PERSONALITY OF THE WEEK.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 239, 8 October 1932, Page 8

PERSONALITY OF THE WEEK.

Major Alex. H. Wilkie, of Takapuna, author of "TJic Official War History of the Wellington Mounted Rifles Regiment, 1914-19," was toorn in Christchurch. / NO. 360. He was in a law office at Ash bur ton in 1899 and joined the First N.Z.M.R. for Africa from the Canterbury Yeomanry Cavalry. He served as a trooper with the First, and, returning to New 'Zealand, received his commission, serving again with the Ninth. He was acting-captain at the termination of the war and wears the Queen's Medal with five clasps. Thereafter he addicted himself seriatim to the Government service, to accountancy and to local body representation. In the Great War, Major Wilkie served from 1-914 (Main Body) to August, 1919. He was in every engagement in which the Wellington Regiment fought, except in the evacuation of Gallipoli. He had the novel distinction of attending a Masonic gathering in the building on the site of King Solomon's Temple. It was the first meeting of the kind held there since 600 B.C. Major Wilkie raised a point bf order that the minutes of the previous meeting had not been read. The brethren laughed. He has had sixteen years' service on local bodies.

News comes from Melbourne that a hospital there keeps a scrap of radium worth sixty thousand pounds in a match box. This ,l is to hope that the match THE MAGIC BOX. 'box is not kept in the

children's ward if the kiddies are collectors of match boxes "with the complaint in the virulent Auckland form. In ail average house at the* present moment the seeker after light will find little heaps of unstruck and unboxed matches everywhere, the collectors of the family having spirited the coverings away. One has seen a frantic father endeavouring to strike a safety match on a pane of glass, or a harried mother at her wits' end in a house full, of heaps of live safety matches to get the gas stove going. It would be different if the wax match habit had remained, for a match is a match if it is wax. Wax match containers have been used throughout modern colonial history for containing preciousness' even before the days of radium. The commonest container of raw gold on diggings used to be the cylindrical tin match box, which, Iby the way, was the exact size also to "take a sovereign. A boastful old-timer tells M.A.T. that he once had sixteen real sovereigns in a round tin match box. Happily in those days the kiddies were not collecting match boxes. Naturalists have used match boxes since they ever were made for imprisoning 'bugs, moths, centipedes and tarantulas, and they haven't cared twopence whether the boxes were of tin or of Norway pine. One hardly goes to the extent of suggesting that the average Auckland match box, so great a temptation to childish collectors, should be baited with centipedes, "wetas" or katipos, but if this rage for taking the box and leaving the matches stranded on the mantelpiece continues, something will have to be done.

An angry British general sitting in a magisterial capacity at Aldershot thoroughly "dressed down" a female witness ~v%ho appeared

without a hat. He could RIGHT DRESS. not have been more snaky

if the unfortunate woman had ibeen a common private "crimed" for appearing .on parade with a tunic button undone, and therefore "half-naked." Quaint thing is, of course, that if a man witness dared to appear in court with a hat on there would be an even greater uproar, and someone will explain some day why what is sauce for the gander isn't sauce for the goose. Why is it indecent for a woman to worship in church without a hat and equally indecent for a man to appear with his head covered, unless, Of course, the worshippers are in a Jewish church, when the reverse is the convention? Indeed, one has seen an innocent person unaware of the custom entering a synagogue with his head (in his opinion) reverently bared, to be instantly asked to resume his hat. It is so common to regard garb as the symbol of decency that deviation from standard habit is horrifying topmost people. In a New Zealand court within memory a barrister, having forgotten his wig, explained his remissness and asked leave to plead bareheaded. The presiding judge, however, forbade this innovation, and there were frantic endeavours to borrow a wig, which, being brought, was assumed, although it was several sizes larger than the head it dignified. But the convention is so sacred that except for a slight bending of isome countenances not a smile irradiated the gloom. It has always remained a curious thing that the prisoner alone may appear in unconventional attire—even without a collar. A celebrated writer has declared that a prisoner in a new suit and other sartorial emblems of purity might expect a year or two off his sentence.

THOUGHTS FOR TO-DAY. Let me tie alone to tlie end of the world, rather than that my friend should overstep by a word or look his real sympathy. . . . Let him not cease an instant to be himself. . . . I hate, where I looked for a manly furtherance, or at least a manly resistance, to find a mush of concession.—Emerson. Men are more willing to have their imperfections known than their crimes.—Cliesteri field, j_ , _ t __