CURRENT TOPICS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVI, Issue 266, 8 April 1914, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS.

COXTAC 1(IN TIIKOI'GH HOOKS. The question of the danger of contagion through the circulation of books among diseased persons has engaged the attention of the authorities of the municipal library in Sydney. Mr. C. H. Bertie, the city librarian, said that in America recently the ollicials of tile leading libraries had been circularised and asked whether they had ever known a case of contagion arising through a library book, all the replies being in the negative. Another ollicial stated that the consensus of opinion among library authorities was that there was something in the paper which prevented contagion from being conveyed by books. He believed that some of the healthiest and longest-lived people in the worlil were keepers of second-hand books. It seems to be the aim of many good people ill our day to discover danger in everything. Death, they say, lurks in every corner in the shape of that awful bogey, the microbe. That this minute gentleman bears a bad character anil can be classed as a habitual criminal we Know, but be is not as black as alarmists would paint him. Anyone who looks for danger in every direction in which it >s .said to exi.-.t will lind his time fully occupied. Till'. I'OWI'T. OF TIIK PRINTED WOP.il). The privilege of free speech has lost a lot of its value, and ihc effectiveness of platform addresses can be eiisily exaggerated. Cheap printing and the universality of the newspaper have opened channels to the mind of the voter, through which it'can be Hooded with more ideas in a day than the best of platform speakers can disseminate by word of month in a year. So freely is this recognised by politicians and others

that tlio actual delivery of a speech is often reduced to a mere formality; the rest is left to the newspaper. Fifty persons, perhaps, listen to the jumble of distorted facts, misrepresentations, and prejudiced opinions of the party politician in his suburban hall, but fifty thousand have it left at their doors before the perpetrator of this political hash has slept oil the fatigue of serving it up to his little audience. The truth is that it is impossible to prevent public men from ventilating their views and opinions nowadays. If they cannot get a hearing from the platform they can get it in other ways, and if the public opinion is not influenced in the desired direction it is because the ideas it is sought to popularise are unacceptable.— Christchurch Sun.

MAKING HISTORY. "Whilst the people of the cities have talked politics," says a writer in the New Zealand Herald, describing the recent changes in the South Auckland district, "the people of the King Country have made history, and splendid history too. What finer work can men do than to make waste land productive, to make roads and build towns, 'to establish industries and to cover the land with farms, and homes? The Maori owners of the King Country still boast that the pakeha soldiers never crossed their boundaries, never fought a battle on their soil, never invaded their territory, and never conquered their fighting men. General Cameron marched his armies up the Waikato, and up the Waipa he broke the power of great tribes, but he never thrust his outposts beyond Puniu. It is the peaceful settler who has conquered the land." The King country has indeed seen a marvellous transformation during the past decade.