RANDOM NOTES

Dominion, Volume 33, Issue 283, 24 August 1940, Page 10

RANDOM NOTES

Sidelights On Current

Events

(By

Kickshaws.)

A worse tragedy than the tragedy of France would be for you to slop thinking victory.

A moving picture, it is claimed, doesn’t move: Some do, some don’t.

Traffic cops, it is stated, are asking motorists where they get petrol. Maybe if the traffic cops find out they’ll share the secret with the others.

“Additions could be made ‘ad infinitum’ to your interesting paragraphs about misinterpreted orders and sayings,” says “Cyrano.” “Here is one: When Booth shot Abraham Lincoln in -the theatre Booth jumped on to the stage and cried: ’Sic semper tyrannis’ —the motto of Virginia. An Irishman, describing the scene, gave Booth's words as: ‘l’m sick! Send for McGuinness.’ ”

The death of the hermit of Rampaddock Hill, coming as it does only 16 years after the passing of the Hermit of the Flagstaff at Dunedin, is reducing one by one the Crusoes of New Zealand. There can be no doubt that the hermit complex is very strong in some people. Indeed, a thousand years ago a lad named Romuald packed up a few odds and ends, a safety razor and a few blades, and started to be a hermit near Venice. The idea caught on. A colony of hermits grew round him. Romuald found the population too much, and moved on. Everywhere he tried to be a hermit a colony sprang up which kept him on the move, starting hermit colonies all over the place. By tho time lie had died he had planted communities all over Italy. Romuald lived until nearly 80 and his settlements still, exist.

Most people imagine that hermits art. crazy poverty-stricken beggars, but this is far from, being the case. "“Paper Jack,” the one-time famous hermit of Croydon, England, was a prosperous man of business, a student of higher mathematics, and a graduate of Oxford. The hermit of Hitchin, moreover, was worth £25,000, and Jose Alonso, the hermit of Brazil, was worth £300,000. It seems that some people just get bitten by a craze to live in a hole in the ground or on top of a flagstaff, and nothing can deter them. One can, indeed, understand Letter the urge to live in a hole in the ground. It is an urge into which the whole of Europe is relapsing under the mania of the man with the badge of the crooked cross. In contrast, we take off our hat to Simeon Stylitae, who lived on a pillar for 30 years.

Talking of hermits, will any light ever be thrown on the yarn about a lady of high degree who was said to have been exiled and marooned on a lonely island to the south of New Zealand? This outcast had provisions sent at long intervals. In the interval, to while away the time, she paved the path from the shore to her hut with seashells. The woman is said to have been the daughter of Meg. Wilkinson. The last named was a, personal friend of Bonnie Prince Charlie of ‘45 fame. The Jacobites were jealous of the influence these two women had over the Prince. After the battle of Prestonpans, when the Prince fled to France, a plot was devised to kidnap the daughter who had survived her mother. A seaman named Stewart, it is said, agreed to carry her off and maroon her on Campbell Island. Signs of her residence are said to be discernible there to this day. Maybe further light can be thrown on this mystery?

Prohibition of. the importation of Bank of England notes into Britain, especially from occupied countries, is going to produce a flutter abroad. The life of an average fiver Ls said be 60 days. We shall only discover after the war what has been the life of many of these European outcasts. Quite surprising things can happen to a Bank of England note, and yet it is still not without merit. A remnant of a Bank of England note for £lOO turned up in Sydney only three years ago. During the revolution in Russia in 1917 the owner had been interned iu Siberia. The note was entrusted to a friend who escaped. In the process, the coat iu which the note was concealed was partially burned, and lhe note almost destroyed. Subsequently the owner of the note also escaped, and was handed the burned note. The Bank of England was unable to honour the note immediately. It was not till 1937 that this particular note returned to the fold after an absence of over 20 years.

There is very little chance that the recent regulations about the import of Bank of England notes will encourage the Germans to strike forged notes. The ink which prints the notes is said to be made from the charred husks of grapes mixed with a secret oil. _lt provides a peculiar blackness which cannot be imitated. The water from the stream at Laverstoke has peculiar properties not capable of being reduced to a scientific formula. The watermark, moreover, impressed by a brass plate when the note is in a state' of pulp, defies forgery. Five pound notes have been made by the same family in Hampshire for 200 years. Every note is made separately by hand. They are indeed one of the few examples of linen paper that may yet be seen. Gentlemen’s shirts, tablecloths and ladies’ handkerchiefs go to the making of a Bank of England fiver.

“Germans ran true to form even in 1895,” says “R.JAV.O.” “After the battle of Manila Bay, when Admiral Dewey wrested the Philippines from Spain, European countries and the Japanese sent cruisers ou observation trips to Manila. All but the Germans observed the formalities and carefully asked the victorious Dewey where they were to anchor. The German cruiser Irene anchored where she chose. Soon the whole German Asiatic squadron commanded by Vice-Admiral 5 ou Dioderichs on the Kaiserin Augusta, also sailed haughtily into Manila Bay. Von Diederichs proceeded to break tha blockade and also international law by allowing his officers to go ashore and to visit the Spanish lines, etc. When Admiral Dewey called Von Diederichs’ attention to this the German replied that he was ‘Here by the orders of the Kaiser and so long as William II is German Emperor, the Ibilippines will not come under American swav.’ Dewey had to be extremely careful. as the German squadron had more gun power than his own. Later the monitors Moundnock and Monterey arrived to reinforce Dewey’s fleet Von Diederichs once more broke the blockade. Dewey told him, ‘We don’t want war, but we can make war if you want war. If a German ship crosses the line of blockade again r shall consider you want war and shall open fire upon her.’ Von Diede--71, .is did not accept the challenge, but asked the British Admiral Chichester to join in a protest against Dewey'S high-handedness. Britain's sympathy being with America, Chichester refuses!, and the Germans sailed away fused,’ and the Germans sailed away.”