Notes and Comments.

Waimate Daily Advertiser, Volume IV, Issue 150, 9 January 1902, Page 3

Notes and Comments.

‘There is but little humour before an Education Board a novel in the natural order request, of things, but noW and again the dull -monotony is enlivened by a flicker of fun. Though perhaps the latest instance does not come wholly under this head, it is perhaps not altogether destitute of amusing points. At a meeting of the Hawkes Bay Education Board the other day an application was made rsbat a school in the back-blocks might be closed about a fortnight earlier for the holidays, to enable ihe female teacher, who is clerk to •the local Road Board, to take her holidays, so that she might devote her time to issuing the local rate -demands. The Board was flabbergasted, the truthful chronicler {newspaper) tells us. That a teacher in their employ should wish ■to imperil the education of the future rulers of the country because -a Road Board wished to dun -Jones, Smith and Robinson for a few “ bobapiece. Perish the •thought. However, a member who •also hailed from a backblook district pointed out that in spite of free and compulsory education many of the Road Board could not write their own names, and that • those who could had too many pigs and cowa to bother about “ figerin’.” He suggested that as “ teacher ” had the most “larnin” and the -most time, the request be granted, unless the Education Board wanted its sister body to file for lack of

the needful.’' It is satisfactory •to note that the Board accepted ' 'this view and granted the request, ] so that Jim Johnson, of Muddletown, J will shortly receive a formal note in the teacher’s handwriting, requesting him to pay up his arrears of rates or take the consequences.

'The step tarfen by Oamaru residents to boycott all goods made “ made in Germany, as a retaliain tion for the sneers oamaru.” levelled by a certain section of the German Press at England and its colonies sin connection with the Boer war, has but little to commend it. In the first place the German nation as ;a whole has made no hostile demonstrations, whatever certain of its newspapers and its more ignorant citizens may hatffc done, in the second place a boycott by New Zealand would recoil on I the heads of our own dealers. They i stock certain articles and if they jcauuot get them off their hands | they are bound to suffer loss, i Germany would be but little affected were we able to withdraw the whole of our trade, for most people will have the cheapest article, and united action in this oreipect would simply make us the laughing-stock of the nations. It seems that the best way would have been to completely ignore the opinions of Germany and other Continental Powers, Great Britain has embarked on a war which has got to be carried to the bitter end and the colonies will bear their share of the burden quietly and without any goading by anyone. The patriotic motive of the Oamaru residents is to be commended, but it would be foolish to take such n )tice of a few irresponsible fanatics probably subsidised by Boer agents to act as picadors against John Bull.