‘Viva Mussolini!’

When King Victor Emmanuel took his place on the balcony of the Quirinal and reviewed the legions and cohorts of the triumphant Fascisti who have been pouring into Rome these past few days, he must have recognised that a new power had invaded the Roman scene comparable to any which marked the popular upheavals of the past from the days of Caesar to those of Rienzi and Garibaldi. The revolution which has been gathering strength for weeks burst with dramatic suddenness. Rome — Italy — are in the hands of a dictator. The short, swarthy, black-eyed, clean-shaven man of forty, with the bald brow, mobile feature and hard, cynical expression, whom a few days ago the King refused to see, is now the real ruler of Italy. Benito Mussolini is the very type of the professional agitator, and has, in fact, been an agitator all his life. At heart he is a Socialist and a Republican. Now he is the soul of this great movement which he has seized upon and sedulously expanded with relentless ardour as a means to an end. And the end is in itself not very different from that which Lenin and Trotsky proposed to themselves.

A New Zealand reptile

The tuatara is the oldest living representative of the great reptile family. Professor Huxley has shown that it is closely allied to extinct reptiles of the Triassic age. The structure of the head is peculiar, as the teeth grow directly out of the bone of the jaw, while there is a third row down the roof of the mouth. These teeth wear down in the course of time, and are not renewed. A most remarkable structure is the rudimentary eye on the top of the head. This eye is covered with a horny scale, but at one time in the remote past was used by the reptile. Among the New Zealand reptiles, of which a number of species exist, the tuataras are the largest in size. They are fond of water, and will drink freely and bathe in it frequently, and I have found them sleeping under water. They sleep a great part of the day and move about at night. — By Wm. Godley

Chatham kids visit city

In the words of Mr J.A. Thomson, the Chatham Islands school teacher who is with the visiting party from these islands, he and his friends are having "a right royal time" in Dunedin. The visitors express themselves as highly delighted with what they have seen and with the manner in which they are being treated. It has to be remembered that to these children even a brick building, a metalled road, a bicycle or a motor car is a novelty. The first visit yesterday was paid to Thomson Bros. cordial and aerated water factory. The huge machine there was washing, sterilising, cooling, rinsing and conveying to the fillers no fewer than 250 dozen bottles an hour, keeping up an endless supply of bottles for two filling machines, each filling, delivering, and labelling 125 dozen bottles of aerated drinks each hour.  All these things, and many more, were explained to the children, who also sampled some of the firm's products, and a generous gift of a case of cordials was made to the master of the Te One School, in charge of the party. Next came a visit to Shacklock's foundry, where Mr Shacklock personally conducted the tour of the many processes of converting the rough pig iron into the popular Orion range. In the afternoon the Otago Motor Club took the party over the hills to Evansdale. — ODT, 25.1.1923

Compiled by Peter Dowden