RANDOM NOTES

Dominion, Volume 24, Issue 266, 6 August 1931, Page 8

RANDOM NOTES

Sidelights on Current Events LOCAL AND GENERAL (By Kickshaws.) Onr law courts have been described as the last citadel of defence of the English language. Perhaps this explains why many legal documents are utterly Incomprehensible to anyone but lawyers. # A visitor says that American doctor# bund together to construct flue buildings to which to send their patients. If they took the trouble to construct fine cemeteries as well the monopoly would be complete. A member of Parliament has brought forward a Bill to enable women to perform the marriage ceremony. All good members of the Husbands' Union should combine to send a deputation to the Prime Minister urging strong resistance against this Bill. One has only to remember just what a woman can do, and does do, at this very moment, to realise the sinister snags that lurk In this projected enactment. The fact is that woman has far too much power already. She can tell a man the obvious truth and then convince him that she never meant It She can tell a man an obvious lie and fool him into believing it. She can convince a man he’s misunderstood without showing for one moment that she understands him all too well. She can throw away a man’s favourite coat and give his favourite suit to charity and swear she has not seen them for years. She can buy a man a perfectly ghastly pipe and make him smoke It Last but not least, she can make a man feel sorry—especially tor the things he has not done. All this is bad enough. Let all men, therefore, resist with their ultimate ounce of tnordl fibre this sinister effort to enable women to have the last say in the marriage ceremony.

One should no more take Mr. Bernard Shaw’s recent visit to Russia seriously than one can take seriously the gentleman himself. .When asked bluntly by an opportuning reporter, “Are yon Shaw?” he replied: “Absolutely certain.” Mr. George Bernard Shaw has had so many sides to his life that it must come as a shock to find himself an oracle; to find nations waiting on his word; to find that people laugh at his Inexcusably rude eccentricities. The “G. 8.5. who delights to tell the world his opinions began life as rent collector. Later on he became a member of the staff of the Edison Telephone Company and accidentally drifted into his life’s profession. When he becomes reminiscent about his early days his bluntness makes It impossible for him to spare even his parents.

Mr. Shaw’s father was an Irish Civil Servant who, late in life, lost all his savings In a (lour milling venture. The son considers that the business was foredoomed to failure because his father was “one of the most Incompetent of mortals, having spent all his life In a post so stupendously useless that it was abolished even in Ireland sixty years ago.” In explaining his subsequent success, Mr. Shaw says quite candidly that after his father and his struggling business had gone “west," “I did not throw myself Into the struggle for existence. I threw my mother into it. I was not a staff of my father's old age; I hung on to my father’s coat tails. Callous to moral babble, I made a man of myself at my mother’s expense Instead of a slave.” So long as .we do not take Mr. George Bernard Shaw too seriously, there Is much to be learned from his eccentric way of looking on life.

If hostesses took Mr. Shaw seriously he would be the most hated man in the world. When invited to a New York dinner he sent his usual curt postcard, with the words, “Thank you for nothing. . . Blood sacrifices are not in my line.” When invited to Shakespeare’s centenary he replied: “I do not keep my own birthday, and I cannot see why I should keep Shakespeare’s.” Whatever the secret, the fact remains that hosts delight in the few lines of pointed abuse with which Mr. Shaw honours their invitations; the public delights in the air of unforced conviction in which he clothes his opinions; until those who totally disagree with him find that he has'forced his way into their affections. His visit to Russia is typical of Mr. Shaw, the oracle. But let us remember that in a moment of confidence he once remarked: “I’m always making mistakes, but, dash It all, man, I am only human, even if I am Bernard Shaw.”

It is stated that Lord Kylsant’s defence has so far cost him £50,000. Moreover, the legal costs of the Mungana scandal are estimated at £450 a day. Not many weeks ago a news item pointed out that in a legal battle in Sydney it cost £ll.OOO to settle a case involving £15,500. After a battle lasting 58 days an award of £4OOO was made. Trolley loads of exhibits formed part of the proceedings; special cheque signatureenlarging machines were imported from England: special fees were paid to handwriting experts and others. Clearly In this case not all the money went to tlie lawyers. Indeed, the jurymen who earned £2l/7/6 a week on the case must have earned a considerable sum.

While there can be little doubt that eminent members of the legal profession earn fees that contribute considerably to the total costs of legal proceedings there are other little ways in which expenditure mounts up in even the simplest of cases. The present cost of the law is by no means limited to the expenses of solicitors. For instance. it costs 30/- to issue a writ in the English High Court, £1 for every duplicate, nnd 5/- for every other document filed. This alone may mount up to many pounds. Moreover, it costs 10/- for defendant to enter an appearance. At practically every stage in the ensuing proceedings litigation fees have to be paid into court by the parties.

In one case the return of £lOO lent was claimed in court The defendant did not even appear, so obviously he had no reasons to give why the money should not be returned. Yet the cost of getting the eminent judge to say so was exactly £55/11/6. If the man whe owed the money had no money, not an unlikely contingency these days, the successful litigant found himself o\er £l5O to the bad. In one curious legal case a tradesman who had sent in a bill for £4O/17/3 was held by the court to have overcharged. The court fixed n fair price nt £25. The ninn who had refused to pay the first extort’nnate bill had to foot an addition.']] £2l/14/4 in costs. When the successful litigant added up his total legal expenses, including his solicitor's bill, he found he would have .saved £B/18/1 if he had paid the tradesman's original extortionate bill without argument,.