RANDOM NOTES

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 198, 19 May 1936, Page 8

RANDOM NOTES

Sidelights on Current Events (By Kickshaws.) One naturally expects a trawler to provide something fishy, and the Girl Pat is doing her best to do so. « * * Perhaps after those dum-dum revelations Mussolini will be a little less dumb dumb about gas atrocities. * * * Maybe when they have succeeded in pepping up the fish at Taupo it will be necessary to lay down a limit to the number of fishermen the fish are allowed to catch. * » » It was interesting to observe that the Government-controlled National Credit Institute in Italy has granted £1,600,000 to develop Abyssinia, including seven arterial roads. One can but wonder how far so paltry a sum ■will go in the development of a country requiring billions. The cost of road-making in Abyssinia may be as much as £4OOO a mile. If the average cost were put at some £lOOO a mile it would probably not be an over-state-ment. One could sink at least ten million in roads in Abyssinia without half completing what was absolutely required. Even civilised countries today have road schemes involving millions of peunds. As for railways, one can drop millions into them without making any appreciable difference. Not many people realise that railwaydevelopment in Argentina cost £270,600,000. The entire capital was found by Britain. Not many other countries would have cared to foot the bill. It is difficult to obtain figures regarding the cost of the one and only railway in Abyssinia. It seems to have been paid in strange currency, including a sum of 1,000,000 rifles of the year 1870. It took about eight years to construct that railway.

Some experts put the cost of conquest of Abyssinia at roughly £200,000,000, but probably uot even the Italians know what actually it has cost to conquer about three-fifths of the country. The bill that the Italians will have to foot, both for conquest and possible development, will undoubtedly be a very large one. Experience has shown that the cost of conquest is by no means the largest cost. Although organised resistance is ended in Abyssinia, it will probably cost many millions garrisoning the country. Indeed, tlie development of a country like Abyssinia is expensive enough to daunt even the richest of countries. It will be interesting to see, however, just how developed Abyssinia will become. There is a difference between commercial development and military development. Exactly what Mussolini intends to do with Abyssinia, if he is permittee to have his way, remains to be seen. Abyssinia as it stood before the people were gassed out was worth about £2,500,000 a year, mostly with the Sudan. Exploration, road making, garrisoning, minor wars and the like will probably mean a drain on Italy of £50,000,000 a year for many years before the country starts to pay for itself.

There was something a little pathetic in the recent Beachcombers’ Club dinner, despite the fact that it included raw fish, taro, yam, poi, and other exotic South Sea Island delicacies. What was missing on tlie menu was, of course, the South Sea Islands. It is a matter of argument among gourmets as to whether it is wise to eat food out of place, although there is no argument as to eating it out of season. Both are probably equally wicked sins agaim-t Nature, who supplies things where and when they are required. Nevertheless, we have to make the best of things. Food out of place stimulates memory, as well as tlie gastric juices. There can have been few who did not leave the Beachcombers’ Club dinner without something of the past leaving with them. Even an Englishman attacking a haggis is reminded of the dim distant history of Scotland, when this delicacy is discussed in the way it ought to be. Indeed, one wonders if anyone would eat this mincemeat if it were not for the memories it brings of the past. Haggis, in fact, is Scotland’s national drug.

In the old days when one wanted to eat something that was particular to any given district, one went to the district to eat. To-day the district comes to our dinner tables, no matter where they be. Welsh mutton, if needs be. can come to New Zealand, and New Zealand mutton can retaliate by going to Wales. Both have made their respective countries famous. Cheshire cheese not only comes to us all over the world, but, more remarkable still, it need not be made in Cheshire, but anywhere in the world. Only the Vale of Belvoir is supposed to produce Stilton, but like Axminster carpets, admittedly quite inedible, Stilton cheese seeing to have become international in its production. In spite of the fact that the world's worst cooks have always been found in Britain, her roast beef, chicken, boiled turbot, salmon, Irish stews, and fried potatoes, can still make the mouths of people water in far-distant lands. Yet it is the memory of roast beef of Britain that is the important thing. The psychological effect of roast beef upon the Empire is important, as important indeed as the physical effect it bad upon John Bull himself, if we are to bejieve his portraits.

Every country in Britain is still proud of its own particular delicacy. Northumberland folk sing the praises of “Singing Hinnies,” a special kind of girdle cake. Away beyond the borders of England, Scots mince up tlie heart, liver and lungs of sheep and wrap them in the animals’ stomachs and sing the praises of haggis. Yorkshire takes a pride in pudding, and Cornwall in her pasties. There are no dumplings like those of Norfolk. Suffolk imagines that her pork is famous. Moray boosts its ginger bread, and Glasgow its tripe. We, in New Zealand, have our colonial goose, our toheroa soup, and there is nothing to beat a nicely-cooked rainhow trout straight from Taupo. Yet the things that we cook have not made much of a name for themselves. Admittedly. but for the prior claims of haggis on Scotland, we might have concocted something really spicy with our national product, the sheep. Possibly, the Government will give this important aspect of New Zealand products the attention that it should be given. * * » Love to faults is always blind. Always is to joy inclin’d. Lawless, wing’d and unconfin’d And breaks all chains from ev’rv mind. Deceit to secrecy confin'd, Lawful, cautious and refin’d: To everything but interest blind, Lnd forges fetters for the mind. —William Blake (1757-1828).