WITHOUT PREJUDICE

Dominion, Volume 18, Issue 152, 24 March 1925, Page 6

WITHOUT PREJUDICE

NOTES AT RANDOM ■

(By

T.D H.)

Taranaki is annoved because it I* not a bankruptcy district.—lt may be more annoyed, too, when it is. France, according to a Parisian fireeater, has everything in hand for a war with Britain.—The birth-rate statistics leave one a little in doubt as to where the Frenchmen to fight it are to come from. “Dear T.D.H.— This man Fitzurse must be suppressed. The public has had enough of his insane bletherings. The man is a mischief-maker pure and simple. What has your column come to that you publish the views of a ham-strung old dotard -who is an object of pity to ah who know him 7 It is time that the Civic League was made aware it is this man Fitzurse and his worthless cronies at the taproom he frequents who are stirring up all this agitation about the streets. This Fitzurse has a decrepit, brokenmouthed, scrofulous, contraption of a motor-car, and was infuriated at having to pay two pounds tax on it, that sum probably representing twenty-five shillings more than any junk-dealer would give for the remains.

“Fitzurse declares that the streets of the city are in such a state that he cannot use his car. The truth of the matter is that if the pavements of the heavenly regions were put down here and laid down-hill all the way the antediluvian chariot of Major Fitzurse (if the braggart is a Major) would be incapable of motion on them. There were no complaints about the state of our city streets until this military dead-beat started button-holing reputable citizens and pouring his poisonous views in their ears, and insinuating libellous innuendoes that Councilor Forsyth, as head of the Works Committee, ought to have' filled the holes in Tinakori Road. Fitzurse has even been carrying on his diabolical machinations to the extent of pretending concern lest persons may be drowned in the potholes in Taranaki Street when the wet weather sets in. Let me warn this man Fitzurse not to go too far. Those who know him treat his alcoholic vapourings with the contempt they deserve, but there is a limit to their patience, as the old poltroon may find. I feel it my duty to warn the public against a man who was cashiered out of three armies, deserted from five others, who was court-mar-tialled out of four more, and dis. missed with disgrace from the remaining three with the insignia of hi# rank publicly stripped from him, his sword broken, and his boots thrown after him. Nobody cared what the streets were like until this decayed tuft-hunter began his conspiracy, and I say ‘to h 1 with Fitzurse,' and let us stick to city councillors whose works are proved and tried and who have given the sort of roads we have got.—l am, etc., HENRY M. RODGERSON, M.D.

London, it seems, wants a motto for a coat of arms, and has set up a committee to find oue that will command general acceptance. The Corporation of London has a very ancient coat of arms with a cross and a dagger, and the motto “Domine nos dinge,” but the London County 1 Council, which is all London and not just merely the city, has lately set about finding itself arms and supporters, and the other necessary heraldic equipment to put itself on the map ,in the Heralds’ ■ College. Apparently it does not like the idea of adopting the city motto with its appeal for heavenly direction—municipal critics possibly asserting that the London County Council is directed from quite other sources. It will be interesting to sec what sort of a motto it is that commands general acceptance in London m the present year of grace.

New Zealand, in applying to the Heralds’ College for a coat of arms some years back, was accommodated with one that had attached to it the motto “Onward,” embodying the surname of its then Prime Dliilister. A suggestion was made in this column some years ago that our national arms might be brought up to date by changing t3e motto to "En Masse,” but the matter appears to have been overlooked.

Talking about coats of arms reminds us that, according to a learned American, tlie desire to fly has been so firmly implanted in the human breast for countless generations that the world’s most conspicuous soaring bird, the eagle, has m consequence been adopted as a national, tribal, and family emblem to a greater extent than any other object. We distrust these theories. The eagle figures'pretty largely in heraldic devices, etc., it is "true, but so does the lion. And shall we have some gentleman from the universities inform us that the adoption of the lion signifies mankind’s overwhelming desire to grow whiskers ? Confirmation of this theory would, of course, follow from the circumstance that interest in heraldic lions is practically dead now, coincidently with the death of interest in whiskers —which all goes to show that the world, as Dlr. Ramsay MacDonald has been finding out since he lost office, and returned the motor-car, is, going to the dogs at a rapid rate.

If man cannot fly without mechanical assistance is seems that some 600 other mammalians can. Dlost of these are bats, it is true, but the world has a flying squirrel that does a combined leap and glide of over a hundred feet from tree to tree; a flying maki in the East Indies that does "two hundred feet at a time; and flying opossums in New Guinea and part's of Australia. There is also in the East Indies a flying lizard, and flying frogs in Sumatra, Borneo, and Java, while Malaya has a tree-climbing snake that with no such special adaptation of the body as exists with the flying mammals, can glide through the air from tree to tree hurling itself like a missile. In writing of these strange fliers in the “Scientific Monthly,” Dlr. A. H. Clark, of the Smithsonian Institution, remarks that practically the whole lot of them come from the East Indies and roundabout. Why should things 'that do not fly elsewhere take to flying in the East Indies ? The question is no easier to answer than why in tropical America alone in all the world should all sorts of animals use their tails to hang on to trees and generally assist them in climbing.

Sooner or later in any branch of inquiry one comes upon a why that cannot be answered, and when the scientist gives up man calls the poet in to give an explanation.

Philosophy is the science of knowledge of things that nothing is known about, and that the human mind would be incapable of understanding if anything was known about it.

It was the grammar lesson, and the teacher was doing her best to explain to her little scholars the meaning ot “tense.” “If the sentence ‘I had money’ is in tlie past tense, what tense is this sentence in,. ‘I have money’?” she asked. And one bright pupil replied, “Pretence, miss.”

THE DANCE. A thread of flame-lit motion, A strand of music caught, Twisted and twirled together By a pattern Beauty taught; f And spread across the spring grase Ableaching in the moon, A filmy lace of lad and last. That can’t outlast the tune. —Edith Thompson in the ‘'Fortmu**