“WHO’S WHO.”

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 5 February 1927, Page 11

“WHO’S WHO.”

y 'j'HE 1027 edition of “Who’s Who.”

with all its heart-burning omissions, and heart-warming inelusions, has just been issued from the house of A. and C. Black, Etd., and it is safe to assume that many moistened mayoral thumbs are at this very moment nervously flicking its pages in search for tho fateful entry. As likely as not that entry will not. be there; for there are many more applications for inclusion in what has, with Whittaker and j)c Brett, become vulgarly known as the '‘stud book,’’ than there are acceptances. Yet. in spite of this, “Who's Who” for 1927, with its 2270 pages, is an even more ponderous and portly volume than any of its ancestors. Allowing, at a very conservative estimate, ten names to a page, there are now some 22,700 distinguished persons in the British Empire.’’ As the total population of tho Empire has been estimated at 460 millions, one is driven to the rather distressing conclusion that only one person in 12,800 can be classed as “distinguished” in the true sense of the word. Who shall say we are not a democracy?

But by far and away the largest entry in the whole volume belongs to Sir Wallis Budge, the keeper of Egyptian and Assyrian antiquities at the British Museum. The list of his degrees and publications on Egyptology occuf pies no fewer than 151 lines, or very ' nearly two columns. The enormous number of his books defies imagination, and this apart from the fact that many of them run to several volumes, while others, such as a “History of Nebuchadnezzar ” and dozens of exhaustive

NEWLY FAMOUS PEOPLE

treatises on hieroglyphics and Coptics, seem as though each of them must necessarily have been a life’s work in itself. In all this enormous list it is pleasant to find included “Laughable Stories—Translated from the Syriac,” which seems to indicate that Sir Wallis Budge must still be human. The recreations of the great are a little banal to, judge from the entries in “Who’s Who.” Travel; golf and fishing seem to predominate, and it, is curious to note that, the bicycle, though we are accustomed to regard it these days as a almost extinct species, is stili apparently the chosen vehicle, of the great. Mr Bernard Shaw, with a characteristic grasp at even such publicity, as may be offered through these solemn columns, defines his recreations as “anything except sport.” Mr Oliver Baldwin, the son of the Prime Minister, whose education was “In Football at Eton—in other things, beginning to learn,” rather curiously includes “Socialist propaganda” among his recreations. Whether this is intended to be a hit at. or for Socialism it is a little difficult to de' irmine.

.Mr Bruce ami Air Coates tit? with a modest entry of eighteen lines each, but they may be comforted by the reflection that Air Stanley Baldwin himself has no more. General Hertzog can only muster twelve lines of description, but Air Mackenzie King, with the majestic total of 71, puts all other Dominion members of tire Imperial Conference entirely in the shade. He is, in fact, nearly six times as famous as ATr Baldwin; and, by the same calculations, ATr Bruce is eight times more, obscure than Sir Wallis Budge.—Auckland Star.