GENERAL ITEMS

Grey River Argus, 1 September 1917, Page 7

GENERAL ITEMS

How mustard was first introduced to the palate of the. Maori was described by Mr. Coleman Phillips at a meeting of the Early Settlers' Association at Wellington. In 1826 Mr. Henry Williams had settled on the shores of the Bay of Islands, and one day when the famous chief Hone Heke was walking past his house Mr. Williams invited him td come inside and hve some kai. Hone accepted the invitation, and willingly partook of some beef which was the principal item on the menu. There was mustard on th. table, but Mr. Williams did not invite the chief, or any of the chief's party to try it, which' led Hone to remark that Mr. Williams | was a curious man. Mr. Williams ae'cordingly told Hone that he (Hone) I was quite welcome to the mustard and I the big chief very quickly scooped out a spoonful and ate it. " Tears rolled |down Hone,*, cheek, but he suffered in "silence. A fellow chief also , helped himself to a spoonful of the mustard, and immediately after swallowing it began to dance around as though in great pain. He earned the wrath of Hone Heke for such undignified behavour in the presence of a pakeha. !

During the - present great war the . psychology of courage and its concomitant, fear, have often been discussed freely by those who have "been' through hell to glory," and, in the majority of cases, whilst men have gone over the top "like greyhounds from the slips," few of them have not acknowledged at some time or other the sense of fear. Only recently a young man writing home to his parents in Wellington, said that it would be ridiculous to say that he was not afraid, for he was, but there was something^ else that came to one's aid *as one rushed, forward to meet the Hun> some primitive desire to tear forward and kill those who had slain one's comrades. The writer of that letter did not perhaps relise that* fear is quite a natural instinct born of a dread of* losing one's life-nit is the flesh crying out for protection ; and that aid which comes to 90 per cent of men at the proper moment is the purest form of courage. It is only the craven who turns and runs in the face of imminent, danger. The truly courageous goes forward to do or die. This definition of courage is not new. In ' ' Count Basil," a tragedy by Johan_a Baillie, published away, back in 1789, one of the characters, Count Rosinberg, says: "The bravo man , is not he who feels no fear, for that were stupid and irrational, but he whose noble soul its fear subdues and bravely dares the danger nature shrinks from."