WITHOUT PREJUDICE

Dominion, Volume 16, Issue 224, 9 June 1923, Page 6

WITHOUT PREJUDICE

NOTES AT RANDOM (By T.D.H.) United States opinion is that tho entire European situation may be put to rights by anothur conference. — So long as tfie United States Senate is not asked to ratify anything, perhaps. Australian Labour is so wedded to equality in all things that a Labour leader who has a corner in brains is asked to get out. . , [ Experience is what you. get when you are looking for something else. Dr. Bumpus called last evening to say he hopes the Hutt Road Board will not be rash enough really to begin this permanent surfacing in 1927. Thera are not only the city streets to be put right first, but the tar and cement will be needed for laying down tennis courts all over the Town Belt after that. In any cape nothing should be done that would be prejudicial to the interests of the important motor-car repair industry that is so rapidly expanding in tne city, and will ere long, the Doctor feels sure, become one of its economic mainstays, and a permanent source of wealth and affluene* to the entire population.

“I am, and have ever been,” said Dr. Bumpus, “against precipitate action in any direction. The present conflict of opinion as to the relative advantages of tar or concrete roads points to the extreme unwisdom of any considerable expenditure until the point is definitely settled. The world is too full of costly mistakes in the past through prematura stations. lasok, for example, aF the vast expenditure our Dominion has incurred in the building of railways. Immediately tha first railways ;were laid down I fait that some improvement on them muse infallibly be discovered. Had New Zealand looked all round the railway question before building her lines, and taken the same time for careful consideration that the Hutt Road Board is taking in the matter of roads, vast sums of money could have been saved. As it is, we arc now told that railway# are obsolete, and that tar or concrete roads are the thing of the future.”

’ “Statesmanship, I have ever contended,” continued Dr. Bumpus, “is the art of keeping things under careful consideration and steadily in view. We have sunk forty million pounds of hard-earned money in railways, money that we might to-day have had in our pockets had we waited for concrete roads and motor-cars. This is equivalent to nearly £4O a head, man, woman, and child; or, in other words, no less than £2OO cash in the bank for every family of five persons in the entire Dominion. Add to this sum compound interest at the rate of five per cent, spread over the fifty years during which we have been wedded to the folly of railways, and it becomes at once apparent that had the Public Works policy not been so rashly entered'upon the head of every household —the sum is complete and conclusive and a child can work it out — the head of every household, as I was about to say, would to-day IVM,’© been in a position virtually of finSHch-l independence. It is from a similar catastrophe, I feel sure, that the mature consideration of the Hutt Road Board and the Hutt County Council will save us in the matter of this present craze for concrete roads.” “I think, Major,” said Dr. Bumpus, “we_may safely rely upon their discretion in floating our little venture.”

I may add that Dr. Bumpus and Major Fitzurse have lately been sounding a number of eminent persons with a. view to securing their services on the directorate of an aviation company they are forming, the shares in which are already being sought at a premium, although the prospectus ’has not yet been issued. “Wellington,” Major Fitzurse informs me, “is ideally situated for extraordinarily economical low-powered flying machines. Travellers with a small expenditure of benzine on these machines can. go north with a southerly gale, and return to the south with a northerly gale. The alterations in the direction of the wind have been carefully noted by myself and the Doctor during the past three months, and are sufficient for very rapid outward and return journeys in either direction. All that we need now is an assurance that the local governing bodies controlling the roads of the district will not let us down by bolstering up motor-.transport. We do not ask the local bodies to do anything at all for us. In fairness to ourselves, however, we request that they shall continue to do nothing for the motorists'.”

Mr. Albert Vandam, in his book “An Englishman in Paris,” recalls how cocksure the French were of beating the Germans in 1870. When the German diplomats were packing and leaving Paris for Berlin a cab was called from the ranks to take a young attache from the German Embassy to the railway station. He was going te join his regiment. On alighting from the cab, the attache was about 10 pay his fare; the driver refused tbe money. “A man does not pay for bis own funeral, monsieur; and you may take it that I have performed that office for you. Adieu, monsieur.” With that bo drove off. All Paris chuckled oxer the story.

Mr. Thomas Pemberton, a farmer, of Lytham, in England who recently died at the age of 88, for over 'half a century never laid abed later than 5 a.m. in winter and 2.30 in summer. Early rising is not invariably so benefical. A century ago aMr A. C. Buckland wrote a book entitled * Letters on the Importance, Duty and Advantages of Early Rising, addressed to the Heads of Families, the Lover of Nature, the Man of Business, the Student, and the Christian. ’ The author advocated, from personal experience, the reduction of the hours of sleep to the lowest number possible. A note by “Tho Editor” to the fifth edition of the book laments the death of Mr. Buckland at the ago of 25.

A correspondent sends me the oath by which the Highlanders were forced to adjure the national garb in 1747, after the disaster of the Fortyfive. As administered at Fort William and elsewhere it ran: “I •> do swear, as I shall answer to God at the great Day of Judgment, that I have not. nor shall have, in my possession any guh, sword, pistol, or any arm whatsoever, and that I never use tartan, plaid or anv part of the Highland garb; and if Ido so nmv I he cursed in my undertakings, family, and property, may I never see mv wife and children, father, mother, or relations, may 1 be killed m battle as a coward and lie without Christian burial in a strange land, Car from the graves of iey forefathers and kindred; may all this come across me if I break my oath.”

LET ME CROW LOVELY. Let me-grow lovely, growing old— So many fine things do: Laces, and ivory, and gold, And silks need not be new; And there is healing in old trees, Old streets a glamour hold: Why may not I. as well as these, Grow lovely, growing old? — U7 klson Bak«r«