RANDOM NOTES

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 300, 15 September 1936, Page 8

RANDOM NOTES

Sidelights on Current Events , ' / • ’

(Bv

Kickshaws.)

■ If you want to Mve long, says a health expert, walk as much as possible. Traffic statistics do not seym to bear out this contention. The things the Nazi leaders say, it is declared, would have started ’war in 24 hottrs in 1914. After all. One simply can’t start a war in 24. hours every minute. * ♦ ■■ ’ « ■ .. . Matrimony, says a writer, Is an ihstitution of learning. The fact remains, though, that It is an Institution 'Jn which a man loses his bachelor’s degree without acquiring that of a master.. ♦ * * When German medical exerts start talking, as they have, about mongrel races, and the need for their extermination, they are treading on ground upon which angels wffiild most certainly use some little tactfulness if they trod on it. Apart, perhaps, ffom a few savage races, such as the original Australian aborigine, there is no such thing as a pure-bred race. We are all mongrels and the Germans are just as mongrel a race ks are the British, the Frffnch, and all the olbers. A desire to impart purity of race to one lot of people and to call others mongrels Is likely to bring forward scientific fact as proof that the pot is calling the kettle black. Indeed the problem is merely one of probing sufficiently far into the past to discover the degree of mongtellness of any race one selects. .... Even the Australian Aboriginal is a mongrel If one probes back half a million years into his past. In fact some people believe that he and the races of Europe, including the German race, are blood relations. The so-called Aryan race which has been stressed to ridiculous limits on the part of Hitler and his friends is po more myth when one turns the searchlight of ethnological fact upon it. In fact the real truth about Aryans, if ' there is such a race at all, is that they are all descended from Babylon and are closely related to the Jews. A professor by the ma me of Max Muller introduced the Aryans to the world. When, however, he was faced With tense criticism he was forced to admit that there was no such thing as an Aryan race. There is no such thing As Aryan eyes, Aryan 1 hair, Aryan blood whs merely a myth because an Aryan race never existed. The much-discussed Aryan culture, moreover; it has been proved, was actually derived from Babylon and was due originally.ehtirely to

Semitic Influences. In fact where comparisons are popular the Jewish race is far less a mongrel race than is the socalled German race, which is a mixture of many races. - ♦ ♦ * Experts who take a delight in tracing the family trees of nations back to their beginnings usually base their investigations on the ‘ recognition of five basic races. These races are Caucasian, Mongolian, Ethiopian, American, and Malay. It is more,than doubtful if there are any individuals one hundred per cent, baste: in any of these divisions. The Malay race, for example is now suspected of being a mixture that contains a predominance of Mongol blood, and the American races are also tarred with the same brush. All the Other peoples of the world are made up from these five basic constituents. it will be noted that there is“ not a word about a British race'or a German race or a French. The reason is that these races are such a mixture that they can hardly be considered a race at all. It would be more exact to call them a civilisation, or a. community. Other experts go'further and divide us into only three races—white, yellow, and black. If one goes back further still, some experts believe that these three races sprang from the Redskins. r

If one were to attempt to analyse the German race it would be necessary first bf all to decide from what date the analysis should start, because Europe has been the scene, of huge waves of migration since the early days of primitive man. Some say, in , fact, that the Lost Tribes of Israel migrated across Europe, starting communities i.i all its corners, including Germany. In the days of Caesar the area which we now call Germany included Saxons, Friesians, Thuringians. Goths, Alemanni, and Franks. Huns and Magyars were also knocking on the door. Before the year 843 A.D there was therefore no such thing as kingdom of Germany. Subsequent to that these various tribes settled down and intermarried, producing an exceedingly complicated mongrel 'race, which we now call Germany.

The truth about the race purity of Germany is that no expert would ever attempt tc uphold any such contention. The best that ’ban be done is to say that since prehistoric days the inhabitants of Europe as a whole, have belonged to the same white race. There are three principal European types to one of which all Europeans belong:— The Mediterranean type with dark hair and skin, black eyes, and long heads; the Alpine type, with brown skin, hair, and eyes, and round heads: and the Nordic type, with white skin, golden hair, and blue eyes. One cannot sav, however, that any one race is entirely a Nordic race or any othei type. Tlie peoples of Europe are. in fact the result of thousands of years, of cross-breeding of these three types. Individuals of any pure type are very rare. The languages of Europe, moreover all come from one mother tongue called officially Indo-European. The Aryan language, incidentally is fount! outside Europe. But for the fact that each man saw an enemy in his nearest neighbour we might have had a United States of Europe a thousand years ago. Hitler might well condone the study of ethnographic common sense.

"I have rea I a few pieces In the paper recently al>out Mr. Semple’s idea of scrapping old cars," says “Worried.” ,“Can you tell me just what Mr. Semple means? For instance, I have an old half-ton truck with perfect brakes, lights and steering gear; in fact, it is mechanically sound, but is not very handsome to look at. Are old trucks like this to l<e dumped off the road just because they are old and ugly?” [lt is understood that the word “old” referred to that stage of senile decrepitude that constituted a danger to other road-users. A car that has been kept in good mechanical condition, provided t does not break some law as regards its control or otherwise, would be legally entitled to use the roads.)