100 YEARS AGO
FROM OUT ARCHIVES
Cinema’s pervasive influence
In the old country, what is known by the impressive title of the Cinema Commission of the National Council of Public Morals is entering upon an inquiry into the psychological effects of cinemas. It has appointed Professor Spearman to carry out a series of experiments at University College. Other distinguished psychologists have promised their assistance and the Board of Education has intimated its willingness to allow its expert instructors to assist the inquiry. One of the particular aims of which will be to discover the effect of cinemas in relation to the child mind and the use to which they may be put as an educative force. It would be interesting to know to what extent the cinema, with its rapid sensations appealing strongly to the eye and asking little effort from the imagination, has replaced the cheap illustrated literature which used to make a potent appeal to the minds of young people. Presumably the older influence still survives and the two exert themselves sidebyside today, but it is apparent to the most unobservant that the lure of the cinema is allpervading.
British military crackdown
London: The new military policy is becoming more and more evident in Ireland where the cavalry are increasingly active. Hussars are patrolling the hills outside Dublin and others are at Wicklow. The Naval Brigade arrived at Skibbereen and further military detachments are arriving daily in the southwest and are occupying the police barracks. Replying to Lord Salisbury in the House of Lords, the Lord Chancellor emphatically declared that it was the policy of the Government, whether the struggle was short or long, to employ the whole of the available resources of Britain to restore law and order in Ireland and render the secessionary campaign now in progress utterly impossible.
Prince in at the kill during hunt
The Prince of Wales yesterday spent some time in a pleasant run with the hounds as the guest of the Canterbury Hunt Club. About 100 ladies and gentlemen followed the pack and a large number of people and motor cars watched the run from the roads running through the flat country. The Prince, mounted on Miss Richards’s nobby, brown cob, Clinker, was in at the death after the first short run, in spite of the fact that he had come to earth unceremoniously at one fence.
Praise for Frances Hodgkins
Mr Frank Rutley, the art critic of The Sunday Times, has given expression to some specially complimentary remarks regarding the work of Miss Frances Hodgkins (Dunedin): ‘‘In all England, so far as I know, there are two women painters and two only whose art is equal in robustness to that of any living male. Qualities of charm and distinction may be found in the paintings of many other women, but in this matter of robustness, only two are preeminent. One is Mrs Annie Swynnerton, the other is Miss Frances Hodgkins, the first ‘‘one man’’ exhibition of whose watercolours is now open at the Hampstead Art Gallery. Here, both in landscape and in figure subjects, are admirable examples of her vigorous brush drawing and bright sunny colour. Her skill in depicting light and movement are well displayed. — ODT, 22.5.1920.