WITHOUT PREJUDICE

Dominion, Volume 16, Issue 169, 5 April 1923, Page 6

WITHOUT PREJUDICE

NOTES AT RANDOM (By T. D. H.) As so many crimes have been committed in the name of Liberty, Signor Mussolini is abolishing it in Italy.

President Harding’s Government, however, is still keen on liberty.—Liberty for the American oil trust to own all the British oil wells.

British Labour is in favour of the nationalisation of the liquor trade —as the next best thing to free beer, perhaps.

As the last Superintendent of Marlborough, Mr. A. P. Seymour, whose death at Picton is now reported, participated in the unexpectedly dramatic , ending of that province. November 1, J 876, was the day fixed for the abolition of the provinces, and the previous day Mr. Seymour was busy at the provinc'al offices putting everything in order for closing down. From, some unknown cause a fire broke out in the office in the early hours of November 1, and before the flames were extinguished, not only the provincial buildings, but the whole business portion of Blenheim, had disappeared. . Right through Marlborough’s provincial history Mr. Seymour was a very active spirit, for it was on his motion in 1860, that the capital of the province was moved from Blenheim and given to .Picton, where it remained for six years until'the Blenheim party, after some alleged gerrymandering, stole it back again. Ojie ’of Picton’s most heroic defenders in the councd on occasion was the late Mr. Arthur Beauchamp, father of Sir Harold Beauchamp, who, after speaking for the best part of a day. .announced that he had now concluded his introductory remarks, and would procee'l to the main question. However. Mr. Beauchamp, succumbed after being on his feet ten hours and forty minutes.

According to Mr. Lindsay Buick, the Picton-Blenheim feud, which was the bone of contention for most of Marlborough’s seventeen years as a province, arose out of a difference of .opinion as to whether the first Provincial Council should adjourn for the .Queen’s Birthday, in 1860. The question was raised the day before, but the Superintendent, Mr. Adams, said there was so much business that they must go ahead. Next morning, when the clock struck eleven, Mr. Eyes and two other Blenheim members who wished to adjourn and probably had picnics to go to, walked into the council chamber, found the late Captain Baillie there, and as there was a ouorum, nbld a meeting of the council and adjourned it for tho dav without waiting for the Superintendent or t ; he other five members to arrive. This annoyed the Superintendent, who gave Mr. Eyes a piece of his mind, and threatened, among other things, fo take away.tne capital from Blenheim. A. fortnight later, Mr. Seymour brought- ill his motion to move’ the seat of Government to Picton, which was duly carried, and left Blenheim sick and sotc for six lons vears. Politics, of course, are conducted in a far calmer and more judicial atmosphere nowadays. ,

Esperanto,’ we are told by-the Australian and New Zealand Esperanto Congress now sitting in Sydney, aims or.lv at being an auxiliary language. This is hot exactly news, but reminds us that since Dr. Zamenhof invented Esperanto in Russia between thirtyfive and forty years ago, its progress, if fairly steady, has not been remarkable. It has fared better, however, , than Volapuk, which a South-German priest invented in 1880 and which fell to pieces through its disciples wishing to remake its grammar, while its ’nventor insisted that they must either take his Volapuk or leave it. The result was that the disciples—who were largely Russian—left it, and their leader, M. Rosenberger, produced a new international language, ‘ldiom Neutral,” in 1902, of which little has since been heard. -The League of Nations last year instructed one of its numerous commissions to go into the question of an international language, so no doubt they are hard at work reading up the “Encyclopaedia Britannica” for a report which no one will read. Esperanto’s nastiest blow of We came, from the .French Government in July last, when its teaching was banned in, French schools on the ground that it was only used for disseminating Bolshevism I, Most porantists seem to be the mildest mannered Bolsheviks that ever cut a throat. '

Are we growing more superstitous or less? An American professor of psychology took a census among thp students of Oregon University m 1919, and fomid out of 557 who answered his questions only 158 could never remember having been influenced by a superstition. Two years ago the well-known scientific journal, “Nature,” declared in a leading article that the belief in amulets, charms, and superstitions generally, was increasing all over Europe. It declared, for example, that in Paris hunchbacks have a regular clientielo among, stockbrokers,, who touch the deformity before making an important deal; while the French' actor is said always to have a hunchback in his dressing room on a first night. The motor-car mascot was even courted in “Nature” as evidence of superstitous belief. '

The most prevalent little superstition among the Oregon students was touching wood, which a third of them admitted practising; next came into belief in the four-leaved clover, with prophetic dreams in third place, and the thirteen in fourth' place. The number thirteen in many peoples minds has thcorigin pf its ill-lucky associations in the last supper, when Christ sat down .with the twelve Apostles, but thirteen was considered unlucky at a much earlier period than that It was noticeable in the Oregon census that the girls were more superstitous than the men. Even Biblereading was practised by one maiden on grounds. “I have the habit of reading a chapter of the New Testament in the morning,” she wrote, “and when I fail to do so it seems that I do not have good luck forthat day.”

My note' about vegetarians has prompted a correspondent tn say that the most conscientious person he ever knew, was a vegetarian, who once wrote to a bookseller ordering a copy of Tcnnvson’s poems, and put a postscript to the letter: “Please do not send me one bound in calf as I am » vegetarian.”

THE CLUE NOT FOUND. If we but knew, O life, If we but knew, Not thus would -wo half-hearted close the strife, Ambiguous in aim, to nothing true! Not thus with empty hands Before tho door That leadeth darkly to the windy lands Would we give down, forespent, perplexed, unsure. • August almost our day, ' Yet in the blue Of retrospect, how marred, how thrown away! O unreturning life, if we but knew! —William Alexander Percy.