CASUAL COMMENTS'

Evening Star, Issue 20032, 24 November 1928, Page 2

CASUAL COMMENTS'

THINGS GO OH [By Leo Fanning.] After sticking closely to the stay-at-home policy for a year and a-half, a trip from Wellington to Dunedin this week took on romantic aspects of adventure, although I had made the jour ney many times. Everything came to mo fresh again—the quick swing of the slings of mails, the chatting, laughing crowds by the gangway, the pitch-aud-toss of friendly words between deck and wharf, and, most of all, the farewell of a bridal party, linked and looped by coloured streamers with relatives and friends below. Nobody was talking about the General Election or the state of parties. # * * * * , No doubt the ferry steamer scene would have been much the same on the evening of polling day last week. Did that bride have time to vote? On November 14 she would have been in the swirl of preparations for the wedding, and she probably did not know whether Mr Holland, Sir Joseph Ward, or Mr Coates was the originator of the seventy million pounds loan or bonds scheme.

This reverie was broken up suddenly by a thump on the back and a loud query: “Well what do you think of the-elections? ” Happily, I managed to bounce away into a dense cluster of passengers, and fled far from the bridal party. Just when I bad missed catching the twentieth pair of eyes that I knew, I had a head-on collision with a political friend in a narrow passage. “ I’ve dodged nineteen—and now I’ve run into you,” he said. “ 1 managed to avoid your eye some time ago,” I replied. “ and now you’ve caught mo.” So we uad politics while we walked and while we sat, while we were in the smoking room and when wo were not — politics until past bedtime, but we settled nothing. We played various tunes on the political triangle, but it remained a triangle. “ I’d rather see a collision than a coalition,” my friend said, trying to draw me.

My policy at the Christchurch Station in the .morning was one of very watchful waiting until all persons of my acquaintance likely to talk politics wore safely seated—but ail my precautions were in vain. Strangers took up the tale with me, and I did my best to turn their heads to the true magnetic meridian in the political field. * * * « *

“ Do you think the seventy millions did it? ” said one man to another. “ Or the small farmers, the ‘ trade,’ the Prohibition party, the Catholics, the Protestants, the unemployed, or the 1928 Committee? My wife says ” “ Moo,” interrupted a sleek Jersey cow, kuee-deep in living emerald. The cow gavo never a thought to dairy hoards or Tooley street, _ She was working away, as usual, doing her best to build up a favourable trade balance. ■» «• * * The opal hue of the wide Ilakaia River gavo a reminder that the glaciers of the Southern Alps were going on with their ordinary business—slow, steady, and sure—the grinding of the mountains’ rocky flanks. The whole of that wide plain was the product of the glaciers’ workshops, which are never idle. On that heavenly morning of late spring the whole of New Zealand had not perhaps a more pleasant scene than that river bed with its coloured waters, its pale gold of lupin and bright flash of broom, fronting the white crowns of the Alps, which seemed only a few miles away. At least I had that belief until 1 saw the green of pastures flowing like a stream into the turquoise sea of South Canterbury and North Otago, and the marvellous deop-blue waters of Blueskin Bay with their edging of white lace on the tawny sands. ***** I wish that a scientist would give some sensible explanation of that turquoise colour of the sea by South Canterbury and North Otago. Is the colour duo to the hod of the ocean there, or the output of the glacial rivers? That colour seems to, be independent of the sky, although a blue dome intensifies the tone, of course. ***** Sheep and well-grown lambs were half-hidden in rich pastures. I began to think about thepart played by grass in maintaining New Zealand’s prosperity, and then of the moisture in the grass—moisture which has been round and round the world innumerable times in ocean currents and clouds. The natural moisture in the New Zealand mutton eaten by people in England would have served a turn in mutton eaten by their ancestors from sheep raised on their own pastures centuries ago. ***** Currency of Nature! What a turnover! Looking again towards the Alps I saw old stacks that stock had been nibbling during the winter—and near the remnants of last year’s harvests gleamed the vivid green of their young successors. Nature’s living factories wore very busy with the making of new wealth for the Government statistician to add up and tabulate in due course. • ***** At a little station a burly man slouch-hatted, bristly-bearded, shirtsleeved and dungareed, was walking towards the carriage. lie was a gladdening spectacle; he took me back dotades to pre-motor days. Here would be a proper flavour of the country. I stretched an ear to catch the word Jersey, Holstein, Merino, and Romney, for the man seemed to be really interested in his subject. Alas, ho was talking about his new motor car. ***** “ But what do you think will really happen? ” intruded a raucous voice: ‘Do you think the two moderate parties will coalesce? ” “Baa!” exclaimed a Corriedale mother in a truck, separated from her lamb, which was in the next vehicle. I watched that sad little family drama of the sheep. The mother, recognising the voice of her offspring had battled her way to the end wall of her prison, and the lamb had struggled to get as close as possible to the well-known call. The mother’s pale eyes were" almost as expressionless as those of a fowl or a fish, and the face was wooden, but 'the voice had a heart-touching pathos. Yet these things have to be. The production and marketing of meat must go on. ♦ • * * ♦

I was on the look-out for lovely Warrington, the colourful, peaceful hamlet by Blueskin Bay, a cosy place which I always pass regretfully. Warrington was showing no wear and tear_ of elections. I should not like to think that any hot arguments happened there during the campaign. I like to think of Warrington as a village of happy lovers, and wedded folk whose lives are as bright as spring flowers. If one could only tarry at Warrington for a while —but things must go on. • « • • * Perhaps most of the in the train were already bored , with the pageant of spring. Some in my carriage were asleep; some were wrapped up in newspapers or books; others were still arguing about the fate of political parties. A cream-lorry clattered past. Things were moving on in the suro way to heir.' the people to pay the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker.