SUMMER RAMBLINGS

Evening Star, Issue 22572, 13 February 1937, Page 2

SUMMER RAMBLINGS

[Written by Mari’ Scoit, for tho 1 Evening Star.’]

We have had a glorious summer—five whole days of it. In this wo have been peculiarly blessed, possibly beyond the inhabitants of the rest of these sundrenched islands. Because of its lateness, its transitoriness, its very unfamiliarity, we have enjoyed every minute of it, as summer can only he perfectly enjoyed on a sea beach with the shelter of cook manuka, kowhai, and giant puriris in the near background. Wo have baked in tho sun, duly protected as to back and head according to medical directions; we have bathed perpetually and exhaustingly, now in tho sheltered waters of the bay, now in the foaming Pacific breakers across tho sandhills. We have _ministered unto each oilier with olive oil and many patent cures for sunburn, taking all the while a private pleasure in our tribulations, much as a self-con-scious martyr mignt boast of the size of the faggots at his stake; we have heard the song of. the mosquito in the night-watches, and our tents and pillows one and all exude tho correct odour of citronella. In short, we have drained the joys of summer to the dregs. Determined also to savour its pleasures subtly, I have dared to open a book which I have long intended to read but which this unseasonable summer has kept unopened on the shelf. The book is ‘ Policing the Arctic,’ and must be read on a sunny day when one’s mind turns longingly to iced drinks and snowy peaks; that is, if one would admire its miraculous achievements without too much fellow-feeling of acute misery. # Even with these exterior mitigations it makes painful reading, for it tells a tale of heroic achievement against almost incalculable odds, of grim struggles in the gold-rush days against the dregs of humanity, and even grimmer ones against Nature itself. Read on an icy winter’s day, it would become intolerable; it was only because I was at times feeling uncomfortably hot myself that I could endure the thought of that cruel, relentless cold. What was the inducement that not only led those men out into the cruel wild, but held them there during all those years of devoted service? Certainly it was of no material kind, for they were paid a merest pittance, nor allowed to stake claims. Their endurance .was of that peculiarly quiet and unostentatious order that we are accustomed, egotistically perhaps, to associate with the British character. Even our national prejudice would not deny their due to the heroic pioneers of other races, yet it seems as if, for this particular type of long-enduring, dogged, selfless achievement, the Briton is particularly suited by temperament. The most remarkable thing in the history of the R.C.M.P. is that every man of the band was a hero, every constable as gallant as his fellow, every private as devoted as his officers. _ Their bravery was represented by no isolated feat of gallantry, no sudden attack or recordbreaking siege; it is a quietly-told story of daily acts of courage and endurance that have seldom been surpassed in any chronicle. The record of their achievement in bringing order and discipline into the farthest and most inaccessible corners of the earth will live for ever, and this, with the, knowledge of duty unhesitatingly done for many years, was the only reward they carried away with them from their Arctic service.

What was their subsequent history? We are told of one distinguished officer who lived out his years of retirement in “ the warmest city he could find ” ; but for the most part the record of these heroes ceases with their connection with the force. Was memory enough to light the evening of their days, or did they presently go forth again to blaze other trails, to become pioneers, and the fathers of pioneers, in other lands? One likes to imagine it, to picture those dauntless spirits still happiest in the mast primitive surroundings, most at home in the wildest places. In any case, they have achieved the deeds of which most of us must be content only to dream. And how we dream! But, since we may not explore beyond the far horizons, we go forth once a year into those spaces that daily become less wide and open—and camp. What is there in so many of us that beneath allour veneer of respectability longs at times to “ go native,” to revert to the primitive, to forget the conventionalities that must usually rule us for our own good and become as little children —and dirty ones at that? Has it something to do with our colonial heritage, with our British love for the untrodden paths, our national urge towards adventure, or is it an instinct that is common to all civilised people, a mere haunting echo from the days of the cave-dweller and the bush-man ? We are apt to consider the simple life a prerogative of our own; it is_hard to imagine some of the nationalities of Central Europe, for example, content to fleet the time carelessly, as they did in the golden age. A trifle difficult to picture any of those sponsors of dictatorship" looking without disdain upon pleasures so simple, so aimless, so undignfiedly childish as these regularly recurring holidays during which most of us rush to camp uncomfortably, to sport ourselves often painfully in cold seas or upon hot sands, to sleep in mosquito-ridden tents on hard beds, to eat sand-riddled meals of nondescript flavour and chancey character. But perhaps I am all wrong. Perhaps the dictators themselves cherish a secret leaning towards the simple life, long to slip away from adoring crowds to uncaring solitude, to doff their regimentals and assume scanty bathingsuits, forget their campaigns of hate and violence and do nothing at all with complete absorption and contentment all day long. If it bo so, then is there more hope for 1937 than wo have been led to expect. For one thing is certain —there fis no method so infallible for regaining a truo sense of values, no cure so sure for a swollen and distorted ego as to go apart for a time from the haunts of your fellow-man and view yourself as mirrored in nature’s look-ing-glass of calm seas, measure yourself by her standards of forest giants and the infinite distance of the stars, weigh your petty, ant-like activities, your feverish rushing hither and thither, by the unchanging and lofty serenity of the skies. It is worth some sacrifice to make such, an adjustment. Admittedly there have been moments in the last fortnight of cold grey days, of stormy nights when a dilapidated tent flaps forlornly and ever more crazily and the rain seeps relentlessly through 1 that comer just above our heads, when we have all had to tell ourselves that we are hardy Britishers enjoying our immemorial heritage, revelling in the simple life for the ultimate good of our souls. Yet have we endured, to find at last our reward. For we have seen' summer after all—five long, beautiful days when we have lain on the sand and listened to the hot, crackling sound of the lupin pods bursting above our heads, when we have been almostdeafened by the glad shouting of the locusts, suitably—and most becomingly —baked from the semblance of raw meat to that of an over-cooked joint, by a sun of the proper and conventional

summer strength. Soon it will be over. To-night I discerned a cloud no larger than a man’s hand that will spread by to-morrow until a grey pall once more enshrouds summer almost at her birth —but we have had our day. We can go home and casually display suntan, sandfly-bitten, limbs, enormous appetites—and wo can know our souls refreshed and renewal for auotber rear.

less than 25 miles an hour. It is the extra few miles an hour that contribute considerably to the toll. Still . . • speed lias always been the object of abuse. A hundred years ago Lord Brougham (the vehicle was called after him) said: “The folly_of seven hundred people wanting to ride at a speed of 15 miles an hour in trains of six carriages is beyond belief.” (Names in this Diary are fictitious.) (Copyright.)