THE WEEK, THE WORLD, AND WELLINGTON.

Marlborough Express, Volume XLII, Issue 115, 16 May 1908, Page 6

THE WEEK, THE WORLD, AND WELLINGTON.

CLIMATE IN WELLINGTON.—THE POETRY OF MOTION:—NAVY LEAGUE NAGGINGS.—SILLY SERV'IA.—THE HORROR OF INHUMATION.—O. HENRY'S STORIES—AND A WAR BOOK. THE MODEST WITNESS, AND SOME REFLECTIONS—STARVING THE BABY.—THE OFFENDED FATHER.—VaLE. 0. C. KINGSTON.—NEWS AND NONSENSE. — WELLINGTON'S RAILWAY SHED.—HANGING OUT OF FASHION.

One of the first things they told me when I canle to Wellington was that I must attach no credence to the slanders that derided Wellington as a city of violent gusts. The people who told me this'had nearly all been born and. bred in this city; so that I suppose that they ought to know. They said that Wellington was not a windy place at all, "properly speaking," I believed them. I always do believe people who are serious and patriotic— good citizens with a high ambition to be aldermen. Nor, at the outset was my faith shattered. The first day or two were of a quiet heat so-suffocating and. intense that my nose skinned, and I had prickly-heat for the fi^st time in ten years. It was so hot that the indigenous trees fainted in the afternoons, and even the ice-cream vendors looked disconsolate. It was so 'hot that the principal hotel actually laid in a stock of ice;'a thing (I suppose) unprecedented in the history of hotel management in this contented city. I only saw the ice in the principal hotel one day • I suppose it melted so rapidly that the management lost nerve, and retrenched. y During those two days there was scarcely wind enough to move the whiskers of a fly. I told the citizens that the place reminded me of Sierra Leone. Not, you will understand, that I was ever in Sierra Leone; but merely because Sierra Leone seemed to be the hottest place I knew of, with the exception of the place it is not polite to mention in New Zealand. Happily, I had only had time to try three cures for the pricklyheat when the weather changed. The thing befell in the middle of a palpitating night. I heard something fall with a bump ■ and when I got out of bed, I discovered that it was the mercury in the thermometer. I put my nose out of the window straight into the teeth of a blizzard. It was colder than a benevoleht institution; and the wind (which, in my simple faith, I took to be utterly, exceptional and abnormal) was so fierce that I was reminded of a dream !• had two years ago—the dream that 3f was riding into the teeth of a snowstorm in an automobile that travelled 2002 miles an hour. As the wealher had been torrid for two days, there was, plenty of hot watei* in the bathroom ,\ so I took a bag of it back to bed with me, and thus narrowly escaped death from exposure. At nine o'clock, when I got up for breakfast, the temperature had risen again, and the whole city lay under a blur of gentle rain. For some months we enjoyed every variety of weather and temperature quite a i number of times, and those abnormal winds were so frequent that I felt quite,annoyed about it. ' • • • •■:■-■ And that, brings me; after inordinate divagation, to my point/ I wonder if the poetry of motion is really good for one. In Wellington,, if one is shrewd and at all afflicted by nerves, one lives in a weather-board house. That is in order that one may still have a place to sleep in if an earthquake comes along. But in this season—this curiously protracted season—of abnormal winds, a weatherboard house ha* peculiarities.. At night your house sways and. swings like a balloon in a cross-current or a politician of eminence waiting to see how the cat means to jump. You dream that you are singing "Rock me to Sleep, Mother!" to an enraptured audience of the Crowned Heads of Europe, Asia, Africa, and Hokitika. So long as the actual motion dosen't make" you seasick (I am a-good sailor, 'myself) you awake with quite a good conceit of yourself. Now, is this motion—this poetry of motion—.good ; for , one ? I want to know. . ' ~^> « ■'•■*' ■ * . « Town continues , very quiet, and money is tighter than it has been for some time p-ast. I have been making some inquiries as to the alarmist rumours one occasionally hears as to the difficulty of getting employment in Wellington, and I have decided that the rumours are without foundation. The men who can't get work in rare cases arethe men who want to pick and choose, and are very averse from going into the country. There is plenty of work; but money seems to be less plentiful than usual. lam not a financial expert, and I don't know why money is less plentiful. All places are alike to me, because I never had as much money as I wanted in any of them. • • # •* M. Briand, the French Minister-for Justice, is about to introduce a Bill to improve the jury-system. If it passes, French juries will not only give a verdict as to the guilt or innocence, of a man; biit, in case of conviction, will also have a voice in declaring the penalty. I'm only a layman, and I can't see how that would improve existing conditions. If the judge found the verdict and the jury decided the penalty, it might be much better; butyl suppose that is too much to expect. I

The Wellington branch of the Navy League is still hammering away at its grievance. By hook or by crook, it wants to persuade the American Fleet to visit Wellington. To a broadminded JDo'dy like the Wellington branch ot the Navy League,- it seems 'orribly unjust that Auckland should have all the ships, and Wellington none. To me, it seems absolutely silly to think for a moment that the American Admiral will care two cents for the twopenny jealousy of Wellington and Auckland. Also, this pertinacity of complaining, when the Americans have already announced their intention, savours of querulous discourtesy to an invited guest. - A little decent dignity is "an excellent thing, whether it be in a league or a sweep.

If there were such a thing as Gilbertian tragedy, that is what the .state and style of Servia would remind one of. There was that squalid tragedy of the assassination of the King and Queen, some years ago. It was abominable and inhuman; but what you may call the stage-setting was cheap and tawdry? the whole effect more like grand opera than life. So much so that the world m general made a fool of itself in its summing-

up of the thing. The King, who had been as bad and silly a King as need be, was indirectly extolled as a martyr; the Queen, who had always been a very dangerous and unscrupur Lous adventuress (if no worse), was extolled as saint. Ignorance justified itself in hysteria. We really need to dissociate the idea of human worth and splendour from the idea of monarchy; and so we should arrive at a saner and sweeter point of view. ! The murder of that poor girl in Australia last month strikes me as a thing more pitiful and horrid than the , murder of a thousand Dragas could be. Death is a great leveller, and the loathsomeness of murder consists primarily in the horror of the crime itself, and not in the social eminence of the victim. That, however, is a point apart: we set out to talk about Servia. The atmosphere of Gilbertian tragedy does not lift. The new King is no better than the old, arid no less foolish. And the new Crown Prince apparently more foolish than the King. The other day he was amusj ing himself by shooting the ash from a soldier's cigarette. He missed thecigarette, and killed the soldier-. Then |he put the soldier's body in a coffin, [and sent it to the soldier's father, "without remark." " Thei thing is abominable, of course; but before was abomination so 11 absurdly conceived? It really seems to be about time that Servia became a republic, At any rate, things could be no worse and sillier. -.* : ' '(• * * Wellington is really going to have a crematorium, and to that extent to come into line with the most civilised cities of the world. I never pretend that my purely personal opinions are of any necessary value; but it always has seemed to me that our sys- [ tern of burying the dead—and especially such of the dead as die of loathsome and venomous diseases—is an execrably vile system. I never met an intelligent man of any religion who pretended or believed that it mattered much hpw a dead body was disposed of. I find it difficult to believe that any intelligent man could really approve of a system ; which makes of the poor, loved dead a menace to the Hying. J$ is at best a very and unwholesome ■sentiment that revolts at the dean destruction of a, corpse. ... "': .* ' .'■ *~' * • -'''.*■■' ■«. ' *• ; *' .■ If. you are fond of good short stories, get "The Four Million," or any other of the books of the master who signs himself "0. Henry." For he is a master—perhaps the greatest living master of this form. He handles his episodes with the most adroit artistic touch, with the true artist's contagious pleasure. He uses English with marvellous dexterity and rare discretion—even . when it is American English. He has colour, style, and an unfailing radiant sympathy. There is not in. any of his work anything approaching what the most censorious critic could call the questionable note. And he amuses. He is, ' essentially and always, a superb story-teller. His is the art that conceals art; the art that escapes the ordinary reader's eye, and is the despair of the artist less accomplished and assured. He is a true dispeller of dulness, the valiant enemy of insipidity and ennui. I am a cosmopolitan myself; but I am still enough of an Englishman to be sorry that 0. Henry is American.

j And, while I am on the subject of books, there is another I commend: not at all for what it is as literature (because as literature it isn't), but for the thought it inspires and the torpor it may tend to dissipate. "The World's Awakening" .is an imaginary account of the great world-war of 1920. If the Navy League once awoke, this' is the sort of book it would industriously circulate. The story is cunningly and ably told, apparently by an expert. It shows what may happen in \;ase of quite possible political changes at the heart of the Empire. In fact, it sounds a warning that cannot be sounded too often in our apathetic British, ears—a warning which. * we in the Colonies need especially to take to heart.

The deep-sea steamers trading with New Zealand are having great and increasing trouble with their firemen, and especially with their British firemen. Men behave excellently on the voyage out; but, once they get to New Zealand, they leave their ships. There is a constant demand for firemen for the intercolonial trade, .and the pay is better than it is on the British ships. Wherefore, the Brit-

ish. owners are in somewhai of a ', dilemma. They prefer British firemen to aliens; but they have more success in keeping aliens than Britishers. The trouble is really a very serious matter. Big ships ready for sea are delayed because they cannot get their proper complement for the stokeholds. A delay of a big ship means loss. , : » * * * * * * Did you happen to read about themodest witness who recently heightened the interest of proceedings in the Arbitration Court at Auckland? He assured the Court of his conviction that the minimum wage in all callings in New Zealand should be £5 a week. "For every man?" asked Judge Sim.. "For every man, married and single," said the faithful witness; "so that they could build houses for themselves. * * # * * * * Why should one laugh at this devout idealist? Why not £5 a week? ~ Why not £10? So long as the duties were raised sufficiently to prevent competition of imported goods, the mere matter of a minimum wage could make little difference. The worker's living expenses would jump up, and it would become exceedingly difficult for him to save anything at all; but he would handle more money, more money would circulate from hand to mouth, the country would have a yet higher polish of figures and statistics. I long ago discovered that the New Zealand: worker gauges his su&cess by the amount of cash he handles, and Dot by the amount and fulness of the life he gets. He is the grateful slave and pious devotee of the surface glamour of gold. I remember that, once upon a time, certain of us (simple friends of mine and I), being averse from gambling but fond of cards, used to play poker, with counters for stakes. One night I won as much (in counters), as £3421 2s lid. I was none the richer in fact, and somewhat the poorer in brainstuff and time; but I had a sort of glow, as though I were a millionaire for three minutes. That, I suppose, is precisely how the worker feels when he increases his wage by ten shillings and his cost of living by ten shillings and a penny. Pierpont Morgan does not seem quite so far above him, after all; and a keener and more enjoyable edge is put to his pity of the Japanese worker who gets- ten cents a day—if such a one exists. In a tram the other day, I was telling a carpenter that I have known good craftsmen of his order in Tasmania who only get eight shillings a day. His honest indignation thrilled me. "But." I said, "they got their houses for eight shil^ lings a week or so; they could always add., to their larder when they were lin the mood to go fishing; meat and vegetables were reasonably cheap; clothes were not nearly so costly as they are in Wellington. Why were they so badly off with their eight shillings a day, after all?" "Poor beggars!" he said. When I swung off the _tram at my house (for which I am paying a good deal more than I paid in Dunedin. and fully twice as much as I paid in Hobart), he was still troubled. He was sympathising acutely with the downtrodden carpenters of Tasmania. * # . * * ' « * * Another of those pitiful starved-

baby cases in Wellington. The mother was not an especially intelligent or capable woman; but she fed her baby as she thought best. And the baby died from lack of proper nutriment. . It is a revolutionary suggestion, I ! know; but might it not be a good j thing to teach the elder girls in our i public schools something about the ; general management of babies, and something about the use and abuse of patent foods—which in some cases so easily become patient poisons? I know how delicate and difficult a thing it is to teach or induce grown women to treat babies properly-^Dr Truby King tried it in Dunedin; but with girls at the impressionable age something might perhaps be done. ***■* * ' * * When I started to talk'with him, I was waiting for a tram at the corner of Willis and Manners Streets, and he was leaning against a post by my side. He was sleek and furtive, well enough dressed but unhappy. He borrowed a match from me, and I gave him a cigar because he seemed so disconsolate. It was a cigar I could scarcely have smoked myself; but he enjoyed it, and I could see that my brotherly solicitude for his comfort gave him confidence. I got out of his line of smoke, and wooed him to lay bare his soul. When he had talked commonplace for two minutes, he came Waturally to the topic of woman. He said women were ruining this country. He said women took jobs as prevented a man gettin' anything to do. But what hurt him most was his knowledge that women had no sympathy. He said it wasn't easy to get anything in his line, and he'd done next tp nothin' for two years. But his wife and daughters always had plenty of work. But did I think they, had any sympathy with him? No, sir! In his, own country (he didn t mention which of the favoured countries it was) women had proper res-< peG for their husbands, and gals didn't give ttteir fathers no lip—they wouldn't dare. But in Noo Zealand it was different. His women were always naggin' at him. He couldn't smoke in peace by his own fireside for their interference. If he went out for a glass o' heer, they nagged just the same. There was too much freedom in this country, an' too much eddication. In his country women kep' their place. But 'ere—well, look. You brought gals into the world and brought 'em up decent, an then they turns on you. He said he didn't know what the country , was comin' to. ' _ , , I told him I'd been a good deal worried about that myself. By the death of the Hon. C. C. Kingston Australia loses a big, clean man. Seven years ago, when, after years of obstinate conflict with parochial greed and prejudice, the federation of the Australian States was at length | consummated, the best Australians . looked to Kingston with eager hope. He was one of the few men Australia possessed that could in truth and decency be termed statesmen. Edmund Barton was a fine and dignified figure of a man, and he had worked nobly in the good cause; but Barton had singular defects to dilute his singular excellencies withal. George Houston Reid was a notable and agile politician; but outside of New South Wales few people, even amongst those of his own party had any strong - confidence in him. Sir Edward JJraddpn was a man of dignity and natural force; but he was aged and don©; and his personal qualities were nof-all such as commend a pub- j Heist ttt'ia young and stalwart democracy. But Kingston was a man after the people's own heart. His integrity had never been questioned, his honour never even by suggestion smirched. His record was a record of unselfish service'rendered with modesty and a single mind. He was an adroit and capable leader of men. He was an out and out democrat, but in his enthusiasm for the workers there was neither hysteria nor greed. There was, in short, no smallness and no grossness1 in the man. He was one of the very few on whom Australia could rely with positive.confidence. Thus, as I say, at the outset hope was strong where he and his merits were concerned. Unhappily, Kingston, though still a young man as, age still goes in, politics, had lived strenuously and mot spared himself. His strength" was going. In- a yery short, time, he broke down, and disappeared from public life. Such faint hopes as anybody had cherished of his"recovery are ended by his death. He was a good man in the good sense, and in the memory of Australians who see and remember he will occupy a place of honour. #->** * * - * * There-is such an itch for news in these days that all sense of the value of news seems likely to be lost soon. Already it is plain that the gentleman who selects the items that are cabled from London has at best a very defective sense of news-value. Take up what paper you will, and you will find cabled ftems that are of no interest in Australasia. For purposes of this rapid note, I am referring throughout the Wellington Evening Post of this date—May 11. It is cabled that Mr James Alexander Campbell is dead. We're sorry we didn't know him, because we lose the opportunity of grieving or being in any sense interested; a million people die every day. But as a rule, the valueless items on the cable-page are far less interesting even than that. What New Zealand wants is a'man in London who will cable the sort of news that New Zealand finds reasonable or special pleasure in reading. I turn to. another page of the paper, and am informed that "during the voyage from London of the Paparoa, which arrived at Wellington on Saturday evening, there was the birth of a male infant in the third-class." The interest here is adventitious, arising from the fact that the paragraph makes a flaming record for the wonderful badness of its English; the news-value of the item may be best stated as X. Did you ever notice, by the way, how deplorably bad the English is becoming in the "leading" dailies of our four big cities? Terrible English like that just quoted is not at all uncommon in Wellington; but I never saw it equalled in any country or provincial paper. News, I take it, should not only be interesting: to satisfy, it should be- daintly served.

In other parts of New Zealand, I have come across the theory that Wellington has an insatiable maw, and is pampered abominably by the Government. I always believe things people •tell me, and when I came to apply the test of fact to that theory, I was somewhat shocked. I don't know how much money has been wasted on Wellington ; but the amount that has been effectively spent by Government must surely be smaller than that spent by Government in any other capital in the world. If you doubt me, consider the Government Railway Station. It is a dirty, ramshackle shed, lacking;

even the grace of picturesqueness. It is inconvenient, inadequate to the traffic, and utterly comfortless. In the whole region sometime governed .by those bad brutes the Boers there ! was not a station so deplorably ugly I and decayed. Having regaftT to the ! traffic and the importance of the city, : I don't suppose there's such another silly makeshift of a station in the world. Well, at length the Government is talking about erecting a commodious station at Wellington; and I'd be willing to bet (if I were naughty enough to be a betting man) that in some parts, of the country there'll be an outcry at the vagance." There are few things so quaint as is, in some lights, the Member of Parliament who is what you call a good man for his district. The ideal Parliament would be an assembly where none were for the district, and all were for the State. _ The idea that statesmanship consists in jealous bickering between parishes should really be discouragedr After all, a capital is a capital, and the present (railway station at Wellington is not only a disgrace to the Dominion, but also in some sort a disgrace to civilisation. It has everything it ought not to have, including fleas. **•*■ * * * * You may find a mark of my heterodoxy in i the fact that I never have believed in the efficacy and justice of capital punishment. However bad a man is, there must be better things to do with him than to hang him. That, however, is rather apart from the point. The point is that it is at least doubtful whether any body of men has the right to destory any individual in cold blood. In short, it seems doubtful whether legalised murder is a fitting punishment for murder committed in defiance of law. I should hate myself if, as a juryman, I was ever induced to deliver a verdict that fruited in a hanging. I have known notably good judges to be quite of my opinion. There was that excellent jurist and most admirable man, /the late Judge Clark of Tasmania. He would not pass the capital sentence on a man; so that the Bench found it necessary to contrive that he should not try capital cases. Judges as a class have had no such scruples. There was Judge Jeffreys, the handsomest man of his day, and the most bloodthirsty. He loved a hanging as good matrons love a christening. When a man was proved innocent, it made Judge Jeffreys bilious and morose; but his horrible geniality on a conviction made him infamous. But ( when we come to judge Judge Jeffreys we must make him some handsome allowance on account of the spirit and the tendency of- his time. The popular mind had not yet revolted against the abominations of cruelty, and barbarous punishment was as much the fashion of the day as barbarous sport was. Coquetting ladies of high birth lunch-., ed daintly at open windows while they enjoyed the spectacle of a drawing and a quartering in the, space below. Ghastly outrages in the name of Justice were generally approved or condoned. Let me cite a fact or two. On the 12th August, 1579, Turnbull and Scott were hanged at the cross of Stirling for "making up ballads tending to the sowing of sedition among the nobility." Had I lived in those stiring times, I could scarcely have escaped the rope. On the 2nd December, 1584, a boy was burned alive at the cross of Edinburgh. This poor lad "called Robert Henderson (no doubt by the instigation of Satan), desperately put some powder and a candle in his father's heather-stack, standing in a close opposite to the trone of Edinburgh, and burnt the same with his father's house, which lay next adjacent, to the imminent hazard of burning the whole town. Farther back in English time, in all cases of proved felony, the male convict was hanged, the female drowned. But we need not go back to Richard I. Samuel Rogers saw a cartful of young £irls on their way to be executed at Tyburn for the part they hadtaken in the Gordon riots. Greville saw some young boys sentenced to death over the same business. "Never," says the quaint gentleman, "did I see boys cry so." On June 11, 1812, at Lancaster, a boy of twelve was hanged for taking part in a not.. Be went on crutches,to the place of execution, crying for his mother: These abominations are painful to' recall, hot good to remember, if only because they havfe been gradually swept away by\ the onrush, of democracy. Social reform has accomplished what popular religion failed to do; for through all the age of cruelty orthodoxy was far deeper and more general in England than it is now. In all great matters, the spread of liberty has carried with it the spread of kindness. It is pleasant to realize that sometimes—-sometimes when we seem to be getting a foretaste of what I may call a surfeit of democracy. The ointment is beneficial, even though the little flies occasionally stink. Everywhere just now, one notes signs of the growing disrepute of the death-penalty and the lash. Men are becoming too wise in some matters longer, to pretend \yith. seriousness that much can be said for a system thai; adopts brutality for punishment of the brutal. Into the troubled waters of criminal responsibility I' do not dare to go.

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