THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 22, 1913. THE SIXTH SENSE.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXV, Issue 10713, 22 October 1913, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 22, 1913. THE SIXTH SENSE.

t ■ . Amongst the main drawbacks to the settlement of the Northern Territory the Administrator in his annual report just issued, gives prominence to the fact that the community has to live in a state of social starvation. There are by no means of satisfying the modern man's daily craving for news. ..The community finds itself cut off from the society of the 'world, marooned on a desert island in the sea of humanity, where the drama of life is shut out from its iview. All this the Administrator says is due to the lack of a daily press. Commenting on this ihe Sydney Telegraph says: It does not much matter which part of tie world a man is in, if he bis his daily newspaper; he is in the midst, of its pulsating life all the same. The din of events is in his ears. Every morning his eyes open, on the whole panorama of human activity, pictured to him in bold, swift ©utlin by the press. Nothing of interest can escape the glance of a few minutes over the aaiirvellous scene. War in the Balkans, a pugilistic lttn.fi in the New South Wales Parliament, the appearance of a vaudeville star in Paris, & coalminers' strike in Pennsylvania, a suffragette outrage in Scotland, »:•■

aeroplane accident in Germany, ft political plot in Persia, a bear movement in Wall Street, the effect of yesterday's rain on the wheat crop in India, a Derby race in England, a faction fight in Belfast or Bengal, a revolution in China —all are taken in at a.look over two or three pages of freshly-printed matter presented to him hot with his breakfast coffee. Every event of leading importance, that has happened throughout the world since yesterday morning is there outlined before him; if details of the 'more immediately interesting ones are required, they are.likewise provided. If all the world was literally a. stage, and the daily .newspaper reader occupied a front seat in the stalls, he could not see more of the stupendous, never-ending drama; Not only is he a, but through the medium of the, same press ihe .hears every situation discussed amongst the audience, of which he forms one, and who have the piece elucidated and commented upon for them in detail by experts , whose business is to do nothing else. He .may accept that ready-made explanation and so save himself the trouble of following the play with a too laboriously critioal eye, or he may collect his own } data and shape bis own, conclusions, just as he. may buy cloth and cotton and needles to make his own clothes* or order them from the tailor according as Mm, best. 1 Either way his newspaper r brings, the world around him and makes him a part of it. This triumph of human ingenuity which supplies a veritable sixth sense, enabling nien to become immediately conscious of the whole world's happenings, no matter which part of it they may be in, is without doubt the most indispensable factor in modern civilisations. , Torealse the part, that the daily press plays in human affairs it is only necessary to imagine I the position of any country in which the publication of newspapers was to i cease suddenly. • The effect would "be I analogous to that of a cessation of light in a city where night waa eternal. Under present-day conditions, people would be just as.helpless.. Information, and prompt information, ik the only food upon which social life can now be sustained; A presentday community deprived! of pabulum supplied to it by the press would socially starve to death. The hunger folr information is just as insistent as the hunger for bread by which alone man cannot, live. " f It requires| to be satisfied eveiy morning and every evening. Yesterday's news will not do for to-day. . To-day's information'is valueless to-morrow, just as-bddily food .would be-after a too ejrtended peri w"'oi:; ■'■ 4epHv ( ation ba*! placed the'victim beyOJjdt further need of.it., And the public for news grows with what it seedsi : ttgpirij. go that the supplying agencies Ijave'to strain resource' in a constant struggle to keep pace with an everIneifreasirig demand. :--.h.