RANDOM SHOTS

Auckland Star, Volume XLVIII, Issue 155, 30 June 1917, Page 14

RANDOM SHOTS

BY

" Every passenger is -compelled to wear a life-belt throughout the whole trip across," said Sir Joseph Ward on Monday describing his return voyage, "and it is rather an interesting sight to see the passengers filing irito the saloon for their meals with their life-helts in their hands." This is quite reminiscent ot Scott's knights of Branksome HalL

They quitted not their harness orlgrht Neither by day nor yet by night; They lay down to rest. With corselet laced, Plllow'd on buckler cold and hard. They carved at the meal

With (rloves of steel. And they drank, red wine through the

helmet barr'd. But the beds of that 48,000-ton ship were softer than those of Branksome Hall, and altogether life was much more pleasant, in spite of the submarines and I the sentimental regard for the good old days.

44±±±4±4±± That speech of tho Kaiser's to the Prussian Guard the other day about Germany's successful preparation for war was unfortunate, and one reason was that the Prussian Guard, the "crackeot" ;orps in the whole German army, has been badly mauled over and over again in this war. Tlie German Higher Command, said Mr. Belloc recently, is still tttached to the traditions of the Guard, ilthough that famous corps has bad more bad luck, or bad management, to its credit than any two equivalent bodies of the enemy's forces put together. "It is still treated as a sort of talisman. It was in particular r sponsible for the disaster of the Marne in front of Foch. It had already been knocked to pieces some days before the Marne at Guise. A portion of it made the only considerable German error in the midst of the Austrian front. It suffered the principal reverse of the Treat advance on July 14 on the Somme. It was here, again (April 14 at LagniJourt) to fulfil its reputation of misfortune." This was when the Australians, ifter being pressed back a bit, countertttacked and smashed the Guard. Mr. Belloc omits mention of one of the greatest failures of the Guard—at Ypres in 1914, when they made the Inst effort to break our line. In " Tlie Land of Deepening Shadow," Mr. Thomas Curtin iescribes the return to Potsdam of the men of the Guard wounded in battle with the British on the Somme in July. The dejection of the faces of the wounded told plainly that they knew they had, met more thnn their match. " They knew full well that they were the idol af the Fatherland, and" that they had fought with every ounce of their" groat physical strength, backed by their long traditions. They had been" vanquished by an army of mere sportsmen." 44*4444444 Seeing that the Germans have committed so many atrocities upon men, svomen, and children it may eeeoi rather absurd to make a fuss about their wholesale and deliberate destruction of trees in France. But the German in laying waste an orchard reveals himself as l barbarian, and his conduct is therefore quite worthy of notice. As the " Spectator " says, there is something in-n-edibly mean and brutal in such destruction. It reminds us that the Greeks, savage though they were in their internal wars, spared the olive trees bymutual consent. The correspondent of an American paper says it is refreshing to turn back to the rules of war laid down in Deuteronomy xx. 19-20, for tho warriors ai Israel. 'When thou shalt besiege a city a king time, in making war against it to take it, thou shalt not destroy the trees thereof by forcing an axe against them; for thou tnayest eat of them, and thou shalt not cut them down (for the tree of the Held is man's life) to employ them in the siege. Only the trees which thou know2st that they lie not trees for mc.it thou shalt destroy and cut them down." The correspondent's comment is Jhat "what thof* rude nomads ot the fivteenth century, before Christ were forbidden to do the Germans of the twentieth Christian century have boasted ol doing." f-444444444 Readers, if you are sitting in a restaurant and you hear a man order Zeppelins in a cloud," don't be alarmed; there will be no need to send for tlie police. It will merely be navy slang for sausages and mashed potatoes. The slang of cookery is rather fascinating ' Adam and Eve on a rait " is poached eggs, and if tho customer changes his mind and orders them scrambled the waiter merely calls down the tube 'Wreck 'em!" The war has enriched this vocabulary. 4444444444 I never know how capable and well educated the women of New Zealand were until I read an interview with a New Zealand lady in a London paper. Every woman in New Zealand, said this representative, knows tho true basis of economical living. They live the simple life; they have the habit of thrift; the most careful personal supervision is exercised in every home to prevent waste; every Woman knows how to do her own housework, for "every mother sees to it that her daughter is taught to look after her h6me, and many make their own clothes." H'm; I suppose the cases that have come under my notice are the inevitable exceptions. I have been told of one case in which, during a discussion about making a cake for a soldier at Trcntham, a young woman said, 'Let mc see, do you use flour in making a cake?" She probably had never heard of Marie Antoinette's remark (I think it was that fair Queen) when told that the populace had no bread, "Well, why don't they eat cake?" It may he said, of course, that this remark about flour and cake was merely "swank"; that the girl wished it believed that she had been brought up above such Bordid things as cooking. But whether it was "swank" or ignorance, she was an exception to the rule that every New Zealand woman is a capable and sensible housewife. ±4#-4±44444 The amazing tenacity of custom in England is shown by a game-law case that came before Petty Sessions recently. We were told some time ago that owing to the shortage of food and the consequent need for wider cultivation and protection of crops, the game iaws had been abolished. Farmers were to be allowed to shoot pheasants doing damage on their own land. Yet in this case a farmer was actually fined for shooting a pheasant in a field of peas, the seed of which had cost him £44. He counted 74 pheasants. It is some comfort to know that some of the magistrates opposed the fining of the man, but is it not amazing that at this time of day any magistrate 6hould be prepared to inflict a penalty in such a case? Truly, as Kip ling says, "the kept oock-r "■ ">asn-nt" is "master of many a shire."