RANDOM NOTES

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 150, 20 March 1936, Page 10

RANDOM NOTES

Sidelights on Current Events

(By

Kickshaws.)

The modern diplomacy game seems to be played with navies on the table and bombers up the sleeve. If we understand matters security must come before disarmament, but security cannot come without armaments. ♦ • • A speaker declares that with proper treatment the world could surpass ail records in prosperity. But just look at the size of the subsequent slump. S * * “Ail argument has cropped up,” says “Doubtful,” “as to what is the correct pronunciation of Majoribauk Street, is it Marsli —or March-bank or Majorbank? I am of the opinion that it is the first-mentioned. Please state your opinion which will be accepted as final.” [This question was referred to the Surveyor-General, Mr. H. E. Walshe, who has kindly supplied the following answer:—“There is no doubt that this street was named after Stewart Marjoribanks, a director of the New Zealand Land Company. The correct spelling is therefore ‘Marjoribanks.’ The pronunciation given me by Dr. G. H. Scholefield is ‘March-banks.’”)

Are we for ever to see the peace of the world endangered by never-ending friction between the French nation and the German nation? The present crisis is indeed but another factor in the long chain of never-ending bitterness that quite unnecessarily has riven Western Europe. If only France and Germany could settle down side by side there would be no need for treaties, pacts, for the taking of sides’, or for the hundred and one actions in Europe that lead to nothing else but mutual suspicion. Why all Europe should be cursed by this traditional hatred is a matter that historians have never sought to reveal. How the mutual distrust can be allayed is a problem that statesmen have always sought to discover. Yet this hatred goes on and on, collecting within its maelstrom countless millions of peoples who have no interest in the matter. The peace of the world has been shattered on more than one occasion by a vendetta that ill-befits civilisation. ♦ V * Cannot the old wounds between France and Germany be allowed to heal and the two nations begin an era of mutual help and support? Some three hundred years ago when France helped the Protestants against the Germans, the seeds of thte everlasting hatred were sown. War between Germany and France is so regular an episode in Europe one is almost safe to hazard the remark in any period of the history of the two countries. There was war in 1674, in 1704. In 1795 when Germany lost the Netherlands, the territories west of the Rhine and the Italian possessions. Napoleon then came on the scene and the German empire virtually dissolved. In ISIO France annexed Northern Germany. In 1813 the French got a knock and in 1870 another one. Smarting under perpetual threats from France the German nation as we know it to-day was born. If there had not been this thread of hatred, so discernible in the pages of history, probably Germany to-day would never be the united whole that France has caused her to become. So this hatred feeds itself and grows. Not even the war of 1914 quenched it. Must it always be so? Have the peoples of the two countries to kill one another until the end of all time? « * * What shall we do with the speeding motorist? “Seal him up,” suggests a magistrate. But there. aro other punishments to fit the crime. Why stop at sealing? . In America, where they never do things by halves, the latest punishment is to sentence speedsters to spend a stated time in the city morgue, looking at the maimed bodies of those who have been killed in motoring accidents. Those motorists who have undergone this punishment are stated to have emerged in a state of collapse. As a deterrent there is little doubt that this ghoulish punishment fits the crime more effectively than anything else. But there ate other punishments less severe that might well be- introduced into New Zealand. Iu some countries speedsters suffer the penalty of instant deflation—of all tires. They are left to pump them up and reflect upon the evils of high speed. Moreover, the tonic effect of a little calculated sabotage whereby certain; parts are put out ol action and the motorist left to discover the trouble might also have beneficial results.

Perhaps in the very near future wo shall have learned judges sentenciug errant motorists to daily deflation of their tires. Every evening they will deflate their tires and every morning before work they will have to inflate. The motorist, one must admit, is particularly vulnerable to punishments calculated to bring home to him the error of fast ways. He might indeed be ordered to assist in cutting a trench across his favourite stretch of highway. Not, of course, that there seems to be any lack of effort in this respect ou the part of the authorities. Possibly, the greatest deterrent to speeding would be to order the motorist to walk to bis destination, leaving the car by the roadside. Once this idea of making the punishment fit the crime becomes popular we shall see our friends, and our friends will see us, engaged in all manner of unusual jobs about the car. The traffic authorities, we feel, would be unanimous in upholding a sentence that ordered the culprit to wash and polish the speed cop’s car. , * . Naturally the Great Seal of England will have to be altered now that a new Kiug reigns upon the Throne of England. The picture of the Great Seal yesterday shows that this precious piece of symbolism is in reality a very ordinary-looking affair. Tiie Great Seal is used for various purposes. Treaties with foreign powers, charters, letters patent, and important State documents carry attached to them impressions in wax of the Great Seal of the Realm. The present Great Seal, as a matter of fact, has only recently been made. When Ki u S George came to the throne the inscription on it referred to the "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.” This title had to be changed when the Irish Free State came into being. Once more further changes will have to be made for King Edward VIII. The King of England does not sign everything with the Great Seal. Like many other men in a large way in business the homely rubber stamp suffices for most documents. Indeed the wax used in making the impression of the Great Seal Is of a special kind made, only by one firm iu Edinburgh. I saw Eternity the other night, Like a great ring of pure and end lo n S bt > . , . . X All calm as it was bright. —Vaughan.