WITHOUT PREJUDICE

Dominion, Volume 16, Issue 162, 27 March 1923, Page 6

WITHOUT PREJUDICE

NOTES AT RANDOM

(By

T. D. H.)

It is proposed that the two condemned British airships slhall be reprieved—in order to inflict capital punishment on the taxpayers perhaps.

Sixty-two motor-cars have been, burned in an Auckland garage.—A fall in 'the pedestrian mortality statistics is now anticipated.

Australia proposes an interchange or warships between the Australian and British fleets.—Dr. Bumpus suggests that the Commonwealth might, exchange the Australia for the Hood, let Britain sink the Australia- in accordance with the treaty, and then exchange the Hood back for another battleship.

Easton Lodge, which the British Labour Party have accepted from Lady Warwick, is just out of the village of Little Dunmow in Essex, and the Labour mdnibers will thus be right on the spot to compete for the famous flitch of bacon. This flitch is presented annually to any couple who can prove to the satisfaction of a jury of bachelors and spinsters that they, have been married for a year and a day and have never repented in word or thought. One couple came all the way from York, two years ago, to prove that they had lived in unblemished happiness for twenty-five years, and duly returned home with the bacon after a trial lasting three hours. Tho custom dates back at least fo the reign of King John, nnd was instituted by the monks’ of the priory. In those days the trial was held by the monks in the churchyard, the couple kneeling the while on two sharp-pointed stones, and the choir of the priory assisting in solemn ceremonial. After the dissolution of the monasteries, the form of trial changed, and the custom died about the end of the seventeenth century until Mr. Harrison Ainsworth revived it in 1855, since when a travesty of it has been observed, on August bank holiday.

People who say the world is not what it used to be, with divorce courts and other things spoiling the home, might note that nowadays one or two couples every year are able to prove their claim to the Dunmow flitch. In the old days in the five hundred years between 1244 and 1772. only eight claimi ants succeeded in proving that they had lived happily together for a twelvemonth. As Matthew Prior wrote in his day: “Ah, madam! Cease to be mistaken; Few married folk peck Dunmow bacon.”

“It almost appears to me,” said Major Fitzurse last evening, as he laid down the newspaper, “that the real mistake Mr. Llovd George and Mr. Winston Churchill made in the war, and which they have not yet explained, was in going in on the wrong side. The observations of Lord Birkenhead about the French air peril are very disturbing. “We are helnless before the French,” says Lord Birkenhead. At the same time our Empire seems to have turned into scrap-iron a Fleet that might have sufficed to reduce the swelling in the heads of our cousins across the Atlantic. It is what _ I should have described in my Parliamentary days on the Ballvbuiiion Town Council* as a most unpropdtious concatenation of circumstances. The_ expenses we have involved ourselves in in preventing the German, effort to remove the French peril in 1914 are in themselves appalling; and from the remarks of so manv eminent statesmen in the Mother of Parliaments it seems that we may be obliged any day now to incur still more expense in doing what Germany was ready to do for us for nothing in August, 1914.”

Whether performing animals are made to do their tricks by kindness or cruelty was a question on which a House of Commons committee heard much contradictory evidence in connection with the Bill now passed. Many demonstrations with performing animals were given in the sacred precincts of Parliament. Animal trainers affirmed that everything worth’ doing was done by kindness. Some people who had severed their connection with the business declared that animal performances were the result of nothing but cruelty. In reply tho counter-sugges-tion was made that there were biased witnesses who had been dismissed from their employment or had failed. Our old friend, Mr. Carl Hertz turned up with his canary in tho birdcage to demonstrate that he did not need a new canary every time he made the birdcage disappear. On the whole, on© gathers that the committee did not consider tbe performing animal trade a particularly desirable branch of business.

Captain Scott’s old ship, the Discovery, has come into view again on being requisitioned by the Admiralty for research work. A dispute frequently arises as to the end of historic vessels, and a year or so ago I recorded how a barn in Berkshire was supposed to be largely built out of the timbers of the famous Mayflower. All that is left of Drake’s Golden Hind is an armchair in the Bodleian Library in Oxford, and the top of a table, standing in the beautiful Tudor hall of the Middle Temple in London, just below the dais, from the very boards of which Shakespeare read for the first time, “Twelfth Night,” before Queen Bess in 1601.

A good lawyer can be useful. In the New York “Outlook” there is a story which'seems to be new of how- Abraham Lincoln in his early days in Illinois saved the life of “Duff” Armstrong, of Petersburg, in that State. Armstrong was a wild young fellow;, and in a melee after a race meeting a farmer of tho district was struck with a neck yoke and died shortly after. Armstrong had had a fcht with the man on the morning of the race meeting, and suspicion fell on him. Only one witness was able to swear that Armstrong had struck the blow. it was moonlight, and I saw the blow distinctly,” he said. Lincoln, for the defence, questioned the witness closely as to what lights there were, and he said it was moonlight and moonlight only Producing an almanac, Lincoln showed that the moon had not risen when the melee occurred, and his client was acquitted. Tho prisoner was accused of having stolen a pig. He said he did it for a joke. “How far did you carry the pio-?” asked the Magistrate. “Just to my house —a matter of two _ miles, said the prisoner- “You carried that joke entirely too far,” said the Magistrate. DITCHLING. If, after having lived in many towns, ’Such goodness comes to me That I might house beneath the noble Downs Beside an apple-tree; Then would I find in moon and candlelight A supper-table spread With Ditchling ham and ale for my delight, And honest Ditchling bread; And open to the kindly Sussex air My heart and window wide, That gentle thoughts might find me sleeping there, And I be satisfied. —Theodore Maynard.