RANDOM NOTES

Dominion, Volume 24, Issue 52, 25 November 1930, Page 8

RANDOM NOTES

Sidelights on Current Events LOCAL AND GENERAL

(By

Kickshaws.)

Racketeers in America are fce prosecuted for failure to pay incometax. Racketeering the racketeers would seem to complete the vicious circle in a manner highly satisfactory to everybody except the racketeered. • 4 « Thieves used a ladder to enter Chelmsford Public Health Office and stole £25. In cat burglar circles this is thought to be an amateur’s first steps in crime.—“ Passing Show.” • » • It is rumoured that a small cinema is to be built at a railway station. An enthusiastic motorist says he knew that sooner or later a use would be found for railway stations.—“ Humorist” Dean Inge says he supposes that in fifty years’ time some old fogey will be writing about the “dear old thirties." Of course he will. Every generation progresses from bad to worse, otherwise why do people look back so lovingly on the simple past? I In 1980 it will be amusing to look back on 1930 and marvel at the absurd manner in which people contrived to kill themselves while crawling along the roads at only fifty miles an hour. Remember it is not much more than thirty years ago since Patent Offices refused to accept inventions relating to flying machines, on the grounds that they were ridiculous. Scarcely thirty years ago we laughed at the ancients in their efforts to transmute metals, and prolong life. To-day we chat, off-hand, about the common origin of matter while Voronoff has become almost part and parcel of the inane social chatter of the day. We consider an upholstered £2OOO car or a 40-seater aeroplane the acme of transport comfort. The Victorians were content with cattle trucks. The world is small enough now. In fifty years it will be worse. Trips from New Zealand to Alaska will rank, in relative time and distance, no more than a present day run from Wellington to Auckland. Our ancestors will sympathise with us for our obsolete use of radio, our waste of power, our uncomfortable houses, our ignorance of roadmaking, aviation, and cleanliness. They will smile at our dependence upon nature Synthetic rubber, sugar, clothes, paper, meat, wheat, and wood will be more than experimental toys of the 1980 laboratories. * • • Although it is doubtful if the origin of life will have been discovered by then, there can be little doubt that our ancestors will be involved in disputes about ectogenetle birth, the marvel of the 1980 laboratories. Indeed, mechanical separation of reproduction from marriage will give the people of 1980 a subject far more controversial than the most controversial aspect of life known to-day. The dear old thirties, Indeed, will lie regarded as a complacent era when civilisation was tumbling along in placid waters immediately above the 1980 rapids. So quaint, so slow, so thoughtful, so romantic—l93o will be considered, nevertheless overpoweringly dull and stupid- * * • Now that Russia is again to the forefront, the somewhat naive remarks of a Russian woman about conditions are well worth repeating. “I am a widow with three children,” she explained, “and life was ~ery hard for me during the Revolution. I learned the trade of pottery in order to get bread. It is a hard trade, very wet work, and heavy, too. making the big earthenware pots we use In the villages. That autumn I had already 10001 b. of bread, enough to keep my children till the spring-time. So now I said to myself, ‘I have bought myself six months of leisure, and 1 can give the time necessary for service in the SelfHelp Committee.’ During the whole winter I worked on the Self-Help Committee, devoting all my days to it. They had a paid secretary, but I was not paid. They made me assistant secretary. Then they wanted me to go to the district Congress. I said, ‘You must pay not only for my trip, but a woman to look after my children.’ At the Congress I told how badly ail the work went. ‘Now they will be insulted,’ I thought. But at the end they said, ‘Auisia Ustipovna, we are going to elect you to go to the Provincial Congress —you can tell them very strongly how bad things are.’ Now. whenever I travel, the Government pays a woman to look after my children, and I work at organising women instead of pottery.” One must indeed move in a roundabout manner is Russia to obtain a Government nursemaid. * After a short flutter in the English Channel it has been decided to install British engines in future Germanmade Dornier Do.X aeroplanes. In her quiet, modest way Britain will accept this as a feather in the cap of her aeroplane engine designers. It is pleasant to realise that there are still things that are made better and more enduring in Britain than anywhere else in the world, not excluding the . United States. It is customary to quote such well-known '-stances as British-made steel rails, British motor-cycles, which are in a class bv themselves, English-made wat-hes and chronometers, acknowledged the world over to be the most costly and the best, and British steamships. t There are other lesser known channels in which Britain still leads. Britlt sports goods still maintain a lead which is sadly acknowledged In countries making exactly the same things. Footballs and lawn tennis rackets are sent in large quantities to such a manufacturing rival as Germany. Moreover. English golf bal 1 " and club heads are in great demand even In the United States—lofted not only across he Atlantic but right over a high tariff wall at the other end. Even gymnastic equipment, once a Swedish monopoly, nnd ice hockey equipment, a wane little played in England, are now both made in Britain in large numbers. • • • Admittedly England is fortunately placed in that she has very nearly a monopoly in the materials used in many sports. English willow for cricket bats has no competitor. The reason why Germany has yet to turn out as good a tennis racket as England is simply because she has no counterpart of English ash. English footballs are now standard .ill over the world on account of the reliability of the leather from which i'-i'v are ni“de. I hold it truth, with him who sings To one clear harp in divers tones, That men may rise on stepping-stones Of their dead selvw to higher things. —Tennyson.