RANDOM NOTES

Dominion, Volume 25, Issue 63, 8 December 1931, Page 7

RANDOM NOTES

Sidelights on Current Events LOCAL AND GENERAL (By Kickshaws.) Efforts are being made to give politicians an additional year. After all many a criminal has got more than that for doing far less. ♦ * * It is alleged that traffic officers in Germany do more to choke the flow of traffic than to further it. The effect of this is that the flow of words nearly chokes the traffic officers. • ♦ * It is reported that analysts have found tin in cheese, iron filings in tea, and zinc in sauce. Inspired by this success they are now convinced that they will soon find the pork in a tin of pork and beans. * * ♦ It Is said that a few weeks before Christmas the people of Britain normally withdraw £25,000,000 from tho banks for presents and expenses incidental to the season. This huge sum after circulating for some four weeks returns whence it came. During the period that these millions are liberated for their annual outing it is perhaps of interest to see what happens to them. The “piece de resistance," in more ways than one, Is naturally the Christmas dinner. This event, which occupies perhaps one hour, accounts for £8,000,000 of the grand total. This annual gorge involves the greater part of 10,000 tons of beef, 600,000 turkeys, 1,500,000 pheasants, ducks and chickens, 800,000 rabbits, and last but nut least 10,000 tons of Christmas pudding. Incidentally into this pudding go among other things 140,000,000 gallons of milk, 40,000,000 eggs and 1,200 tons of currants. Out of the remaining £17,000,000, some £5,000,000 goes m fruit decorations and tips; a similar sum goes in travel, and a mere £7,000,000 goes in presents, postage, and other incidentals. It will be seen therefore that the idea that a community spends lavishly on presents at Christmas must be qualified in the case of Britain by the statement that expenditure upon the inner man is even more lavish.

Scientists are reported to be at work finding new uses for wool. It seems that such diverse objects as. wallpapers, polishes and leather can be made from wool. In the face of competition from other natural products and from synthetic upstarts the tendency today is to find more and more uses for the old originals. For it is toot only wool producers who are anxious to stimulate demand by finding novel uses for their product. Rubber interests are still on the look-out for new channels into which to divert their surplus stores of rubber. In spite of the millions of tons absorbed by tire manufacturers, in spite of the thousands of miles of rubber hose turned out every year, in spite of the hundreds of tons used for sealing rings „ in fruit jars, efforts have been made to popularise such things as rubber handkerchiefs, rubber sponges, and even rubber cloth. Cotton interests in their turn have been busy investigating the possibi’lty of giving us cotton roads, and compressed cotton wood. Innumerable explosives have as their base cotton in various forms. Even milk interests produced such an unexpected thing as penholders made of milk. Incidentally, sheet milk put up in book form is said to be attaining popularity on the Continent

One cannot help wondering if Britain has not become an accepted “mug” in the mattei of war debts. Can it be true that other nations are trading upon that much boomed dogged honest British way in order that they shall escape debt burdens contracted by them in the war. Now that the beginning of the war is some 17 years off, generations’bom subsequent to it might justifiably believe that "France rushed in to the rescue of Britain. In the patriotic fervour of 1914 nobody stopped to add up the answer. It is doubtful, even in those days, if any Briton would have looked with equanimity on remitting nearly three-quar-ters bf French war debts and over three-quarters of the Italian debts due Britain, as was finally arranged. It is indeed doubtful if many of us would have been pleased if we had been told in 1914 that we were going to shoulder a War. debt of roughly £2,500,000,000, or more than all the gold supplies in existence. This is made up partly of debts contracted by Allied nations. But the matter is worse than that, for some do not Intend to pay a penny. Russia, for example, having borrowed the equivalent of £900,000.000, subsequently repudiated . the entire debt Taxpayers in Britain did not know in the spring of 1914 that after the war they would be paying a yearly sum of £45,000,000 for the pleasure of honouring in America Russia’s dishonour in Europe.

Even the holders of £65,000,000 in French Rentes might have had cause for despondency if they could but have realised that France, once the war dangers were over, was going to deliberately dishonour their holdings. The fact is that British holders of rente stock who were not paid at the gold rate of the franc made a present to France of £50,000,000 in 1920. On the other hand, where the rights of French citizens have been concerned, under exactly similar circumstances, France has taken vigorous action in the Permanent Court of International Justice to force defaulters to pay up at top price and in gold. Comparisons are not half so odious as inconsistencies.

An agitator who used the word “scab” against two well-known politicians explained that this word had been used in a political sense and pot in its customary application. We take the word “scab” to refer to-day to a workman who refuses to join an organised movement on behalf of his trade. The United States of America, as a matter of fact, gave us this customary use of the word over a century ago. That country takes a delight in resurrecting old words for modern usages. For no less than three centuries there was no customary use of the word “scab.” The English-speaking peoples had forgotten that such a word existed. When in the 16th century one reads about “a vapring scab and a great swearer,” the word was presumably still being used literally in its customary sense. But even before that it had been customarily applied to women in the sense of a. “slut” or a “scold.” Thus does our language become revived and in the process changes customary meanings. After the same manner tha word “let” once meant “hinder”; “noon” meant 9 o’clock; “sugar” once referred to sand; “consider” inferred a habit of gazing at the stars; “silly" customarily meant “holy”; and an “officious" pepson was a philanthropist,