TOPICAL READING.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXIX, Issue 8382, 16 March 1907, Page 4

TOPICAL READING.

In the course of an address on "'Food Adulteration," at Sydney, last week, the Government Analyst (Mr Hamlet) expressed the desire that legislation would prevent the aduleration of articles other than those used as foods, such as leather, which was weighted with foreign substaices, and textile fabrics, which were otcen composed of only 20 per cent, wool and 80 per cent, cotton. "I once had under my notice," he said, "the case of a'little boy of three who was suffering from arsenical poisoning. The doctor, the nurse, and everybody interested in him tried to ascertain the cause, but for long without success. At last it was found that the cretonne curtains covering his bed • I stead were so heavily charged with ! arsenical colouring matter that, whenever he moved to and fro, the vibration, disengaged the particles of arsenic, and allowed them to fall upon him." Mr Hamlet added that such substances as soap, washing soda, candles, and disinfectants should also be protected against adulteration.

The editor of the Mutual Provident Messenger returned to Sydney last week from an extensive tour of New Zealand, and. has contributed in a short article in one of the Sydney papers his impressions of the colony. He refers to the uninterrupted progress that has taken place during the last ten or twelve years, which is evident in the continued increase in the output of primary products, the growth of new towns, and the extension of land under cultivation. The two main factors contributing to this progress are the regular and adequate rainfall, the absence of any large centre of population. "The ' much-vaunted Arbitration Act," hejsays, "is allowed on all sides to have utterly broken down, :and as we write, strikes are common throughout the country." Though the colony is a veritable tourists' paradise, "the railway accommodation is wholly inadequate and the management extremely inefficient."

Nobody, we think, who is at all conversant with the Persian Gulf question and the trend of German foreign policy, will be disposed to accept the assertions of the German newspapers regarding the Baghdad railway scheme. Germany, they declare has no further interest in the realisation of that enterprise, "which is already Gallieised." Bearing in mind the attitude of Great Britain towards the railway, on account of the great military and political advantages which will accrue to the Turkish Government, from the linking .up of the Syrian and Anatolian railway systems, which are controlled by German financiers; and remembering also German relations with Turkey, and the desire of the Kaiser to strike a blow at the Anglo-French entente, it is not difficult to imagine that this new attitude of the German Press is designed as a blind to Germany's real motive.

The union of Church and stage, of which so much has been written at different times, finds no advocate in Miss Ada Ward the ex-actress who is to open an evangelistic mission in Melbourne shortly. Miss Ward will no doubt be remembered by many playgoers in New Zealand, who may also recollect that some seven years ago she relinquished the stage and become an evangelist. From what she told a Melbourne interviewer a few days ago, this radical change was the result of a casual visit to a Salvation Army meeting at Portsmouth. On her return to the theatre she announced to her company that she was going to leave the stage and the world for ever. "I played out my season of twelve nights," she said. "Then I distributed all my dresses and all my jewels, and went away to preach the gospel."