WITHOUT PREJUDICE

Dominion, Volume 19, Issue 76, 22 December 1924, Page 6

WITHOUT PREJUDICE

NOTES AT RANDOM

(By

T.D.H.)

America, it is contended, is quite free to stage a dress rehearsal of a war with Japan as she proposes. — Just as free, in fact, as she would be to have the war itself. A New South Wales criminal has been given a longer sentence at his own request, as he can make such good money in gaol-—lt is only in really deserving cases that such concession can be made. At sixteen minutes past two thia afternoon the sun will have reached his furthest south for the year, and when he sets this evening the longest day for the season will be over. However, the evenings will continue to lengthen for a little while yet, for the “Nautical Almanac” tells us that the late setting of the sun will not reach its climax until January 5, and it will be about the middle of January before the day draws in again. It was on Pecember 10 that the sun rose earliest, and even now he is three minutes later than he was then* In winter it is just the other way round, the evening begins to lengthen out before the shortest day is reached, while the dawn goes on getting later for a week after it is passed.

If, as is suggested in the news today, the All Blacks are to play the first game of football on record on Goodwin Sands, it will not be the first sporting fixture there, for some rare cricket matches have been played—;or begun, at any rate. The Goodwins are about thirteen -miles long and two «ind a half broad, and lie from five to six miles, off the coast of Kent. Although visible at low water, a public excusion to them and the landing of a crowd of people is an event considered worth chronicling in the London papers, the last such mentioned taking place two years ago, on which occasion it is recorded that the sands were uncovered for two hours. Tradition has .it that the Goodwins were originally the Island of Lomea, which belonged at one time to Earl Godwin© and afterwards passed to the Abbot of St. Augustine’s, Canterbury. The Abbot diverted the money usually spent in repairing the dykes to the building of the steeple of Tenterden Church, the consequence being that in 1099 an inundation took place, and “Tenterden steeple is the cause of Goodwill Sands.”

Although most generally known as ‘.‘that most dreadful gulfe and shippeswallower,” the Goodwins occasionally serve for other purposes. At least two persons have been buried on them in accordance with directions left in their wills. The last was a Miss Lawson, of Broadstairs, who ftied in 1920 at the age of seventy, and was duly given a motor-boat funeral and deposited in Trinity Bay in the centre of the sands. An earlier and less successful funeral was that of a Mr. Francis Humphrey Merdeth, or ‘Merrydeth, an eccentric gentleman of Red Lyon Court, London. He was buned on the Sands on March 31, 1751, but he reckoned without the law of gravitation, and his coffin came up and went on a cruise. It was picked up sixteen days later in the sea off the North Foreland by Captain Myrek Petersen, of the ship Johannes, and taken to. Hamburg, but where it was finally deposited remains shrouded in mysterv It is supposed to have been a desire for solitude and Complete repose ( that led to these two requests for burial on the Goodwins, but Mr. Sa™*! Baldwvn, in leaving directions in 1850 that he be buried in the sea off Ih© Needles, K Vhil definite objective—the defeat of his widow’s intention of dancing on his grave. .

Suggestions have been made from time to time for the reclamation of the Goodwin Sands, and a senes of appeared in the London Times on the subject not sp long ago. In of these it was pointed out that if the Channel tunnel scheme ever comes to anything no better way of diswsmgrf the enormous quantity of spoil from te excavating could be than to use it for the purpose of restoring the once-iertile island of Ea 1 Godwine and removing the worst danger to navigation on the coasts of the British Isles. A lighthouse on iron piles was erected on the s.mds m 1846, but was ovenvhelmed the tollowing rear. Despite the four lightships which now mark the limits of the Goodwins, wrecks still occur ever winter, about the most terrible catastrophe on record being the loss or thirteen warships m the great storm of November, 1703.

Three years back, Lord Headley Britain’s Modem Veer, who made his pirtnmage to Mecca a year or so back —made the interesting suggestion m his presidential address to the Society of Engineers that the Goodwin Sands should be explored for treasure. Lord Headley is a distinguished engineer and an authority on sea coast erosion, wave action, and such matters, and his idea was to sink a floating con; cretc tower Ci the centre ot the Goodwins, make borings to locate the thousands of wrecks, and then drive rapid tumnels to them from the tower. He described it as “a highly speculative adventure.” The good peop eof Kent Sire been so industrious all through history in robbing wrecked ships on the Goodwins, that one wonders how much would remain for modem engineers who set out to pick over their sunken bones.

A batch of ciphers must have crept unnoticed into the Calculations of Dr. S. Levin, the pioneer of reformed spelling, who calculates that “one daily paper may use in a year 45,000,000,000.000 useless signs.” The “Manchester Guardian” has workedit out and says it is a big newspaper that' contains as many as one million letters in a single issue, or 300,000,000 in a vear, and if one in every three could ’be dispensed with under reformed spelling, such a paper would have to continue publication every day throughout the year. Sundays included. for 450,000 years before it has to its’ discredit the huge-number of superfluous letters Dr. Levin estimates “one daily paper may use in a year. —Th® doctor may be an authority on orthography, but unless he is the victim of a curious printer's erro .arithmetic is no more his forte than it is T.D.H.’s—and a plague on all people who work out sums on figures like these, we say. Two married women were discussing the of keeping domestic helps. “Why did your washerwoman leave ?” asked Because she wasn’t satisfied with the way the washing machine did the washing!” was the unexpected reply. masquerade. We dance with proud and smiling lips. With frank, appealing eyes, with shv hands clinging; We sing, and few will question if there slips A sob into our singing. Each has a certain step to learn; _ Our prisoned feet move staidly in set places, And to 1 and fro we pass since life hl stern Patiently with masked faces. —Olive Constance