RANDOM NOTES

Dominion, Volume 26, Issue 29, 28 October 1932, Page 10

RANDOM NOTES

Sidelights on Current Events LOCAL AND GENERAL

(By

Kickshaws.)

Some financial experts are still urging that currency should be tied to sterling. Sterling, it seems, continues to decline with thanks.

According to Mr. Polson currency and unemployment are the two biggest questions before Parliament to-day. Recent speeches make one wonder if Parliament isn't the biggest question before Parliament to-day.

An exponent of our present hospital system considers that it is far ahead of most other countries. Opponents of the system probably agree that If it goes ahead at present rates it will soon be out of sight.

Regarding tohungas (writes F. W. Good, Wellington), I have a book called “Nineteenth Century Miracles.” In the chapter on New Zealand the author quotes the following taken from a small book called “Old New Zealand,” written by General Cummings. A young chief with whom the General was intimate, had been appointed registrar ot births and deaths in a certain district. The General occupied a portion of the chief’s office; but was about to remove to another when the young man encountered a violent death. In changing offices the book of registries was missing. A little while afterward the General was told that the late chief’s relatives intended to invoke his spirit and that as the pakeha had been much beloved by him, he might if he chose, be present.

When the appointed time came, continues “F.W.G.,” tires were lit. The tohunga repaired to the darkest corner of the room. All was silent. There were thirty of us sitting on the floor, the door shut, and the fire low. Suddenly there came a voice out of the partial darkness. “Salutation, salvation to my family, to my tribe, to you, pakeha, my friend!” The spirit, speaking again, gave directions about property and keepsakes. I thought I would more thoroughly test the genuineness of all this. I said, “We cannot find your book with the registered names; where have you concealed it?” The answer came instantly, -“I concealed it between the tahuhu of my house, and the thatch; straight over you. as you go in at the door.” The brother rushed to see. In five minutes he came hurriedly with the book in his hand.”

Souvenir hunters are said to have so completely stripped the aeroplane that crashed at Tawa Flat that there was precious little left. This kink, that is in nearly all of us, Is if anything more inexplicable than the habit of scrihbling names on walls of old buildings, for the latter is not thieving. Individually people are not thieves. Get them in a crowd, such as a mystery train or around an aeroplane crash, and they acquire an abnormal desire to tear plants from the earth and struts from aeroplanes. When *he RlOO returned to England at the end of her Canadian trip guests invited on board in Canada had stolen, as souvenirs, her complete set of glassware. Although mass psychology seems to stimulate souvenir hunters there are people so confirmed in the habit that they have turned into lone hunters. Such an individual made a. souvenir of the key of Bangor Cathedral, England, despite the fact that the key weighed seven pounds.

Nothing is safe from souvenir hunters. Locusts devour every blade of green within miles. Souvenir hunters at Sydney Bridge actually stole the very rivets which held the bridge together. Another keen hunter who made a speciality of acquiring skulls, created a first-class international row by making a souvenir of the skull of an African chief called Mkwawa. Perhaps this souvenir hunter was ignorant of the fact that a clause in the Treaty of Versailles referred specially to this skull. Another person made a souvenir of the hands of the town clock of Armentieres. It is only fair to add that these hands were subsequently returned with an anonymous apology. As a matter of fact no member of the public can wash his hands of the souvenir taint. It permeates all society. Nearly every country house in England is crammed with souvenirs. Even the Koh-i-noor diamond itself is a souvenir of the Sikh wars. Cleopatra’s needle is a souvenir; not to mention the Coronation Stone itself at Westminster Abbey.

The complaint by a Member of the House of Representatives that Members of Parliament spoke not too mucn but too little makes one wonder if excessive speaking is any more a yard stick of 'efficiency than is too little speaking. The member in the House of Commons who never .spoke a single word for thirty-seven years stands out in strong contrast to Mr. Churchill, who never stops speaking. When all is said and done, however, can members of any Parliamentary system, run more or less on House of Commons lines, put his hand to his heart and say that any of his speeches have had the slightest effect on history. The House of Commons at any rate is an assembly not easily swayed either by argument or passion. Its course is usually predetermined by cabinets, caucases, party meetings and the like. The subsequent speech more often than not is mere froth, still-born words. The only excuse that they are born at all is the hope that the electors may read them. But they never do.

The number of parliamentary speeches that have made history in the House of Commons during recent times may be numbered on the fingers of one hand. Mr. Baldwin’s famous “Peace in Our Time” speech that killed the Trade Unions Political Fund Bill in March 1925, possibly stands alone In modern times as a speech that swayed the House as effectively as any oration by Fox or Chatham. The only other speech that came anywhere near that of Mr. Baldwin’s was a speech by Mr. Rosslyn Mitchell, which was virtually responsible for the rejection of the proposed New Version of the Prayer Book. Perhaps it would be only fair to include the speech made in the House of Commons by Sir John Simon on the eve of the General Strike. In a cold, careful, calculating manner, Sir John massed fact after fact, in the middle of a rambling futile debate, that proved that the strike was illegal. Considering the number of speeches that Lord Oxford and Asquith made, only two stand out to-day. One gave life to the first Socialist Government in Britain, and the other killed it. What of the other speeches? The Parliaments of the Empire are littered with them, millions of them. Their futility does no more than delay, not make, history at the taxpayer’s expense.