TOPICAL READING.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 3095, 19 January 1909, Page 4

TOPICAL READING.

THE NEW DISCIPLINE,

Writing of his experiences with British troops in manoeuvres, some years ago, Sir Arthur 'Conan Doyle remarked that another Badajoz might be stormed, but it would not be sacked. Single men in Larracks still fall short of the moral standard of piaster saints, but that the character of the British soldier has improved greatly tliera is no doubt. In the recent manoeuvres General SmithDorrien withdrew the order prohibiting soldiers from entering publichouses and placed the men on their honour to avoid excess. The experi • mem was very successful, and now General Smith-Dorrien, trusting to the honour of the troops, has abolished the pickets told off to patrol the streets of Aldershot to keep soldiers in order. "In making this experi ment which will free a very large number of men daily from an irksome duty, and is, therefore, entirely in the intere-sts of the" men themselves." runs the order, "he (the General) hopes that his confidence will not be misplaced, and that nothing will occur to oblige him to revert to the present state t>f things." At the same time, General Smith-Doj-rien has directed that disorderly conduct is to be severely dealt with. Over a hundred non-commissioned officers and men were employed on picket duty every night from six until midnight.

ISOLATION.

A savagely-written protest against the surroundings in which she has lived and worked, appeals in the Melbourne "Age" from the pen. of' a bush school teacher. She lived in a four-roomed cottage in an extremely uninteresting district, most of the children of which were halfcastes —some of them of Chinese and Assyrian extraction. Her only plaes of refuge was her bedroom, a ulace ten feet by eight, with sordid appointments. The bill of fare was a mere monotone of mut:on, badly cooKed. The younger children were too tired to benefit by the teaching; the elder ones were dull and without, ambition. Only two had ever seen a city, the sea, or a railway train. "My days pass in a feverish endeavour to teach seven 'classes, train and supervise inefficient monitors, form a school library, make a garden (with an insufficiency of water and a soil all of gravel) and arouse the interest of the parents to the pitch of contributing to the decoration and equipment of my school. But alas! the people of Budgeree take a lot of rousing and the cost so far has come out of my own pocket," she writes. "Think of it, oh Department of Education, that talks so glibly of our reluctance to go into the country—a whole year of mental stagnation; not one chance of relaxation; neither books, rnu3ic, theatre, nor healthy human intercourse for a girl of twenty-three accustomed to refined and cultured surroundings, and who knows that she may have to spend the best years of her life in this or a similar environment.'" If some backblocks teachers in New Zealand were to say what they feel we fancy this tale of woe might be paralleled.

THE GERMAN WORKER. It is instructive to notice that the groups of English artisans anu Labour members who have made tours of enquiry in Germany within the last'few years—since the tariff and unemployed questions came under regular discussion —have all returned with some visible sense of humiliation at the social backwardness of their own countrymen of the woxking classes, and the general inferiority as regards comfort of the conditions in which they live. The German may work a rather longer day and receive less pay than the English artisan of the same class (though, as some of our latest consular reports have shown, the general level of wages in Germany has rapidly risen of late), but he lives in greater comfort, he is happier, and contrives to do more by volun-

tary sacrifice to provide for old age than is done in this country, remarks the London "Daily Mail." Some interesting.points are mentioned by four members of the Labour party who have just returned from a visit to several of the largest industrial centres in Germany. One of thorn suggests that the German workers are greatly benefited by the music provided for them -it cheap rates. "In all the cities we visited," he says, "there were magnificent opera houses. I went to one in Dresden, and a)l 1 can say is that tha C >vt:m Garden Opera House is a dust heap by comparison. The Dresden Opera Ehuse is kept going all tho yearround with the exception of six weeks in the summer. Does not this kind of thing lend to elevaie men's minds. If you give a workman no other place but a 'sing-so::g' m a public-house, what ideal is that going to instil into him! It ia en-

vironment that makes a man what he is; and if no steps are ,taken by the State to lift a man out of wretched surroundings, how can we hope to improve him?"