WITHOUT PREJUDICE

Dominion, Volume 15, Issue 169, 12 April 1922, Page 4

WITHOUT PREJUDICE

NOTES AT RANDOM

(By

T.D.H.)

Confidence might be restored in Europe if the delegates at Genoa were less suspicious of a confidence trick.

‘LWe do not come here seeking Bolshevik ends,” says M. Tchitcherin at \ Genoa. —The ends that Bolshevism leads to seem to have already befallen most things in Russia.

What a time they’d have in the Police Court if the Weather Office made a charge for foretelling the future—unless, of course, a plea of not guilty was accepted.

After chahging his name into Seorsa Ghabhain ui Dhubhthaigh, it seems hard that Mr. G Duffy should be chased by the Ii 'publicans, and be obliged to run . . . isk of dislocating his jaw in expressing his feelings in Gaelic.

How many people remember that England got its St. George from Genoa? With a Mr. George representing Britain at a conference sitting in the Palace of St. George, it seems a pity they did not put off the opening date for a fortnight and have it on St. George’s Day. Genoa was a great embarkation port for the Crusades, and Richard Coeur de Lion arrived there with Philip 11, en route to the Holy Land in 1190. The Genoese assisted the enterprise by furnishing eighty galleys to carry England’s lion-hearted king across the Mediterranean, and Richard was so pleased that he chose the Genoese St. George for his ensign, and from that day to this St. George has' remained the patron saint of England. If Genoa gave England its saint it also gave America its discoverer, for Columbus was a native of the city, and it was only because the Genoese were unable to supply him with vessels that he applied to Spain for support. Genoa has a feeling to-day that there are still discoveries about America to be made.

Mr. Lloyd George has an eye for the picturesque in the places he chooses for conferences. Cannes _ was an ideal spot as a fashionable winter resort —but for the unlucky golf links. Genoa stopped developing long before golf links were thought of, and nothing so modern is to be found anywhere near the ancient and picturesque city of decaying palaces—so perhaps the French delegates will feel in less danger of being lured from the straight and narrow path. All sorts of people have exhausted their, eloquence in de- ’ scribing Genoa, with its tier on tier of palaces rising from the water’s edge, and embowjered in green . along the sweep of its harbour, its narrow streets, marvellous churches, and crowded and picturesque humanity.* Dickens called it a bewildering phantasmagoria, with all the inconsistency tf a dream. Tho fact of the matter seems to have been that the Doges of Genoa forbade the people to waste money on fetes, and velvet a;id brocade dresses, so they gave , vent to their extravagance in the building of palace after palace in the days when Venice and Genoa were two of the greatest trading centres of the world.

Thp Palace of St. George where the, European Conferoncfe sits is not a place that exactly breathes forth amity from its walls. The Genoese used to • hate the Venetians intensely, and when they captured a Venetian trading tort at Constantinople in the thirteenth, century they ■ went to the trouble or removing the whole of the stones and them to build a palace in. Genoa with three Venetian lions figuring of er. the doorway, and that is how the building came into existence. J hex were good haters, for they had another feud with Pisa, and after an attack on it bore off the chains of its gate as a trophy, and had them hanging for six hundred years on toe walls or ot. George’s Palace. The palace was used as a bank and then as a corn exchange. and its upper hall, where the conference sits, Ifell into decay lot many rears. In it. as the nablo relates are tablets, busts, and statues, of leading Genoese who have given ot their wealth to the city. So many thousand ducats meant a tablet, so many more a standing statue, ana those who overwhelmed the city with their liberality got seated statues ui positions of special prominence. Tennjson has a stanza’in of his poems about this spot where Europe is now gathered: We lov’d that hall, tho’ white and c °ld. Those niched shapes of noble mould, ■ A princely people’s awful princes. The grave severe Genoese oi oia.

Dr. Bumpus rang me up shortly before midnight last night to. say that life thought I ought to put in a word •of appreciation in my column at tbe self-sacrificing action of the master paperhangers in directing attention to the dangers of scrim—an article ot which they must carry large stocks Tho Doctor says ho was much upset yesterday afternoon thinking of bugs crawling about under all his choice wallpapers, and could not resist investigating. He had just completed tearing down the paper oil six of the nine rooms in his residence, and was muon relieved after this practical tost not to have found as much as one bug—it • was a great load off his roinA Pho Doctor asked me where 1 thought he could get some new papers cheapest.. While it was a fine thing to get down to bedrock on these matters, he hoped the master builders would leave over until next month any views they might have about katipo spiders under the roof, and the plumbers also reserve their ideas about snakes in the drams. These things come a little heavy if run. together. Perhaps, indeed, it would be better if the Health Department, just at present, stuck to having plain rats on the brain.

It is six years ago to-day since the first sections of the New Zealanders disembarked in Franco after their vo>--age across the Mediterranean from Alexandria. Time is ■ and the returned men will soon be ieterans in real earnest. Let us hope that in years to conic our recollection +h» Great War will be more reliable than that of an English village rustic who told me he, recollected the Crimean War quite well. That war. • he sagely observed to me over a pot of ale? “were fought to get Free Trade through tbe Sewage Canal.

There is-nothing but rings and combines nowadays. Even the moon had a ring on Monday night—a circular lustrous haze of great magitudc at an immense distance away from 1 hoebus. There is an old Scotch fayin* which runs: “If the ring round tlis moon is far away, bad weather is: near aivay; if the ring is near away, bad weatner is far away.” The Scotch are knowlodgable folk. Tuesday s ring brought us a boisterous gale and. muddy skies.

Elbert Hubbard, one of the greatest. minds extinguished by the German submarines during the war, would have looked a little dubiously at the scheme, of educational reform propounded by Mr. Parr and his experts. “When is ( the pedagogic weaning tnne_? he wrote. “At fifteen or sixteen, I should, say. To give the young man after that a labour-immunity bath, in the. name of education, is to run the risk of ruining him. You have carried him as far as you dare give him a ride. Be-. yond this he must make his way alone ’ or lie’ll never travel far. All through I life he’ll be looking for a lift.”