RANDOM NOTES

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 54, 27 November 1928, Page 10

RANDOM NOTES

SIDELIGHTS ON CURRENT EVENTS LOCAL AND GENERAL (By Cosmos.) Modem woman’s fondest wish is to be weighed and found wanting. ♦ • • A naturalist says that birds are very wise, but unless poverty is really a blessing' in disguise, the stork uses very poor judgment. • • • One of the manifestations of old age, we are told, is failing memory. Which tends to explain why the older we get the more we criticise the rising generation. « • • In business it is customary to charge for a thing and pay for it later. In the Sydney Municipality it looks as if payments come first and charges are filed later.

If a monarchy were restored in France, the Due de Guise, would become Jean the Third. Interest therefore attaches to the daughter of the Due, whose approaching marriage is referred to in the news this morning. Although the cable does not state where the Pretender to the Throne is, it is safe to assume that he is not on French soil, as, according to the laws of France “the territory of the French Republic is and remains forbidden to the heads of the families that have reigned over France. . . . Whoever, by infringing this interdiction, may be found in France, Algeria or the Colonies, shall be punished with imprisonment for a period of from two to five years.” When his elder brother, the Due d’Orleans, died last year in Sicily, the Due de Guise with his Duchess and three children (a son and two daughters) were living in the French country at his Chateau de Nouvion-en-Thier-ache, but on succeeding his brother as “head of the family,” he had to comply with the law and depart from France.

“B” writes:—There may be various opinions as to whether the letters of our kinswoman, the late Katherine Mansfield, should be given to the public ; there can be no doubt that all New Zealand hearts will go out to her memory in her home-sickness, of which she wrote many times during her life overseas. Throughout the voluminous correspondence which had been preserved, there are numerous references to her love of New Zealand. “And another thing is the longer I live the more I turn to New Zealand,” she wrote. “I thank God I was born in New Zealand. A young country is a real heritage, though it takes one time to recognise It. But New Zealand is in my very bones. What wouldn’t I give to have a look at it”

The suggestion made in the Auckland Supreme Court yesterday that New Zealand may be regarded as a second Reno is far-fetched. Reno, in the State of Nevada, United States of America, has made a business of easy divorce, which apparently is not without profit to a certain section of the community. Until last year, six months’ residence by one of the parties seeking a divorce was demanded by the authorities at Reno, but when it was whispered that another State intended to make a strong bid for the business of untying matrimonial knots, by reducing the residential qualification to four months, Reno promptly amended the period to three. In consequence, there was a decided increase in the divorce turnover, and fortyeight divorce suits were applied for within forty-eight hours of the amendment becoming law. It has been stated that it is by no means a difficult matter for foreigners to obtain a divorce in Paris or Mexico, and until divorce was made easier in Reno, many thousands of unhappily married people went to one or other of those countries to seek freedom from matrimonial ties with a minimum of inconvenience.

At the present rate of development, it is anticipated that the divorce business will eventually become one of the chief activities of Reno, and one American writer, in discussing the question, paints the following picture of Reno a few years hence: “Reno will become a flourishing city, full of hotels which cater for spoiled, idle wives, drawn from the four quarters of America by the opportunity to obtain speedy divorces on flimsy pretexts, and for spoiled, idle men, drawn there by the same lure.”

Who owns the air? We know that under certain conditions the owner of a plot of land is also owner of the soil beneath his plot as far down as he likes to go, provided his title deeds include mining rights and provided also that he doesn’t calculate the precise antipodes of his plot and lay claim, if in New Zealand, to a slice of Portugal or Madrid. The legal aspects of land ownership below the surface have assumed definite form, although what happens in the centre, where all ownership meets, is a problem for future lawyers to determine. But the ownership of the air above one's land will soon assume considerable importance. Already in England there have been significant clashes in regard to this matter. A resident of Wallington, near Croydon aerodrome, already put in a general claim for damages against Imperial Airways, Ltd. Although he does not specify his own little bit of air, he complains of the noise and general racket from the air above. This, he claims, is driving people away, spoiling trade, and making the neighbourhood .“go down.”

In Monmouth an airman has been summoned for flying without a license. He might justifiably claim that he was flying in privately owned air and could not be convicted. Whilst at Humble. Southampton, where in certain winds, the machines are forced to fly low above the roofs before alighting, a resident staked out his claim to the air above with the aid of tall flagstaffs. Miss Grace, the niece of the famous W. G. Grace, sustained serious but not fatal injuries as a result of crashing into the flagstaff. The aviation authorities state that had the injuries been fatal the owner of the flagstaff would have been arrested for manslaughter. But so far there is no legal ruling on the point.. The property owner is most certainly entitled to some protection for his chimney pots and other justifiable excursions into the air above his roof. On the other hand, it is doubtful If he could fairly claim all the air above his house. At a height of even a mile he would have difficulties in staking out this claim, much less of enforcing It. There are already certain broad regulations relating to the flight of foreign aeroplanes over land owned by other nations, but until some definite ruling is given about how much air the householder owns above’ his house, the future seems full of petty wrangles. From Wellington’s point of view the position is important, for the new aerodrome at Lyall Bay, although small, Is situated close to a densely inhabited area similar to, though, smaller, than Croydon itself.