RANDOM NOTES

Dominion, Volume 26, Issue 103, 25 January 1933, Page 8

RANDOM NOTES

Sidelights on Current Events LOCAL AND GENERAL

(By

Kickshaws.)

According to Sir Alfred Gilbert, nobody but an artist knows what the life of an artist is. Sometimes the same mystery also applies to the pictures he makes.

The only thing to do during the slump, in the opinion of an early settler, is to grin and bear it This, it is understood, is better than the alternative, to gin and beer it.

The inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego are said to be a people without chiefs, gods, tobacco, or drinks. 'Which just proves that Utopia is not the myth that civilised countries lead one to imagine.

The fantastic suggestion that London buses should be taken over by the services during the strike is merely a case of history repeating itself. For the first London bus was run by a midshipman and his friends. One hundred and four years ago a midshipman called Shillibeer gave London its first bus services as well as the trim naval-like uniforms that have persisted more or less to this day. Shillibeer’s assistants were all sons of naval officers, and it is said they served him better than their successors who stole £lO a week of the takings. The first bus route was from Paddington to the Bank of England. The venture was not a success. The railways killed an extension of the scheme, high government duty (some 55d. a mile) killed the profits. Eventually the Stamp Office seized the buses for non-payment of licenses. Shillibeer thereupon invented a hearse for cheapening funerals and was the first to be conducted to the cemetery in one.

In view of the invective let loose by Mr. Brangwyn the famous artist, about modern women it is perhaps as well to try to find some standard that can be used as a yardstick. This question has beeu worrying drapers for many years. At one time drapers based their standards upon the Venus of Milo. But she has fallen from grace. According to modern ideals a bust of 37in. and 38in. round the hips is anything but perfect- Most film stars hanker after, and even attain to, a 3-liu. bust and hips. Moreover, most women to-day do not readily admit to more than 36in. round either. No wonder, when ready-made clothes were turned out to a Venus of Milo standard, that they fitted very few women. The modern Venus, according to figures supplied by insurance companies, has a bust of 35in. and 3Sin. hips. AU told, women are now roughly divided into ten types. Mr. Brangwyn may be pleased to learn that included in this list is a “large all-round” and a “very large, bust.” There is yet hope.

Now that both Mr. ChurchiU and General Sir lan Hamilton at one and the same time have accepted responsibility for the Gallipoli failure, it would be interesting to know just what Lord Kitchener would have felt constrained to say. Possibly being a soldier of the old school he would have said nothing. Nevertheless, Kitchener cannot escape a share of the blame. His efforts to run the war as a one man job. were doomed to failure. The fact that he made no efforts to organise a general staff on a Continental basis was not the fault of anybody except Lord Kitchener. The result so far as the Dardanelles were concerned was that the distribution of units rested with the politicians. It is perhaps unfair to blame Kitchener for the delays and the changes of plans that occurred. Nevertheless he was responsible. The result of all this was that everything happened just too late at Gallipoli. Reinforcements arrived exactly when it was too late to use them. Artillery arrived without its ammunition. Ships arrived loaded so that the important things wanted at once were at the bottom.

The total of a million cups of tea that the New Zealand travelling public consume at railway buffets seems large until compared with other countries. The railways in a certain country where 100 per cent, “he-men” are in the habit of travelling, not to mention the “he women,” claim to lay every year covers for no fewer than 50,000,000 people. These travellers contrive somehow to put away 27,000,000 eggs,, enough milk to fill the best part of Wellington harbour, and, yes, last but not least, grape fruit enough to make a heap as high as Mount Victoria. An idea of what this means may be obtained from the fact that enough meals are served- on the American railways in a year to feed a village of 600 persons three times a day from the cradle to the grave. Nevertheless it seems difficult to believe their claim that the meals are really given free. They state that the purchase of the food represents a deficit of half-a-crown a passenger.

So ingrained in a community is the idea that only old men govern that youth becomes old discovering the truth. There have been young Prime Ministers, but so Infrequently that our history books are at pains to mention their age. Other Prime Ministers discreetly have their age omitted. Nevertheless at this moment while age limits are retiring offv cials, prematurely perhaps, it must be realised that Mr. Baldwin himself is 64 years old. His partner, Mr. Ramsay MacDonald is a year older. If Mr. Montagu Norman, of the Bank of England, had been a bank clerk he would have retired long ago. It is much the same with famous generals, xllany leaders whose names are household words were on the wrong side of sixty in the war Admiral Fisher was nearly eighty. Marshal Foch himself was over 70 years old at that time.

A famous London specialist, like our early settlers, has no qualms on the score that old age is unhappy and not worth attaining He declares that if the public obey the teaching of the new generation of doctors they will thoroughly enjoy their old age. They will be free from any mechanical disability and from all degenerative changes, called diseases, which are the penalty that Nature extracts for breaking the laws of health. Youth, he declares, is never really happy. Robust old age is invariably so. “Old age fully compensates for worries, anxieties, strivings, ambitions, miseries, and disappointments associated with youth.” The trouble seems to be that when investigators have succeeded in making us live for a couple of centuries, the haven of old age will not come any nearer. It will merely be postponed All the miseries of youth mentioned above will be prolonged. The problem therefore seems to be to discover some method of growing old while young and remaining in that state for life.