WITHOUT PREJUDICE

Dominion, Volume 20, Issue 61, 6 December 1926, Page 10

WITHOUT PREJUDICE

NOTES AT RANDOM

(By

T.D.H.)

Mr. de Valera says Ireland must keep on fighting until it is a sovereign republic.—The difference between a eovereign republic and a Dominion is that a sovereign republic can declare war on anybody and everybody and a Dominion can’t. Ireland naturally cannot remain in this insufferable position. Finland’s interesting scheme for a. League of Nation’s war chest into which any nation feeling like having a war could dip its hands reminds us that Germany in pre-war days had such a chest. Stored up in Julius Tower at Spandau, the Germans kept a great pile of sovereigns ready for emergencies. In the days before the war profiteer had learnt to open his .mouth it seemed a truly prodigious pile. There was round about 45 tons of gold stored in this stronghold, and many tourists who learned of the vast horde felt that Germany was well-prepared indeed to overrun the world. When the world-war got undec way the gold in the Julius Tower did not go very far. .There was £6,000,000 of it, and in Germany’s first year of war it would have covered that country’® war expenditure for 2J days. In the last year of the war Germany’s war bill swallowed up money at the rate of six millions every seventeen or eighteen hours all round the clock. The total cost of the war, according to some authorities, averaged out at about £1,250,000 an hour for every hour it lasted. The cable message, unfortunately, does not tell us how much money Finland proposes should be in this new war chest, nor just where it is to eomts > from.

This new proposal for more up-to-date facilities for a new war on the time-payment plan makes ■it interesting to recall that it is only eight years ago since the great “war to end ’ war” ended. According to Mr. Vedel Petersen, the Danish statistician, the total number of military persons killed and died in that disaster must lie between ten and eleven millions, but, he adds,, “Russia's losses are not known, and, presumably, never will be.”

About three years ago there were some references in this column to. the ill-fated attempt to colonise the Auckland Islands, away in the far south. It is nearly eighty years ago since the colonists landed on those moist and generally inhospitable. isles, under the auspices of Messrs. Bnderby's great whaling firm. Although it had a Lieutenant-Governor and . all necessary appurtenances for setting up in business as an independent concern, the settlers evinced such a marked desire to shift to somewhere out of the rain that the colony soon languished, and the whole enterprise faded out into the realm of things that Might Have Been. Mr. Russell Duncan, of Napier, however, now forwards a note to say that he recently discovered three survivors of the Auckland Islands colony.

Mr. Duncan writes: “The only known survivors of the F.nderby expedition to the Auckland Islands are three persons, all living at Sydney, viz., Mr. Fred Crane, who was taken to the Islands as an infant; Mr. Harry E. Crane, who was born at Port Ross on May 24, 1850; and Mr. Edwin Parkinson, a broker, of Sydnev, also born at Port Ross, but. Mr. Harrv Crane not know the date of his birth When the settlement was abandoned, two whale ships sailed from Port Ross with the people, one ship was the Fancy and the other the Samuel Enderby, one going to Svdnev, the other to Lew Zealand. Mr. Harrv Crane is inclined to think that it was the Fancy which brought his parents and their family to Sydney.

The Messrs. Crane informed Mr. Dancan that when the expedition reached the Auckland Islands a party of Maoris were living at Port Ross, and the settlers were led to believe that these people had been driven away from New Zealand for some tribal offence. The Maoris were well behaved and lived in harmonv with the settlers, so much so that' the Maori children frequently put in an appearance at Mr. Crane s cottage at meal times—and Mrs. Crane found that they were very partial to porridge. Mr. Crane, senior, m describing the weather conditions to his sons, used to say that it rained for six days in the w-eek and blew a hurricane on the seventh.

In connection with Enderbys’ expedition, Mr. Harry Crane also said that the last member of the crew of the Fancy died at Svdnev some years ago in the person of Captain F. Bracegirdle Captain Bracegirdle was a boy on board the Fancv on the vovage from London to the Auckland Islands; He had a long seafaring career, and eventually became a pilot on the Sydney Harbour sendee. ' The Crane family have conducted a large manufacturing business in Pitt Street, Sydnev, since 1867.

Handshaking, which is stated to have been almost completely superseded in Italy by tbe Fascist salute, seem® to have been less common and of much greater significance in Britain a century ago than now. Between the sexes it was regarded' according to a recent writer, as late as 1628, as of. doubtful propriety. Sir John Nicboll, in giving judgment in a divorce case, remarked that “no indecent familiarities bevond kissing had been proved, adding' “the shaking of hands when thev met is a practice now so frequent l>etween persons of different sexes, however opinions might differ as to its delicacv, that no unfavourable inference could be deduced therefrom. Jane— “There’s one thing I don’t like about Joe— his English is bad.” j oa n—“Yes—and his Scotch is terrible.” “SO THIS WAS ALL.” So this was all there was to the great plav She came so far to act tn, this was all- , , Except the short last act and* the slow fa” Of the final curtain, that might catch half-wav As final curtains do, and leave the gray Lorn end of things too long exposed. The hall Clapped faintly, and she took her curtain callKnowing how little she had left to say And in the pause before the last set started, Slowlv unpinning the roses she had worn, . • She considered lines that had been, said . . And found them hardly worthy tne high-hearted Ardor that she had brought, nor tfee bright, torn Roses that shattered round net dripping red. --Sara Teasdale in the "Lcsdon Mercury.”