WITHOUT PREJUDICE

Dominion, Volume 16, Issue 88, 10 January 1923, Page 4

WITHOUT PREJUDICE

NOTES AT RANDOM

(By

T.D.H.)

Europe lias now, two bugaboos.— Its tramp of armies and its armies of tramps.

It remains to bo seen whether the French, go over the precipice or the German bluff falls down. ’

The Turkish idea seems to be that if they had another war and got beaten again the Allies might otter them an even better peace.

It is not every day that a fullyinitiated member of a tribe of Australian blacks presides over a learned scientific association, but such is the position in the Australasian Association tor the Advancement of Science until the new president is installed. The outgoing president, Professor Sir Walter Baldwin Spencer, is a fullblown member of the Arunta tribe of Australian aborigines—although as white as you or I—and as such has seen with his travelling companion, Mr. F. J. Oillen, many mysterious ceremonies that no white man had ever before looked upon nor probably ever will see again, for the tribes are fast becoming contaminated and forgetting their old lore. I understand that part of the initiation ceremony consists of extensive choppings of the initiate’s anatomy by a mob of howl-' ing savages, armed with Stone Age equivalent of . meat axes. If the professor is going to tell us how he fared when this took place his lecture should be well worth attending by oil in pursuit of scientific information.

Some of the Australian blacks’ ceremonies appear to be even longer than a Highland minister’s sermone, for an “Engwura” which Professor Baldwin Spencer once witnessed began in September and ended in December, and seems to have averaged five ceremonials a day. The blacks sing songs which, they do not. understand, and, when asked to explain anything their usual answer oeems to be that it was done so in the Alchertnga.” No doubt Professor Baldwin Spencer will have some light to throw on whh* that mythic age is supposed, to be. In nearl yall tho tribes tte belief is universal that each individual is a reincarnation of some ancestor. At tne B&ni(3 t-lio blacks Have no bdict in or idea of anything like a supreme being, they cannot count beyond three, have no permanent abodes, no ide# of cultivating food, or storing crops to tide over hard times, wear no clothing, and are the most primitive human beings in existence. Our own great-grandparents or tne Brrnisn Stone Age were possibly more or teas the same, and Sir Baldwin Spencer s researches are like turning over a few back pages in the family any signs of blueness were noticeable in the blood.

A Chicago woman shot her husband because he would not go to church. A case of getting him to heaven one way or another.

Mention of Glamis in my notesi on Monday has moved a native of that Forfarshire parish to write and inform mo that the good folks tongues are •tffigging there about the several visits of Ouke of York to Glamis Castle as the guest of the House o Strathmore. My correspondent, J.R., says it is forty years since he village, but letters still reach him from there. Glamis has looked for a. reawn for tho young Duke B visits, and suades itself it has f?™* bright eyes of the beautiful Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, the only unmarried daughter of the Earl and Countess of Strathmore. As a symptom that may be taken for it is worth, Glamis has noted Bia Royal Highness has become so enaSed of the district and the people that he has taken to ordering Ma kflts from the village tailor who has somewhat of a reputation for the correct cut, and “hang” of these garments—ami especially tor hitting on the enc* length to suit the figure of each client —a most important detail, J.R. understands. I noticed myself that a photograph of the Duke of Yor kilts—the new Glamis ones probablyappeared in most of the recently. Hugo excitement in tho taprod of the Glamis pubhehouse on receipt of the papers no doubt, and the happy event regarded as settled beyond all further dispute. .

The wonderment of the Chathams Islands children at trams, trains, and such things as they are seeing m Christchurch recalls a °F, W® way the fashions used to be fixed in the Chathams. Who makes the new fashions is to most of U 8 one of life • little mysteries, hut at Waitand ta the old davs the sole and final arbiter of taste was the local storekeeper. I was once shown a letter he sent; across ordering the annual supply of for summer dresses, 1V c reu “As we had “tripes last season vou had better send spots this year. And no doubt Chathams Islands damsels uhose papas could not give dresses that year wept sart, bitter tears at having to go striped while all the elite were spotted.

One hears in Britain of who have never seen the Sea. and the used' to be rumours In Wellington of an old lady who had never come into town from Makara since her first.settlement there In the forties or thereabouts. During the dredging; boom of twenty odd years ago, I ed full-grown young men .n South Westland who Lad never seen storied house or a . chta W much less a train or anything of that sort. Nelson, for years, had its “Lost Ten Tribes” in the wilds of Upper Matakitaki. where fe arsome taSs were told of lusty young maMena smashing slates, on the schoolmaster s head and chasing him out of the school, so that our national system of freo, compulsory, and B^J a . r cation collapsed for prolonged htavals in ths region. And there are rforfes of families living in remote bays and south of the OU E o the young people and womenfolk of were so shv that they took to the bush when the Government steamer called, arid nothing would induce them to show themselves. Perhaps some reader can tell us what is the most out of the way and untamed spot remaining in New Zealand to-day.

Place-hunters seldom got much change out of M. Clemenceau. One day, for instance, a group of six deputies called to recommend a. protege, whom they lauded to the skies, for a post as under-prefect. . What! exclaimed Clemenceau, “six of you,, ana you can’t think of anything higher for him than this subaltern s post/ Why. the man must be a perfect idiot!” And he bowed them out.

ACiOPOINT.

Such is the pure sharp cutting of the

To crying beauty that the seagulls And such the white teeth and rebel-

lious hair Of every undertow. . . Lovely as steel, lonelier than all pride, Hard, glittering, trenchant, bitterly wonderful — . Such is the laughter of each ebbing

tide, Tho mowing of each gull. —Joseph Autlander in the ’‘North Auttrican Review.”