NOTES OF THE DAY

Dominion, Volume 23, Issue 80, 28 December 1929, Page 8

NOTES OF THE DAY

If the totalisator is as reliable an indicator as is generally supposed, there is plenty of ready money available this holiday season. Ten race meetings were held on New Zealand courses on Boxing Day, and almost without exception the betting was largely in excess of that on the same day a year ago. A curious feature is that over £51,000 was wagered at Awapuni against £23,000 at Dunedin. The same disproportion has been noted previously and, although Palmerston North is the centre of a populous district, the same applies to the capital city of Otago. Probably Scottish thrift and caution keeps a brake on speculation in Dunedin, even during the “free-and-easy” of the holidays. Dunedin has never given unlimited support to the totalisator, which is sometimes described as our great' national industry. On turnover the description is not wide of the mark. What other business in New Zealand averages a turnover of £25,000 on every weekday in the year or regularly pavs in taxes well over half a million sterling? *•* * *

Recent London files record a remarkable tribute to Mr. J. L. Garvin, the distinguished journalist who for twenty-one years has editorially directed the London Observer. Jhe occasion was a luncheon given in his honour by the Spectator, in the presence of a company representative of the nation’s social and political life, including past and present Ministers of State who at various times had experienced the sting of Mr. Garvin’s criticism. The Observer’s comments on international questions, as well as on domestic affairs within the Empire, have frequently been cabled to this country. The paper and its editor are no strangers. What .has been the secret of Mr. Garvin’s prestige and influence? The Manchester Guardian suggests that he succeeded by maintaining “the essential unity of a paper that has the breath and bearing of a corporate person.” * * * *

Mr. A. P. Garland, in the English Rcviezv of November, invites his inimitable character, “Sergeant Murphy,” to discuss the propiety of “the language of the trenches” in reference to the controversy over the banning of Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front by some of the public libraries. Therein the Sergeant sums up with his quaint philosophy: “Nobody could tell me annything of the language we used in the trenches. I was as foul as the next man —and fouler. You can’t ask a man to talk like Aunt Betsy of Pansy novels when he’s caked with mud in a filthy trench, and freezin’, and with Death grinnin’ at him over the parapet. But Pm all agen dictaphone reports of language that was never intended for publication. There’s certain things that decent people don’t want recorded on the minutes. It’s wan of the points that distinguishes the fellah that’s civilised from the clod. And to bring them up in cold blood is like undhressin’ in public,*’