PERSONALITY OF THE WEEK.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 261, 4 November 1933, Page 8

PERSONALITY OF THE WEEK.

Mr. W. H. Cocker, of Hesketh, Richmond, Adams and Cocke*, was educated at the Auckland Grammar School (four years), Canterbury College (two NO. 411. years) and Victoria College (two years). For two years (1914-15) he was associate to the Chief Justice (Sir Robert Stout) am? acted as his secretary in 1021. when he sat as a member of the Privy Council in London. He was senior scholar in economics of the University of New Zealand in 1915. After he served with the New /calami Expeditionary Force he was demobilised in England and studied for two I' years at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, taking the honours degree in economics and in law, and being elected scholar and prizewinner of the college. He was one of the representatives of the University of Xcw Zealand at the British Empire Universities Congress at Oxford in 1021. He is keenly interested in adult education. For four years he was president of the W.E.A., Auckland, and is. now chairman of the tutorial classes committee. He is also chairman of the Auckland branch of the Institute of Pacific Relations and represented New Zealand at the. I.P.R. Conference at Honolulu in 1927. For four years he has been president of the Auckland branch of the Economic Society of Australia and New Zealand. He is a member of the Auckland University College Council and of the Council of the Auckland District Law Society.

Sydney publicists of the pen draw attention to the recrudescence of the horse in. city life and to outings "in the old-fashioned horseback way of long ago, TO HORGE! when every Australian

was supposed to be able to ride.'' It is indeed a mere supposition, seeing that half the entire population is mewed up in the cities, where people may ride hobbies —but not horses. The poetic picture of young Australia flor ever mounted on a buck-jumper and making noises with a stockwhip "just like rifles in the trees'' has no reference whatever to the general life of the mass of colonials — and the beef emperor who sees a gent, of the stock whip carving "his name with a greenhide fall on the flank of a flying steer" would sack the beef spoiler on the spot. Still, the horse may come back both sides of the Tasman as an amusement, other than on the racecourse—and if current photographed specimens of show prize winners are any criterion the horse in general is a better looker and a better idoer than he has ever been. Horses may come back as a basis of exercise for elderly gentlemen whose waist lines will simply not be controlled by the very best of cars". It will be recalled that Mr. Seddon in his larger days was medically advised to ride, and he daily bumped round the environs of Wellington on Australia for ever mounted on a buckjumper hitherto horseless, purchased quiet mounts and imitated King Dick. One influential merchant, exceedingly peeved with life and feeling anyhow, took to horse riding. In a week he was an enthusiast. In three months he had lost four stone in weight. In six months (he told M.A.T.) he had lost twenty years of his age. Then, of course, he bought a car—and put on five stone.

Guy Fawkes, the old soldier who did not blow up the British Parliament and who has been execrated about it every year since he failed, is being burnt in A CONSTANT effigy to-day (Saturday) DEATH, because it would be wrong

to burn him in effigy on Sunday—and he will lizzie in damp fires'this evening upon a thousand hills, lit b}' children who forget what it is all about. The perpetuation of this synthetic execution of a Yorkshire soldier indicates that his crime is still considered most heinous, for nobody else who has been dead for .340 years except Guy is so honoured. It is of some small interest that the politicians of Guy's days were not notably different from politicians of other and more modern days. Guy hadn't a thing- to do with the devising of the Gunpowder Plot, but he belonged to the party, and they chase him as a scapegoat who was to descend into the vaults below Parliament Himse. where the gunpowder was stacked, to ignite the same with a torch that seems to have burnt ever since. Rival politicians prevented the ignition and Fawkes was stretched on the rack and endured other political attentions of the day. But he would not give his pals away. It seems, however, that the real or alleged states' men who concocted the plot escaped the obloquy Guy was up against, or else the lads of to-day would be faced with the expensive task of burning about fourteen rag plotters on Auckland hills every year instead of one poor j old rag soldier. It is probably the perpetuation of Fawkes' annua] execution by the lads of the Empire that induced the sons: writer to declare "Old soldiers never die." They don't even smoulder away.