WITHOUT PREJUDICE

Dominion, Volume 16, Issue 127, 14 February 1923, Page 6

WITHOUT PREJUDICE

NOTES AT RANDOM (By T.D.H.) Herr Ebert says the world Expects of Germany continued passive resistance. —Well, it thinks it probable she will do everything except pay up and be done with it. It is alleged that the Turks do. not intend to make compulsory marriage general, as reported to-day, but are only adding it to the list of courtmartial punishments. British Parliamentary Labour is strong to make Parliament alive, but not quite strong enough to make business dead. “I hope. ‘T.D.H. ’ ” said Dr. Bumpus yesterday, “that you will direct attention in your column to the vdry d'stressing lack of serious thought on public affairs in this Dominion at the present. For many years past I have made a practice each morning.of detaching a nauc of that, most informative and morally uplifting publication, Hansard, and pausing to read a passage in it before proceeding in my matutinal duty with the razor. I commend this practice, to all who would keep in touch with . the current of our Parliamentary life. Few, I fear, follow it; and ignorance of the contents of Hansard is abysmal.

“This afternoon in the Legislature.” continued Dr. Bumpus, “I was much moved at the brilliant and impassioned denunciation by- the Leader of the Opposition of that iniquitous impost the income tax But my elation was checked. For on ■ casting back my mind I felt the gravest doubt as to whether the contents of Hansard are familiar even to the chiefest ornaments of the Legislature. For in view of what tho Leader of tho Opposition said yesterday it seemed incredible that he could be aware of the previous votes of the member for Hutt on tax-free debentures. The ■sad contretempts in the eweining on the want-of-confidence motion in addition ra’ses grave questions for. the thoughtful-minded. ‘ls it possible,’ we must ask ourselves, ‘that the distinguished gentlemen of His Majesty’s Opposition have been studying the problems confronting our fair young land with the same jejune attention they have devoted to tho standing orders of the House of Representatives?” The position is distressing," added the Doctor, “but. no section of society is the same since American moving pictures destroyed the family life that is the foundation of the State.”

As Dr. Bumpus seemed to be looking at the world in an excessively gloomy light last evening, to chder him up I showed him the cabled summary of President Harding’s stirring Lincoln Day speech which appears in our news columns. “The fullest and tiniest service,” says. President Harding, “is service conceived in unselfishness and rendered. without thought of immediate gain.” “A noble sentiment, admirably expressed,” said the Doctor. “It is indeed a privilege to discharge a bill to a creditor whose action in presenting it has been dictated by motives so lofty. My own unhappy lot through life has been to be confronted by sordid duns, impelled in their attacks upon my purse only by a low desire for gross material gain. Here we have a great Christian nation which in the full knowledge that it is more blessed to give than to receive, renounces for itself, and permits to. us that greater blessing. It is this sublime spirit of .self-abnegation that has made that great people of the North American continent what they ar* to-day.”

The Valentine, whose day is for ever over, was killed by vulgarity. It flourished in the .’fifties and the ’sixties, when, it is recorded, over half a milion valentines passed through the post each year. Then it gradually declined. Red-nosed men and women replaced the red roses, and lavender-scented lace paper of more artistic days, and these gutter publications sprang _up and choked the bona-fide valentine. There is no real history of the origin of the valentine, but the custom does not go much further back than the days of our grandmothers. St. Valentine himself, who suffered martyrdom either under Claudius II at Rome or under Aurelian in 271, was venerated along with other saints of the same name on February 14- Beyond this he had nothing whatever to do with the pretty celebrations of our grandfathers and the vulgarised form which endured till comparatively recent times.

Apropos of my paragraph yesterday about the monkey and the lock,' Afajor Fitzurse tells me that when in Africa many years ago ho was much struck with the intelligence of some Capo baboons which raided the camp and carried ofi articles of military equipment. The baboons retired, to some caves in a cliff and when Lieutenant Ship and a party of soldiers attempted to approach, one old baboon, who acted as general, had the o.ihers posted at various points and throwing down heavy rocks, so that the men were obliged to desist. The incident is described in Dr. Romano’s book on “Animal Intelligence,” and other standard works. It gave the Alajor an idea, and in one of his campaigns in Nigeria, when native recruits were running short, he gave a rifle to a pet baboon which used each day to watch the drill on the parade ground with intense interest. The animal, a vellow anubis baboon (P. cynocephalus) became most expert, and the Afajor captured several more of the same species, forming a squad and promoting the original baboon to be lancecorporal. Looking carefully through King’s Regulations to see if there was anything prohibiting the enlistment of baboons, the Alajor found nothing, and then proceeded to raise a company.

Major Fitzurse states that his new recruits made excellent soldiers, and in operations in the tropical forests tho expert use they made of their tails enabled them to surmount obstacles with great rapidity—in fact, the Major mentioned several in dispatches'for services in this connection. This very promising schema for raisinexpensive and fully acclimatised troops for tropical campaigns was eomp'etely killed by the refusal of the 0 M G ’s department to supply walnuts'for private soldiers’ rations. The Major was thereupon obliged to disband his new company, but he retained the services of the original Jr. Cvno, now a retired sergeant-major, as a batman. ‘‘An excellent, servant he was, too,” mused the Major; in fact, more like a brother than a servant—but it was always a mystery to me how lie acquired his low taste for beer that ruined him. Major Fitzurse subsequently wrote a paper wine he read before the Philosophical Society of Bogglington-under-Mychwood, on '“The Military Advantages of Reviving the Caudal Appendage in the Genus Homo”-and is convinced the next war will be won by the nation that solves this anthropological problem. Tt often comes into my head That we may dream when we are dead. But T am far from sure we do. 0 that it were so! Then my rest Would bo indeed among the blest; I should for ever dream of you. —Walter Savage Lender.