INVITING A REVIEW

Gisborne Times, Volume XLVIII, Issue 4474, 15 February 1917, Page 2

INVITING A REVIEW

SIR HIRAM MAXIM’S JOKE. Sir Hiram Maxim, who blessed us with the automatic machine gun—"the invention of the uevil” Sir lan Hamilton calls it—lias pared away (writes "Civis” in the <Rago Daily Times) without beholding T 'ie miilemai peace his gift was to oestow. It would tend to shorten wars, be said. It would, if we could put the light [tuple in front of it—if, a-s in old French ballad, Tney who make tlie quarrels weie the only ones to fight. Sir Hiram Maxim’s real distinction is that which was mentioned to King ’Edward when visiting the VickersMaxim gun factories: "This is tne man, Sir, who has prevented more men from dying from old age than any other man living.” He lias now died of that malady himself, amplyconvinced that humanity it not made more humane by enlarging its lethal armoury.

Spite of the association of his name with tiie most murderous of weapons. Sir Hiram Maxim personally considered might have been a churchwarden or a kirk elder— As mild a mannered man As ever scuttled a ship or cut a throat. Many amiable stories are told of him. An American by birth, and the firstof his nation to receive an English knighthood, he Americanised the ceremony by pushing aside with his foot the cushion placed for him to kneel on and giving a hearty shake to the King’s hand held out for him to kiss. An official intervened to set him right. King Edward laughed, the knightelect apologised. Whereupon the King —<“] hope. Sir Hiram, the day will never come when you and 1 may notshake hands.” ' The Westminster Gazette tells of his penetrating to tlie editorial table, and talking of things in general—politics, the weather, the crops, anything but the motive of his visit, which it appeared was that a Book of his sent in for review had not been noticed. „ “As he talked he took a scrap of what looked like colored crayon ont of his pocket, toyed with it a moment, and laid it down on the table beside him. He repeated the performanc e with another, slightlv different; then with another, and so until he had a pile of small mysterious fragments lying close to his hand. And all the timo he went on chatting. “Looking at these, are you?” he remarked at last. “Wonder what they are? Well” —picking one up—“this is a hit of max i mite. Put a match to it and nothing happens; hut if it is only treated the right way there will be a hole in t-lie ground instead of an office here.’ And so on with the rest. Ho had planted there a choice collection of the most- horrible explosives, each of which had some different method of getting to work—one by shock, another by pressure, yet another by heat. ‘But wha t I wanted to. say,’ ho went on, ‘was this: I published a nook last week, and v Oll haven’t reviewed it yet.’ ” , There and then he was promised Ins review at once; but when lie maichec. ont. satisfied, he left his treasures behind him, “and” (says the editorial person) “I went, trembling, to drop them -over the Embankment. But I have been tempted to wonder, since whe’her they were really explosives or not.” Probably -they were not. Bluff in things big or little come native to the American.