TOPICAL READING.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXIX, Issue 8198, 31 July 1906, Page 4

TOPICAL READING.

The last step in the elimination of aliens from the United States Navy wii! be taken when the battleship Connecticut, built at New York, goes into commission. A new regulation forbidding the employment of foreigners as stewards and wardroom servants will be put in force, and none but Americans allowed to serve in this capacity. In the crews of American warships the percentage of aliens and foreign-born seamen, at one time considerable, has been gradually reduced, until the alien element is now represented almost entirely by Japanese, who have been found admirable stewards, and Italians, enrolled as bandsmen. The place of the Japanese will be taken by negroes, and the ranks of the bandsmen will be supplied from native-born musioians trained in the schools of instruction that have been established.

Some interesting testa for consumption were detailed at the annual oourt of governors of Brompton Hospital for Consumption reoently, when Lord Gheylesmore presided. The report explained that at their sanatorium the patients under careful supervision were gradually auoustomed to exercise?, arranged in five or six grades, the lowest being simple 'walking, and the highest the digging of treuohes in' previously unbroken ground. No male patient was considered to present "total arre9t of the disease" until all the baailli had disappeared from_the expectoration and medioal examination bad failed to deteot any sign of active mischief, and also until he had performed the highest grade of exeroise for a fortnight or three weeks, without rise of temperature or loss of weight. Such bard work, it was added, would rarely be required from the patients in after life and there was thus a strong probability that the arrest of the disease would ba permanent.

The man who said that nothing happened so often as coincidences had his trite saying illustrated at the Rugby football match on the Cricket Ground on a recent Saturday (says the Sydney Daily Telegraph). Last year two players, G. Riddeil and G. Little, playing in a club match at Auckland, New Zealand, the former representing North Shore, and the latter the City Club, collided, each breaking a collarbone. Riddel subsequently came over to Sydney, throwing in his lot with Glob". The law of chances waa much against the unlucky pair ever meeting in the football field again, but on Saturday the unexpected happened. Opposed to each other as iu the case in the Auckland match, each swung his left log in attempting to kick the ball, and botn limbs snapped with a orach: that could be heard some distance off. That two men anould break their collar-bones at the one time is remarkable, but that the same men should subsequently meet in another part of the world and under exactly similar conditions break a leg each, will furnish food for reflection to all who believe in predestination. The fatalist will, no doubt, argue that if Riddeil and Little ever play again, it would be wise for them not to oppose eaoh other, while the anti-tatalist will say that it is all coincidence, and that as Riddeil and Little have exhausted their share of ill-luok no one would be safer than Bhey in future.

The Chinese cabinetmakers of Waterloo and Alexandria, Sydney, are, it is stated, working at all hours on Sunday and at night, to the detriment of white labour. The matter came before a meeting of both the Alexandria and Waterloo councils and the aldermen decided to draw the attention of the In spector- General of Policw to the matter. One alderman put it that

be was compelled to close bis shop at 6 o'clock, and yet the Chinese were allowed to open their shops and to work after hoars and also on Sundays. Another alderman was oV the opinion that the Chinese in all trades should be made to comely with the Factories Act. "When the Chinese went to England," be said, "they had to do as Englishmen did, and wby not in Australia?" The j Co-operative Furniture Trades Society wrote to the councils and urged tho co-operation of the aldermen to have the evil remedied. It was decided to comply with the request. The result of the letter to the Inspector-General of Police has been that two of the local Chinese were before the Redferu Police Court charged with following their usual occupation on Sunday. They were eaoh fined 5s and costs.