NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 14940, 13 March 1912, Page 6

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

IN NORTHERN MISTS. Dit. Nansen's history of early Arctic exploration has made its appearance at an opportune moment, when the minds of men are filled with admiration of his countrymen's brilliant exploits in the Southern Polar region. The volume bears abundant testimony, as eloquent as it is fascinating, to the daring and. skill of Norse navigators in the dim and misty ages of the past. The greatest of the classical explorers in the North was Pytheas, of Massalia. A contemporary of Aristotle, he discovered the British Islands and something beyond them, which he called Thule. This latter place Dr. Nansen, on what seems to us very good grounds, identifies with Norway, and ho argues that at the time there was communication by sea between Scotland and Norway which, if we accept it, gives a prodigious antiquity to the Norseman's command l of the high seas. Pytheas seems to have voyaged as far north as the Arctic Circle, and first described the " Congealed" or Polar Sea. "No other traveller known to history," writes Dr. Nansen, " has made such farreaching and; important discoveries." The next landmark in northern explorations is the discovery of Iceland by Irish priests. These men sailed north in the eighth century, impelled not by any desire of gain or knowledge, but solely to find loneliness, JVe know, that when the

first Norwegian settlers came to- Iceland they, found; Irish priests in possession. In the second half of the ninth century we reach the great ; days of King Alfred; himself an eminent geographer, to whom the Norse Ottar or Othere told strange and singularly accurate tales of the polar seas, and the North Cape, and the Finns, and the land running east to the White Sea. Ottar is the ; greatest northern explorer after Pytheas. Then came many Viking adventurers, the Norse settlement of Iceland, and the discovery and settlement of Greenland by Eric, the Red 600 years before John Davis, that intrepid seaman, explored the Greenland coast right up to north of Davis Strait, and presently ; the shores were dotted - with Norse settlements that made a precarious living out of cattle and fish. But the great romance of Norse discovery is connected with the land called Wineland the Good, which was almost certainly the northern continental coast of America. The story as told in the Saga of Eric the Red is that some time about the year 1000 Eric's eon, Leilf the Lucky, being driven out of his course, came to a land in the West full of wild vines and selfsown wheat. Later chapters discuss various geographical problems of the Middle Ages. Dr. Nansen argues that the decline in the Greenland settlements did not arise from a change of climatic conditions, or Eskimo aggression, or sudden pestilence. The settlers were- dependent on Norway for corn, and as' Norway lost her colonising interests and ships did not appear they gradually adopted the Eskimo mode of life, and became absorbed in the native population. THE REFERENDUM. In a recent work on "The Referendum Among the English," the author, Mr. Samuel R. Honey, a distinguished United States lawyer, gives some pertinent and interesting extracts from well-known writers —There is high authority for the belief that the principle of a "reference to the people" is an advantage to the body politic. Mr. Bryce says (American Commonwealth): "Reference to the people may act as a conservative force; that is to say, there may be occasions when a' measure which a Legislature would pass either at the bidding of a heated party majority, or to gain the support of a group of persons holding the balance of voting power, or under the covert influence of those who seek some private advantage will be rejected by the whole body of the citizens, because their minds are cooler or their view of the general interest less biassed [ by special predilections Or interests." Professor Goldwin Smith, in support of the same principle, urges that: "The people cannot be lobbied, wheedled, or bull-dozed; the people is- not in fear of its re-election if it throws out something supported by the Irish, the prohibitionist, the Catholic, or the Methodist vote," and W. E. H. Lecky, in the Democracy and Liberty, says :— Democracy has been crowned king. ; The voice of the multitude is* the ultimate court of appeal, and the right of private judgment which . was once claimed for members of Parliament is now almost wholly discarded. If t the electorate is to judge policies, it is surely less likely to err if it judges them on a clear and distinct issue. In such a case it is most likely to act independently, and not at the dictation of party wirepullers." And one more quotation from Mr. Bryce's great work may serve as a capstone to the fabric which the writer has tried in construct. .He says, and very properly says:—" The excellence of popular government lies not so much in its' wisdomfor it is as apt to err as other kinds of government—as in its strength. : It has been compared, since Sir William Temple, to a pyramidthe firmest based of all buildings. Nobody can be blamed for obeying it. There is no appeal from its decisions. Once the principle that the will of the' majority, honestly ascertained, must prevail, has soaked into the mind and formed the. habits of the nation, that nation acquires not only stability, but / immense effective force." ■