"IF WINTER COMES—"

Auckland Star, Volume LIV, Issue 148, 23 June 1923, Page 6

"IF WINTER COMES—"

It was really considerate of a professor in England to tell us this week that , "English people complained (of the! weather, yet it was the weather that made Britons what they were. If they had the weather they prayed for they : would degenerate to a third-class i Power." This is a great comfort to j Auckland people in the midst of a burst ! of winter that, but for snow, is as I wintry as a sou-wester in Cantermiry or Otago. Perhaps if we did not have j these occasional plunges into real winter j we should be in danger of sinking to the ■ rank of third-rate dairymen. Of course the Professor's eulogy of winter is not new. Kingsley has immortalised the | subject in his "Ode to the North-East Wind" —"the hard gray weather," which "breeds hard English men." What's the soft South-wester? 'Tls the ladles' breeze. Bringing home their true-loves Out of all the seas. But the lilatk North-castor, Through the snowstorm huilerl. Drives our English hearts of oak Seaward round the world. The climate of Britain has helped to make Britons hardy, and it may be that if by some change in Xature it became softer the people would decline in vigour. Yet history shows that warmer climates have produced vigorous Empires. Persia,' Mesopotamia, Egypt, Rome, were all , much nearer the Equator than England. The city of Rome is in a latitude corresponding to Wellington, which ought to make Wellington happier. The principal difference between ancient Rome, the centre of an Empire that lasted much longer than the age of our Empire, and Wellington, seems to be that Wellington has not yet produced a Caesar. | An English poet, moved to love the lovely that are not beloved, - '. loved winter best of all the seasons. He found in it "not death, but plenitude of peace," and "warmth and light asleep." Coventry Patmore gave exquisite expression to that idea of resurrection which all of us, even the most inveterate grumblers, must feel if we think about winter. It is the season of rest, preparation, and regeneration. In winter we complain of the cold and long for the spring, but we know that eternal summer would pall, and that it might bring troubles more serious than those caused by winter. It is not in the' nature of British people to long for Lotus land. As for the Auckland climate, the irony of to-day is that you will find parts of the Auckland province advertised as winterless, while on the other hand you will hear people saying that the trouble about Auckland is that it is not cold enough in the winter, that the warm, enervating.summer requires as a foil something harder and more bracing. This concerns the welfare of human beings, but gardeners will add that there would be fewer pests if winters were more like those of Christchurch, with their regular frosts. The main trouble about the Auckland climate seems to be its uncertainty and variety. In the South Island you know with much more certainty what you are going to get in the winter, and you build your houses and dress accordingly. Here so few da3 - s in the year are really cold that the cold is more unwelcome when it comes, and it is more difficult to keep it out. Here, moreover, cold is more associated with rain, and wet cold is far more unpleasant than dry. But, as the woman says in the play, " 'twill pass surely," and in the language of the poet whom Mr. A. S. M. Hutchinson has introduced to so many, "If Winter comes, can Spring bo far behind?"