WITHOUT PREJUDICE

Dominion, Volume 16, Issue 122, 8 February 1923, Page 6

WITHOUT PREJUDICE

NOTES AT RANDOM

(By

T.D.H.)

Lord Curzon is explaining how he acted in conformity with the Allies and got nothing at Lausanne, and M. Pomcare how Tio acted alone and got nothing in the Ruhr. Firearms are responsible for a lot of crime—but there seems to have been more before they were invented. It is stated that the support the Liberal Party received in the country wau “reminiscent of the days when John McKenzie launched his lend settlement scheme.” —But a political party cannot live on reminiscences. General Ludendorff, who is meeting with so much hostility from the populace on his travels, is rhe power behind tho throne in the military and monarchical plottings in Germany. He plays a mysterious role, avoiding the limelight and attracting as little attention as possible from the Berlin authorities, who nevertheless are said to watch him closely. His name has never been linked with an illegal enterprise lik« the “consul” group which murdered Herr Erzeberger and Dr. Rathenau, but he holds a patriarchal position over the veterans’ leagues, officers’ associations, and other militarist bodies sanctioned by Republican law. A certain Colonel von Xylauder, widely known for his monarchist intrigues, is understood to be Ludendorff’s factotum in dealing with the anti-Rcp.ubhoan organisations. The colonel is a forceful m.w of culture and ability, a*d tlijte are people who think General Ludendorff is grooming him for the pwl of dictator.

An interesting case of lietter being better than best was discovered in tho Hanse of Representatives yesterday. A member stated: “I was serving iny pa.rty best and my country better.”

Wellington’s wind has a lot of hard things ”>ai<i of it- hut it is not often that it lifts railway rolling stock off the rails, as is alleged to have happened yesterday on the Rimutaka Incline. It is, 1 think, only once before that it has done this, and that was j

its notorious performance of September 11, 1880. The. Saturday morning train to town was climbing ths hill that day when a sudden gust at the Siberia corner swept the two roar carriages and guard’s van clean ofl the rails mid down into the gully. The woodwork of one carriage left the undercarriage and crashed a hundred feet down the bank' to the bottom of the gully, flying into splinters and fragments as it went, the pieces being whipped up and carried far and wide by the wind as they broke iff. 'file other carriage and the van lay on their sides at right angles to the line, the coupling, altbougn bent and twisted, still holding them to the rest ot the train. To fetch Leip the brake van was detached from what remained of the train ana run down the incline to Cross Crook. This left the engine and two laden vans standing ongfhe line, and the next tnir.g that happened was that the two vans were blown over on to their sides, but did not fall down the gully.

' I our lives were lost as a result of that Rimutaka accident of 1880, and five persons were seriously hurt and eight less seriously. The killed were all children. Ono was Miss Ida Pharazyn, who was travelling with her twin sister, who escaped; another was a son of Air. Quin, proprietor of the Grey town Arms; and the third a son of Mr. Nicholas, a Wairaripa settler. A further child died subsequently. As a result of this accident the Railway Department put up a nine-foot palisading at the scene of the accident, where the line crosses the gully on an embankment. In the old coaching days mail coaches were occasionally blown off the Rimutaka road. Perhaps 1 some readers can tell us when and where such accidents occurred, and whether it was at the notorious “AVindy Corner,” near the top of the hill, on the Wellington side, or elsewhere.

According to his daughter, the late Mr. W. T. Stead is continuing his lit-erary-pursuits on the other side of the grave. The results have been comirunioated to Miss Estelle Stead and Mr. Pardoe Woodman, a member of her theatrical company, and the new work by her father she has publisred in book form, with an introduction by Sir A. Conan Doyle. Mr. Stead is recorded as saying that when he was drowned in the Titanic there were hundreds of dead floating in _ the water, -and the souls rose “vertically into the air at terrific speed. . .

We moved as if we were on a. very large platform.” They arrived not at Heaven, but at “the Blue Island.” — Whether it was 0. wharf, a -railway station, or an aerodrome, we are not told.

One of the best things Mr. Stead did on arrival at the Blue Island was to take a long walk by the seashore with his father, who was dressed exactly as on earth, and had remained apparently of the same age as when, ho died. (The reviewer in the “New Statesman” observes that the not unimportant question of whether infants arriving in long clothes remain for ever in long clothes is not referred to.) Presently they came to a building and had a meal, an ordinary mundane meal, except that there was “no flesh food.” Life on the island, we are told, is almost exactly the same as on earth.

AA’ellington’s plentiful crop of blackberries is now ripening rapidly. In. the Hutt Auilley the other day a local resident informed me that, the North Island blackberry bears better fruit as a mile than that in the South Island. The blackberry m the South. Island, he declared, was mainly Californian blackbenw, while up here we have the English blackberry, which lias bigger berries and more of them. This was news to me, and I will have to leave it to the experts to say whether there is anything in it. Our botanical text books do not lend much colour to the theory. They record the existence in tho country of about half a dozen Varieties of l blackberry, but with one or two exceptions all seem to have been spread indiscriminately. Greymouth, for instance, appears to have the Italian blackberry pretty well to itself. Brightwatcr, out of Nelson, has a special variety of its own, which was identified as such by an expert many years back. Further, according to Kirk’s “ “Student’s Flora of New Zealand,” the Canadian blackberry has been naturalised in several places on the Rimutaka Ranges. This variety grows only in a low bush, two to three feet in height. AVho introduced the blackberries is lost in obscurity, and there are no claimants to the honour. An old negro woman stood by th* (’■rave of her husband and sand mournfully, “Po’ Rastus! I hope he’s gone where I ’spec he ain’t.” A DIFFERENCE. AVhen we were but fourteen and one, To ourself we would frequently own There was nothing new under the sun, For wo knew all there was to be known. But arriving at forty and two, AVo’re bewildered and mired in doubt, For we’re constantly finding thing« new Which we don’t know a darn thing about. —Walter Turnbull :n the New York Herald.”