RANDOM NOTES

Dominion, Volume 27, Issue 16, 13 October 1933, Page 8

RANDOM NOTES

Sidelights on Current

Events

LOCAL AND GENERAL

(By

Kickshaws.)

According to news from America a coal magnate has given evidence in a union suit/ This blanket code seems to be more informal than one realised.

If one understands correctly the official explanation why Australia can reduce her taxes and we can’t, it is because we have to be taxed so much because we have been taxed so little.

It'is all very well for that German professor to propound a theory that war is the final settler of internatioual differences, but war doesn’t seem to offer any great help in settling its bills.

“Karori” writes: “Many of the younger generation are probably hazy about the relief of Mafeking, as featured in ‘Cavalcade.’ Could you find room in your column for a short story about this famous incident. It should prove of interest to many readers.” . It is impossible to give full details of the siege that made this back-block town in South Africa famous. In 1899 the, town was besieged by the Boers thanks to the usual series of inanities on the part of the master strategists of Great Britain—so marked a feature of the opening phases of most wars in which Britain is involved.' Mafeking was gallantly defended by Colonel Baden Powell, as he was then; better known to-day as the originator of the Boy Scouts. By eating stewed rats and converting dead horses into soups the garrison held out for no less than seven months. It was relieved by Colonel Plumer who rose to fame subsequently in the Great .War. Thanks to the progress made in aviation it is more than probable that the Empire in future will be denied the thrills that these inevitable blunders produce. Thia will be very bad for patriotism.—Kickshaws/ . i . If it be correct, as revealed in a corner of the news recently, that Queen Elizabeth was the first English queen to cover her palace floor with carpets this is yet another precedent for which she is responsible. It is only fair to point; out that Queen Elizabeth was only the second English Queen who could have been the first English Queen to cover her floors with carpets. But she has more than this to answer for. She was the first English Queen to,>mnrder Mary Queen of Scots. She was the first English Queen to knight Drake, aud the last to discover that her lover Raleigh had been carrying on with one of the maids of honour. She was the first English Queen to use a needle because needles were not introduced into England until her reign. She was certainly the first English Queen to have an Armada to fight and she was the first English Queen to give a name to a part of London called Purfleet. When she went to sec her fleet she was so overwhelmed at the ramshackle collection of derelicts she exclaimed: “Oh. my poor fleet.” So they called the place Purfleet because she might have said, "Oh my pure fleet,” but it is very unlikely.

Being Queen of England in the days of Queen Elizabeth must have involved difficulties which to-day it is not easy to visualise. When all that trouble was going on in Scotland it took Queen Elizabeth a good month to get au answer to letters. Even when Mary Queen of Scots arrived on English soil Queen Elizabeth did not know about it for so long that Mqry’s gaoler had time to fall in love with the captive. This naturally made Queen Elizabeth jealous because one disability under which she did not labour was the lack of looking glasses. When her Drakes set‘off into the West she had not the slightest notion what international complications they would bring back with (hem. International diplomacy in those days was slow moving. To-day if an Armada set out to sail up the English Channel there is no doubt that the secret service would be made to feel suspicious that something was in the air by scare headlines in the press. It was not so in the days of Queen Elizabeth. She had neither reliable secret service agents nor press publicity to confound her.

The Canterbury campaigner who lias had his pipe returned to him that he lost 31 years ago iu the Boer War deserves our sympathy seeing that he no longer smokes a pipe. As a memento the recovery of this pipe will rank with all the other incredible coincidences that one encounters in this world. There is a certain airman who cherishes a memento all the more for the reason that he lost it originally during a forced landing in the middle of a desert. He found it three years later when his engine misfired and stopped on a flight across the same desert. As he stepped from the cockpit on the second landing he found his lost souvenir lying at his feet. One can only cap this by the yarn about the girl at a picnic beside a well-known lake in Cumberland. She asked a friend for a donation to a certain charity. “Two years ago,” replied her friend, “I lost half a sovereign here. It is yours if you can find it.” The girl absent-mind-edly let some sand run through, her fingers. In her palm was the missing coin.

AVhile on the subject of coincidences perhaps readers can beat the following curious instance which Ims admittedly the demerit of being perfectly true, but it is given for what it is worth. During, the war a lad was waiting in a trench in France to go over the top. His mother had died when he was a baby. His father he had never known because he had drifted away shortly before his mother died. AVaiting to go over the top he chummed up with a tough old chap belonging to a Canadian regiment. Like the youngster he was a Welshman. He had lost his wife 18 years previously and in his' grief he had left home and child. He bad got into trouble and spent six mouths in gaol. Ashamed to return he had emigrated to Canada. “That’s my wife and myself on our wedding day.” the old fellow said, pulling out a photograph. It was the original of an enlargement that had bung on the wall at the lad's home. One hears of this sort of thing in fiction, but not so often is it confirmed in real life.

Will all those readers anxious to join the Byrd expedition kindly note that Kickshaws can do no more than refer them to Admiral Byrd’s agents. Messrs. Tapley and Co.. Dunedin. There let the pealing organ blow. To the full voiced quire below In service high, and anthems clear As may with sweetness, through mine ear, Dissolve me into ecstasies. And bring all heaven before mine eyea z —Milton.