CURRENT, TOPICS

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVIII, Issue 6, 4 December 1937, Page 8

CURRENT, TOPICS

(By “Wayfarer.”)

No wonder foreigners find English difficult. Consider our verb to mind in “I don’t mind hot-weather, i mind the baby,” /“Mind where your® going,” and “Mind me.

Girls are much better writers than boys if a writing coriipetition in Britain fostered by Mrs John Galsworthy in memory of her late husband, ■•; the famous short story writer, is any indication. More than 200 boys and girls entered for the competition. First they submitted two scripts. from - a passage from one of the Galsworthy novels. The judges chose the best forty scripts aiid brought the writers to the London County Hall, where they were put to the final test. Five awards of £lO each were won by girls. INot a boy figured in these highest awards, beven prizes of £5 also were won by girls. Bovs did not win any of the secondary prizes. There were ten prizes of half a guinea each in the third grade and boys managed to win two of the.se. The explanation of the poor showing mnde by boys was not tne smallness of the number, of boys in the competition. It was entirely due to the superior penmanship of tne girls... ' .

On the shores of remote Chesterfield Inlet on. the west coast of Hudson Bay, Bishop Arsene Turquetil recently opened the .celebrations to mark twenty-five years, of ■ missionary work in the central Canadian Arctic. During most of that quarter centuiy, Bishop Turquetil lias lived in the Hudson Bay region. The Bishop travels much in the Arctic, and he travelled even more in the days when Re was younger. To-day he spends much of .his time at his Bishop’s Palace at Chesterfield Inlet, but once he travelled so extensively and so' swiftly m that feniote region that Indians and &skinios have called liint tlie Bishop of the Wind. Bishop .Turquetil presents a striking appearance in his long black robes and his flowing grey beard, a big man, well able physically to stand these many years of Arctic travel to various small Indian and Itskimo villages and- sealing camps. Bishop Turquetil' is modern in his methods of travel. While he is not able to uso the aeroplane on all his trips, he has been using a poft’able radio . receiver on his jaunts, by dog team in winter and coastal schooner in summer for the past ten- years. The Bishop was the first man to bring a radio into the Hudson Bay 'region, and had much trouble in the earl-" days to keep his radio working in the ' extreme cold, on his trips. He also knows the insides of radio studios, just as liis parishioners, white and native, know his radio voice. For -the Bishop of the Wind is the first to have used a broadcasting studio to keep in . touch with his Arctic parish. From American and - Canadian stations Bishop' Turquetil has talked to his charges on his few trips out of the Arctic in recent years.

War of alphabets.—lt seems almost incredible that an alphabet could control a nation and, yet, writes Lawrence Isaacs in an exchange, consider the following: -, I had been attached to the staff of the Mitsui Bussan Kaisha, affiliated with the Japanese Government, at their Hamburg office as an Interpreter and courier Tor about two years, during the course of winch time it had been 1 part of my duties to conduct a lot of the Japanese Government officials (navy, army and railway) around to various interests in Germany, and then it was that .1 met a Japanese personage named Takai. At dinner one night 1 asked Takai how it was that although the Japanese had adopted so many of the customs and ideas of Western civilisation, they had never changed the letters or their alphabet so that everyone couls read it. One answer, he said,, was China. “There are very few Europeans in the heart of China:,” he explained. 1 -‘They are nearly all in or around the coast cities, the chief reason being that they were unable to. master the language. The Japanese can learn the Chinese language easily because we are able to master it' through our knowledge of our own tongue, and ■which helps so considerably in the mastering of their various dialects. Japan has the cream of the business in the interior of China and intends to hold it at all costs, and will tolerate no interference. If we were to change our letters into the Latin letters such as you use, .. then in time you would master Japanese to. the extent of being .that much closer to the Chinese,” lie said. —'That conversation took place in 1910. Twenty-seven years later I still think that what 'Takai said has a novel element of, truth.

Disturbances in the Mediterranean always emphasise, the strategic importance of the Balearic Islands, but in peaceful times, although they lie across the trade routes, they are no longer great ports of- call. In the Middle Ages, however, after the King of Aragon, James the Conqueror, had driven out the Moors, the islands, with Catalonia, produced the finest seamen of the Mediterranean. Palma had a great dockyard and the Majorcans were the leading geographers of Europe, using the magnetic needle long before its supposed discovery by the Gioia of Amalfi. Their maps were famous, and an excellent chart of the Mediterranean is preserved at Palma. It is stained with ink—the result of George Band’s carelessness. She had asked to see the map, and was so horrified at the accident that she rushed out of the house into the street, writes a London correspondent. The old Majorcans made great voyages loug betore the days of Cabot and Columuus. In 1346 Jeyme i 1 errar set sail trow Palma, passed througu tne Straits and coasted aiong Africa as far as the mouth of the Kio del Uro live degrees south of Cape iNun, which tne Portuguese did not round until 1419. As for Port Mahon, in lVlinocra, the great Genoese admiral Andrea Doria summed up its excellence when lie said “The best ports of the Mediterranean are June, July, August, and Port Mahon.”

In classical times the natives of the Balearic Islands were pre-eminent for the use of the sling. Indeed, the name of the island cluster is itself derived front a Greek word meaning “to throw.” The Balearic slingers formed an important branch of the Roman light-armed troops, and are mentioned by Caesar as taking part in his action on the Aisne. Pliny; indeed, describes the invention of the sling to bis Deople; but that is aoparently to be ignorant of the .youthful Jjavi'd. Moreover, slingers are .mentioned, in the Book of Judges as fofind among the Benjaniites: “Seven hundred chosen men left-handed; every one could sling stones at an hair breadth and not miss.” > ...

The Balearic Islanders were* however, exceedingly expert with that weapon. Diodorus Siculus . informs us that they could break a shield, helmet, or any piece of body armour, some of the stones hurled being a pound in weight. Usually, however, the slingers employed light stones or leaddh bullets.