up. There are times, indeed, when life seems a .singularly bungled business. What clumsy necessityis that of nutrition, to whieh'all organic ! nature is subject! .If only we could live without eating, or could extract unlimited sustenance from the air, what a dilVerent world it would be. Wonderful, no doubt, is the'chemistry by which | the vegetable kingdom transmutes inorganic substances into foodstuffs for the animal kingdom; but no more dillicult, and indefinitely more, humane, would have been a ' chemistry which should have enabled sentience and intelligence to draw their supplies direct from the inexhaustible storehouses of the elements. There lies Ihe initial error. Cruelties and cupidities, riches and poverty, war and rapine, are all ultimately traceable to the primal imperative: '-'You must eat to live." If the problem of nutrition had never arisen, or lr.'.d been more cleverly solved, (he companion problem of reproduction need have given little trouble. Hut it is all, 1 repeat, too old a story to be dragged before the tribunal of reason if wo could conceive a power deliberately choosing to attain through aeons of groaning and travailing an end which might have been painless achieved, we should assuredly have a right to accuse that power of 'stupidity, or cruelty, or both. But in fact we can conceive no such thing. All we know of a surety i» that, in the course of the struggle for existence, there has somehow been born within us the .compulsive, Ihe magical id-ea of Good, drawing us on and on, despite e. thousand obstacles, to heights which as yet we can but dimlv descry. And if we. choose' to call that idea (lod, can we be said to take his name in vain?