WITHOUT PREJUDICE

Dominion, Volume 16, Issue 171, 7 April 1923, Page 6

WITHOUT PREJUDICE

NOTES AT RANDOM (By T. D. H.) Mr. Lloyd George seems uncertain whether the United States killed, the League of Nations or merely prevented it from being born. Soviet newspapers furiously accuse England of murdering Irishmen —which is all the thanks John Bull gets for his years of effort in preventing Irishmen from murdering one another. Russia intends .to build four battleships.—We still wait for our peaceloving Socialist Party protest when Russia spills blood. Are people sometimes accidentally hypnotised, with disastrous results to themselves? This morning is reported the case of an airman who was apparently hypnotised by a whirling. aeroplane propeller and walked into it and was cut to pieces. Exactly the same point was discussed in New York u while ago when one motor-car following another in brilliant sunshine on a va cant and open stretch of tho Riverside Drive gradually gained on it and rushed straight into it. The occurrence was absurd. The driver of the second car sat at his ease, his gaze straight ahead, and there was nothing to divert his attention. The explanation put forward in the New York “Herald” was that it was a case of “road-hypnotism.” The following chauffeur had been gazing steadily at the bright, streaming roadway flowing smoothlj' beneath him; and apparently its monotonous sameness had concentrated his mental faculties to the point of inducing momentary self-hypnotism. A further question raised was whether the effect of steadily watching the shining steel track gliding under them was not sometimes the cause of railway en-gine-drivers over-running signals and causing great disasters. Some, people are much more prone to hypnotic influence by gazing fixedly at an object than others are, and maybe, some day in the future when we know more about these things the hypnotically inclined will be ruled out for running motors, locomotives, and aeroplanes in the same way that colour-blind enginedrivers are barred

In the Yorkshire village of Broughton, “for twenty years,” says the “Manchester Guardian,” “not a native has died under the ago of seventy." How annoyed they will be with the first person who spoils the record!

Another tornado is reported in the United States, this time in Louisiana, and heavy loss of life is feared. Th# tornado in the central valleys of the United States is remarkably regular in its habits—up to a point. The tornado season is from March 15 to June 15 ; the favoured hour is between 2’and 5 o’clock in the afternoon, and the course over which the tornado sweeps is usually from south-west to northeast. The track of a tornado varies in width from a few hundred feet to a mile, and is as a rule from five to ten miles long. Over this area it rushes with a speed about that of .an express train, but no one seems to have been able to measure accurately the . speed r of ai tornado’s gyration as it flies on its course of death and destruction. It has been noted, however, that it is sufficiently great to ■ drive straws straight into the bark of trees as if they were bits of steel. On March 28, 1919, no fewer than thirteen tornadoes occurred in the lower Lake Michigan district, doing all. sorts of damage, blowing railway trains off the lines and wrecking buildings. One motor-car garage, for instance, was. blown to splinters, but the car inside was left standing unhurt. Others on the roads were not so lucky, but were blown straddle-wise on top of the fences, while telegraph poles broke in two, and suburban residences were in some cases left upside down standing on their chimneys. And yet people grumble at Wellington’s well-behaved breezes

Scottish papers tell of a cat which jumped from the fourth-floor window of a burning house in Kilmarnock “and walked away none the worse for its adventure.” In. a case like this there is some truth in the adage about a cat’s nine lives, for they have a remarkable faculty (shared by the squirrel and some cognate animals) of landing on their feet.. A scientific man investigated the subject some years ago, and came to the conclusion that the facultv depen cfeff wholly on the gvration of the tail. He even devised, a cardboard cat to illustrate his theory.

“My husband is so easily pleased,” said the blushing bride- “Yes, I gathered that at the wedding,” said the elderly spinster

Very strong exception to a- paragraph about Esperanto in Thursday’s column is taken bv Mr. V. L. Al. Daniel, who writes:— “Chancing this morning to glance through a portion of vour newspaper of yesterday or the dav before, 1 was amazed to see under the ironical caption ‘Without Prejudice’ a most unwarranted insult to me personally, and to every person who happens to know and to use the auxiliary language Esperanto. After exnlainiug that Esperanto was born in Russia (the home of Bolshevism, you know) and was rejected hr the French because of its use bv .Bolshevists (Bolshevism again!), you say: ‘Alost Esperantists seem to be the niildest-manner Bolshevists that ever cut a throat.’ That is to say. m effect (to take the phrase in its ordinary meaning): ‘Of the whole body of throat-cutting Bolshevists the Esperantists are a part, and seems' the mna-est-mannered.’ On behalf of the Esperantists generally, and of myself to particular, who am well known throughout New Zealand as a teacher of Es- f peranto, I demand a public apology.

“T.D.H.” has not the least desire to hurt anyone’s feeling in grinding out his little string of paragraphs each morning. Unfortunately, it is a. very hard task to go through life without treading on one’s neighbour’s corns occasionally. However, Mr., Daniel has taken up the closing sentences ot that Esperanto paragraph in quite the wrong spirit. The actual words were: “Esperanto’s nastiest blow, of late came from the French Government in July, last, when its teaching was banned to French schools on the ground that it was only used for disseminating Bolshevism! Most Esperantists seem, td be tho mildest-mannered Bolshevists that over cut a throat.”—lf that exclamation mark nnd the last sentence mean anything, they surely mean that. “T.D.H.” thought the French Government was carrying things pretty far if it suspected the average Esperantist of being a Bolshevik. Air. Daniel, in his letter, has some interesting things to say about Esperanto, which will duly, appear in The Dominion’s correspondence columns.

“His friends could give no reason why he should have committed suicide. He was single.”—An artless news item from a country paper.

SHADOWS. Sometimes the shadows that are thrown On garden plot or wall Alake little things look strange and And great things, oh, so small! Then who shall say but little things May prove most great at last, Aiid great things in the end as small As shadows that they cast! —Helen Frazee-Bower.