TRIVIA.

Press, Volume LXVII, Issue 20316, 15 August 1931, Page 13

TRIVIA.

•M i l unch cackles: I I "When Shakespeare described the winter boughs as 'bare ruined choirs whero late the sweet birds sang',' he took a superficial view to illustrate a mournful mood." Sheffield T'apev. j This was Milton's mood when he asked, "To bo or not to bo?" ; My own mood is that of Bacon. when ; he wrote: On with the motU-j ! Let joy be uncoiilipco, , •Sweet joy, v i'u.v: hand is ever at ins nose, | Coekinsr a snook, to see the enginer with 3jis own petar, "while flll his met. ti#zo Kt each other with a mild surprise -\nd say "'Oh yeah:'" From the "At .Kaildoin " colnmu ot the (Sunday "'Observer' Uandhi was << i was i'l-iiicipn! siretcher-bearer in tin: Medical oUlcer of the -Boer War. Ho was Natal Army, and was asked to go into tin: present at the Battlethick of the ritle-tiro of Coleuso. Gandhi to rescue the wound- was not at Coleuso, as od, and ho immedi- lie could not collect ately dirt so. winning his bearers in time for the admiration of the the battle. He, thcreliritish troops who fore, had nothing to saw his heroism. At do Willi the ouly son tho battle of Colenso of Lord Roberts, who he helped to carry the was removed in the only son of bord ordinary way by am - Kobert.s, whr, was bulance after the mortally wounded engagement i» the from the battlefield.- - evening. His heroism The U,-v. t . V. An- is also a myth, as ho drew stipulated, when I engaged him, that ho was only to be employed on the lines of ■ •ominunicatioii and never under tire, and he, never was under tire. — Major-General Sir T. J. Gallwey. Wh<> was U 1,1 "Uobcrt Elsmere" that said, "Otic may as well preach n 1 1 ' 1 '' •" able mythology as anything else' ? The loud bang ot this head-on collision reminds nic that some time ago, w hen I arranged here a small museum ot' contradictories, there was no rootti for the two exhibits below. * • i.) ] n October. 191 o. 1 had a ver,> bad attack of malaria, followed by a form ot' beriberi: my teeth became loose in my gums, and slow paralysis attacked my hands and feet. I could only walk with a stick, on my heels, and finally could not write without difficulty. I knew enough of the stale of the hospitals even at that time to refuse to become an inmate. ... I went off on a ■returning transport to India, scarcely abb; to walk. I found some beer on board, not the Japanese variety but the real thing, though browed iu India. I developed it liking for it that rapidly {lrciv on mi':. I craved lor it and i' l " riulged my tasto very freely. It seemed to be all that I needed; I felt it to 1)0 meat as well as drink. Never before had I felt thus about alcohol, and I 1 bought at first that I had set my feet on a slippery path, but 1 knew that I had beri-beri, and that many of my friends thought that they had seen the last of me at Basra; I felt it was a case of kill or cure. My condition rapidly improved, and doctors, after the event, ascribed my craving to vitamin deficiency which was met by the yeast m the beer. In the Statistical report of the health of the ltoyal Navy in 1927 will be found a report by tho medical officer of H.M.S. Lupin commenting on the fact that only teetotallers succumbed to an outbreak of beri-beri in tlic Persian Gulf during that year. —■Lt.-001. Sir Arnold T. "Wilson: "Lovalties: Mesopotamia, 19141917." (ii.i In IStK, when br. von I'etterikofcr and Professor Hutige appealed to German-speaking physicians to sign a declaration concerning the damages of

' alcohol they received only nine re- J [ sponses. Less than ten years later, j I practically the same declaration, Fpeci- j | fically urging abstinence on scientific j j grounds, was signed by seveu hundred j medical names, including over one hun- ; dred from Germany herself. . . There j w hardly a year passes which does not ; ;.dd some new evidence to the indi- • j vidual ami social value of total abstin- j once. I i ---Cocker and Murray: '•Temperance aim J Prohibition in New Zealand." ! * i | Ah Baldwin 'i eccntlv went to ball.-, j bury to receive the freedom of the City. I Later he stood where once the Parliamentary Tree grew, beneath whose branches were elected the members for the pocket borough, the rotten borough of Old Sarum; and there he unveiled a tablet to the memory of one who was elected, in this rotten way, William Pitt. It is difficult to make straight the logic of democratic reform when the corrupt tree insists on putting forth much quite good fruit. Old Sarum was one of the many i>t>roug!i* in England which were called rotten boroughs. 1 a tit going* to say a word for therotten borough. Don't let us condemn a. system until wo look at the fruits of il. After all, u very great proportion oi the House of Commons for centuries was bent there by these boroughs. What did tlicy do; They watched over the growth of England from her earliest struggles to a century ago. It was the tenacity of our Parliament, largely chosen by the rotten boroughs, that stood for generations between Napoleon Bonaparte and world power. Having done that, there was no more for them to do. 'They had seen our country through u crisis as great but much more prolonged than the oopllict wo have so recently passed through. They went out and no words were bad enough for them, and yet .1 sometimes, think the time may conio when our enlightened posterity may think it just as inconceivable that men should be returned to Parliament by making promises they know never can lie fultilled as we regard it as impossible that men should bo returned for rotten boroughs. History would be really edifying.. and would not require so much explaining and explaining away, if it were clear that all the political .knaves aucl bunglers flourished on the far side of 1532; if it. were clear that the centenary of the First Reform Bill, next year, will bo an occasion to celebrate the long, happy ascent from Canning to Ko thornier?, from Pitt to Lloyd George; and if it were clear that, somehow, in the substitution of balderdash for five pound notes, bribery has become as innocent as the transactions oi the rngels. Of course some of those old fellows did go it. A hundred and fifty years ago it cost £12,000 to win or lose Lincoln, where there were a few dozen electors; while in the dearer boroughs the defeated candidates were frequently gazetted as bankrupts. In 1790 and again in 1806 the Government candidates for Hampshire County had to pay almost- £25,000 apiece to over-reaea their opponents; and in the great Northampton election of 1768 each of the three candidates claimed more votes than the full total of qualified electors. The unlucky man who was at tho bottom of the poll, shrewdly suspec-ting some malpractice, entered a petition; the House of Commons ordered a scrutiny; and every day during the enquiry, which lasted six weeks, the scrutineers and judges had dinner at Spencer House. Lord' Spencer was himself fighting tho election, and the dinners, tho cost of which may or may not be included in the round total of his expenses, £IOO,000, really ought to have won it for him; but his guests with superb impartiality declared a tie. So Lord Halifax and Lord Northampton and Lord Spencer tossed, and Lord Spencer won, and he put in an absentee. The price of pocket boroughs was raised by men who ha a made money iu India or the West »tidies and couic home to be important Lord Chesterfield, when he wanted a secure seat for a young friend, found that an offer of £2500 was not enough; the standard price, according to the agents, was between £3OOO and £oO.C. That shrewd oi.l man. Mr Cecil Torr. —whose "Small Talk at Wrcyland" is so pleasant to keep close and privato that only a sublimely unselfish character would recommend it Mr Cecil Torr says that "barefaced bribery is not a bad thing, in its way": The voter got hard cash, and the candidate provided it; whereas the voter only gets wild promises now, and these always cost the countrv a good deal, even if they do no good to anybody. Moreover, when tho voter could be bought, there was not the same necessity for cramming him with lies. With his pocket full oC money and no il visions in his mind, ho went gaily to the poll, feeling: that it was all » festival at which ho was an honoured guest. And in very many places it was very little else. He also points out the distinct possibility of advantage in getting crooks " to run things: Inefficiency is said to be n sign of honesty in public bodies. "When a public body is corrupt, the members take good care that everything is managed so efficiently that nobody would like to turn them out—they take no risks of losing a pouition that thoy find so profitable. On this hypothesis the Local Authorities in Devon cannot possibly be cor- ' rupt; and yet I sometimes feel a passing doubt when I see what schemes they sanction and what tenders they accept. Corruption may be beneficial if it implies efficiency. The amount of money that is misappropriated will seldom bo as much as would bo muddled away by honest, inefficient men. We usually have some very able men I in Devon, astute financiers whose abilities arc thrown away in the routine of penal servitude on Dartmoor. We might entrust our Local Government affairs to them, not nui'e with i a- free hand, but with a reasonable laxity allowed in matters o£ finance. 1 There was an Irishman who put half--1 a-sovereign in the plato at church iiu stead of a sixpence, and when he discovered the mistake rushed off with the intention of putting it right. But he turned back: "Sure it's all to the glory ' of God! —To hell with-the half-sover--1 eign!" The overburdened ratepayer ' may find a not dissimilar comfort. If his rates are too high, ho may reflect [ that he is subscribing to monuments of civic honesty. Mr C. X. Baeyorlz, who ha.* come 1 mm Australia to act as a judge at tho Wellington Competitions, says he is glad to bo back in a country where vowels are not mutilated. But sometimes they are swallowed! whole, with consonants for roughage. As for instance: "Orrye, goobvja snaow, prolly see yout there." That, I understood, was the Grand National proverb. -J.n.E.S.