THE MAKING OF DIAMONDS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 13781, 20 June 1908, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE MAKING OF DIAMONDS.

■■■"-.-■: BY TOHtJNGA. ' The man who says he can make diamonds isn't always to be relied upon, as .some timid owners of diamond mines: have found to their cost. But "Science"—which is a vague and. imposing term like "the Church" and "the Law" and;" Public opinion," meaning largely, as these other terms do, what the individual usincj it wants it to —can admittedly make little diamonds and may i some day make big ones. At which probable consummation tho ownership. of a diamond mine will cease to be the aim of great men and the possession of a diamond no longer bo regarded as indicating the having parted with a tangible amount of worldly wealth in exchange. Here in Auckland, we do not sec diamonds or even imitation diamonds in all their glory. For wo have not yet reached the full diamond wearing degree of civilisation, being still only humble brethren of the degrees of gum and -old and timber, of brick and butter, of wool and coal. But we may live in hopes. For the time will surely come, unless the Jap.' upsets our complacency too soon, when prosperous colonists will trade a hundred thousand feet of heart of kauri or a thousand tons of factory butter or a couple of thousand Taupiri shares or the seasons digging °*- - gum swamp or anything else they may have to spare after paying ihf ,','rwcr- and v 'he baker, for a few diamonds to dangle round xt] f *,x>}iL of a woman. ■;' ■ ■ ■'" i -.;...,/ In this, of course, is a liability to error. There are some necks which may be regarded as fairly deserving of being decked with a kauri lease, or a coal mine, or with the plunder of Pekin, or anything else remarkable. The man who has never seen such a neck has not yet been born to the actualities of existence and will go to the grave as ignorant of the fever called living, as the born-blind will of the greenness of grass and of the brownness of plough lands, and of the soft blueness of an Auckland winter's sky. But error enters in the general failure of these deserving necks to -get the big diamonds, as the average man knows from his reading of toe ways of the world, and as we shall all know some day from our personal observation'. If the'chemist would only turn out diamonds at about the price of walnuts, and of about the : same size, every neck mi? S have a string of the glittering gems right, —and the only difficulty would be that then it would.be regarded as a sign of exceedingly bad taste to be seen wearing diamonds at all. And there you have it! There are, of course, a few bits of diamonds to be seen about, in jewellers' shops and on men's breastpins and women's rings and, brooches and other dollmg-up gear, but as a broad rule Auckland abides by its practical property, and does not do much in the way of transferring its surplus forests and mines and savings bank balances into the gaping pockets of the. fortunate gentlemen who have got hold of Earth's known diamond deposits. We shall do it some day, of course, unless the scientific diamond comes freely into the market: which makes it exceedingly natural''for diamond mine-owners to be willing to pay fancy amounts for a real diamond-making recipe if any chemist happens to discover one. They want to lock it up, naturally. For not only in Auckland, but throughout the world the diamond has only a curio value, and .would cease to have any special value if freely, available.:

There,is a tremendous amount of fudge in human society, as we all know. Apparently human society couldn't endure without it. Possibly, necessities are the bricks, and humbug the mortar of our social edifice; from the Icings, whom we treat as semidivine, when they please us, and kick out when they don't, to the servitors whom we regard as inferior beings when there are too many of 'them for the jobs, and to whom we kow-tow like Chinamen when the billets are too many and the girls too few. And even although a few of us' have so far advanced on the high-road to Wisdom that we can laugh at ourselves, none of us have so far advanced that we like others. to laugh at us. And the Worldly Wise to this very day and hour and city take themselves seriously,. and do not see that the civilised white man with his-diamonds is on all fours with the naked South Sea Islander with his beads.

We shall be told, of course, that the diamond is sought after because it is beautiful, and this is as far true as that potatoes are sought after because they are among the semi-digestible starch-foods. Incidentally, it may be remarked that by the operations of some, mysterious " law" cheap food is almost always inferior food, ot which obvious truth the potato is a glaring example. In these days when the " isms" are rampant it docs not do to suggest that anything of a vegetable character is not.as manna from heaven; if that be so is it to be wondered at that the children of Israel lusted after, the flesh-pots of Egypt, and gorged themselves to a finish when they got a chance at quail on toast?

As a matter of fact, the diamond is not valuable because it* is beautiful, but because it is rare and beautiful. Paste " diamonds" are just as pretty to look at and are worn because they can only be detected from the real article by an expert, and because everybody else imagines them to bo genuine. A cheap artificial diamond, which could not even bo detected from the natural gem by an expert would disturb the logic of the world. Diamonds would be as beautiful as ever, but would be notoriously cheap and common, would cease to be fashionable,' would cease to be worn by those who had plenty of spare cash. Everybody knows that. Then how can the diamond be valuable merely because it is beautiful? The situation is simplicity itself. There is a limit to the acquisition of the things which only make for the comfort, the convenience, and the beauty of life. That limit is very soon reached by the fortunate citizens of even the newest 'settlements. There is to be found in Auckland to-day as much comfort and convenience and beauty as there is in any city of the world, London, Paris, New York, 1 and St. Petersburg, not excluded. Bub in those great "civilised" cities Society becomes unnatural and abnormal, and begins to squander its wealth upon idle' luxuries merely to show that it has wealth to squander. ■ Which isn't really " civilisation;" for it isn't the best use to which the possession of coal mines, gum lands, gold reefs, wool clips, and butter ; crops can be turned. , ' . ™ A diamond is a very useless thing. The world Would be not one whit the poorer, but considerably the richer, if every diamond not industrially or scientifically used, were converted into coal or sugar or some other form of carbon, and if pretty "paste" were mounted as jewellery in its stead by those who wanted it. And in the Age of Common Sense, which is not necessarily an age of revolutionary reforms, but on the contrary may be**an age of very conservative government, we shall certainly, put the diamond verv severely into its place. At any rate, we "shall not trade for it ship-loads of wool and cargoes of timber and the garnered harvests by which alone the world lives. . . However, until the Age of Common Sense we might as well have the diamond for we.'dtfAo be squandered oil as not. For if it were not the diamond it would be something else. Until mankind is intelligent enough to perceive that the substance is" greater than the shadow,; that the use of wealth is greater than the waste of wealth, there will always be some form, and many ' 'forms* of barbaric display*