RANDOM NOTES

Dominion, Volume 24, Issue 291, 4 September 1931, Page 8

RANDOM NOTES

Sidelights on . Current Events LOCAL AND GENERAL

(By

Kickshaws.)

A medical expert aaya mat there is nothing like a cold bath when it's warm. A similar opinion is held by quite a large number of schoolboys. A motoring journal says that many people are going so far by car and then walking the rest We thought that modern cars had outgrown this tiresome habit so prevalent twenty years ago. , , * If Bradman has sold his Australian birthright on the field of sport to an English cricket team for the sum of £25 a week. It will be deplored by sporting circles In both Australia and NewZealand. If this habit becomes common, It will be more profitable for an amateur team visiting England to keep their shining lights at home—for fear that they might lose them. Possibly what has occurred was bound to take place sooner or later, for It is well known that many English football and cricket elevens are In reality little else but money-making machines. This is especially the case in football. On that understanding the habit of buying and selling players is not only forgivable, but necessary. • « • When it is known that for a sum of £lO,OOO a London football club imported a North Country Scottish centreforward, calculated by his fame to give returns In gate money of many hundreds per cent., the transfer seems businesslike enough. The only unfair part of such transactions refers to players themselves. Although their powers can command huge Inter-club transfer fees they themselves receive only £8 a week; falling to £6 In the summer. Britain Is by no means the only culprit regarding the buying and selling of human beings on the field of sport Last year a famous goalkeeper in Spain, where the game blds to oust bull-fighting In popularity, was paid £2OOO cash and £3O a week to change sides. " '

If sport has to be commercialised, it may as well be done on accepted business principles. We tolerate, for example, both professional and amateur vocalists. But that does not justify the bonus habit that has crept into the field on occasions too numerous to mention. For example, no less than 21 amateur competitors in the famous Tourist Trophy race last year were suspended for accepting “bonuses” from firms interested In the race. The word “bonus" sometimes seems indistinguishable from the word “bribe.” In some cases English amateur cricketers have received sums amounting to £lOOO In a season. -While It is not unknown for boys with undoubted ability on the cricket or football field to receive free education at well-known public schools » equivalent In the course of a few years to many hundreds of pounds.

Although It is natural to link the present Ruapehu disaster with the Mount Cook tragedy of last year the two are totally distinct, despite the findings of the coroner in the latter. If ever there was opportunity for a tragedy from exposure, that opportunity has been offered on the slopes of Ruapehu. Lost in a blizzard for several days, frozen at night by the numbing cold of high altitudes, even the staunchest human frame might be calculated to succumb. The fact that all but one of the lost party have been found already Is, Indeed, conclusive evidence ‘ that the human frame can suffer prolonged extremes of cold without disaster. At the inquest on the five people who lost their lives at Mount Cook last year it was stated that they died of exposure. But there is every reason to suspect that this was not the case. Although not warmly clad the four women and their guide were at least sufficiently warmly clothed to resist considerable cold for some hours.

In the Mount Cook tragedy last year. It seems- incredible that five human beings could succumb to the comparatively small extremes of cold that they were called upon to bear in the‘short space of two hours or less. Moreover, if the party had felt the effects of cold surely the three spare cardigans in their rucksacks would have been utilised. Five people would not die of exposure all at the ( same time — almost instantly. Tests made on lightly-clothed Individuals show that man can stand temperatures In the vicinity of zero for several hours without deadly results. Indeed, shipwrecked mariners have withstood biting cold and snow for a whole night. While the present Ruapehu disaster may have tested human endurance to its utmost, the Mount Cook fatality did not do so. Many people who have made a considered investigation of that case are of the opinion that death came instantaneously as the result of secondary effects from a nearby stroke of lightning. Certainly that appears to be by far the most reasonable hypothesis.

It possibly came as a surprise to those who read about the Grand Canal in China bursting its banks to learn that this canal was built 2300 years ago. However advanced engineers of to-day may be, assuredly they can make no claim to have originated the fundamental details of canal construction. Canals built to-day are but modern prototypes of a method of artificial transport that has survived more civilisations than any other. While the Grand Canal is undoubtedly becoming old, there are other canals which were hundreds of years old before the Grand Canal was even conceived. For example, our Suez Canal, Ffar from being something modern, Is merely a copy of something very old. From inscriptions found at Karnak it is known that a canal existed near Suez 3300 years ago.. Moreover, there It, every reason to believe that even in that far-off time' the canal was many, centuries old. The channel of this ageold canal is traceable to this very day.

In 609 B.C. a comparatively modern Pharaoh started to build another Suez Canal. The fact that 120,000 men died on the constructional work was sufficient even to dismay a Pharoah. The canal was subsequently completed a generation later. In 200 B.C. direct connection was made with the waters of the Red Sea. Since that date the original canals in that area have been allowed to fall into disrepair. They finally became unserviceable about A.D. 770. In the same century schemes were again afoot for building another Suez Canal. But after five centuries of talk the Turks intervened aud the project was dropped. Even the Panama Canal Is by no means a new idea. Over 400 years ago a Portuguese navigator actually published a book on the subject. But for the fact that the Spanish Government passed a law to the effect that “to seek or make known any better route was forbidden under penalty of death” we might have hod ou£ Panapia fiftsai jcwisrieji