NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 18206, 27 September 1922, Page 8

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

NEW PARK FOR LONDON. A new park came into the possession of London by the will of the late Mr. Probyn Godson,- who left to the London County Council part of the Castlewood estate, Shooters Hill, Kent, with Severndroog Castle, Uie mansion house, two lodges, stabling, and twenty-two acres of park land. This now becomes one of the council's parks, open to the public for ever. The council has undertaken to make an expenditure thereon of some £10,000, with a yearly cost for upkeep of £800. Severndroog Castle is the highest point between London and Paris, being 450 ft. above the level of the sea. It is an historical building, haying been erected in 1784, by the widow of Sir William James, in honour of her husband, who distinguished himself against the pirates_ of the Indian Seas, one of his exploits being the capture of the fortress of Severndroog, on the Malabar Coast, in 1755. Severndroog Castle was, during the war, in the occupation of the Special (Constabulary for six years, and was considered by the authorities the most valued and import-ant observation post for the defence of London against attack bv enemy aircraft. The rest of the Castlewood estate forms part of the Well Hall Garden City site, and is under the management of His Majesty's Office of Works, having Jbceu commandeered during the war by the Eastern Command. It eventually goes to two persons for life, with ultimate remainder to the poor of Woolwich, Plumstead, Eltham, and other places in Berkshire and Worcestershire, for the purpose of building almshouses, and in assisting the poor of these plates to emigrate to the colonies. NATIONALITIES IN THRACE. In an explanatory statement to representatives sf the press the other day, Mr. Lloyd George said if the war spread to Thrace> where national rivalries existed, there might be a conflagration not easily extinguishable. Racial conditions justify the grim picture. The existing rivalries touch the varying interests of Turks, Greeks, Bulgarians, Jews, Armenians, Serbs, and descendants of desert tribes, now settled amidst Europeans, but neither absorbed nor absorbable into European stability. They are Arabs, Kurds, and other Mahommedans, whose only bond of unity is centred in the Kaliph. The Sevres Treaty boundaries extended west of Adrianoplo, and thus deprived both Turkey and Bulgaria, not only of that busy town, but aliio the important Kazas, adjacent to it. The geographical changes in Thrace alone affected the local interests of 34S„000 Greeks, 442,000 Turkß, 70.000 Bulgarians, 9500 Jews, and 3500 Armenians. In Asia Minor the racial disparities on a population basis were even more pronounced. It should be noted, however, that, as admitted at the Paris Conference, it is almost imposible to obtain exact returns of racial populations in the former Ottoman Empire. Religion and politics play dominant parte in the taking of a census. In Western Thrace, for example, Bulgaria, with a desire to justify an outlet to the iEgean Sea, has always overstated her territorial population. A Turkish census is fantastic at its best, since the computators sympathise with the Turk's love of evading taxation &s much as possible, and throwing the make-weight upon the infidel. It is recognised, however, that apart from unreliable statistics there are sufficient different populations to create in Thrace, under well-managed provocation, seven Irelands at Ireland's worst.

IRISH NATIONALITY. In an article in the Fortnightly Review, Mr. Gerald Heard sets out to prove that. Irish nationalism is an illusion.' He says the Irish are less than a nation, but they have attained something to which nationhood is only a more questionable means— a culture. Their desire to become a nation may be an example of what a modern mystical writer calls the penalty, whereby you" become like what you hate. The strange destiny of the Irish seems so be that, though the world takes it to be national, it will never be fulfilled until civilisation is once more resumed—not as a private hobby but aa a public policy —and nationhood is finally arid definitely outgrown. This ia no fanciful theory. It is the continuous witness of the Irishman's acta, of his behaviour, of the work he has left behind him, of what he did and whali left undone. No historian can doubt that the Irish are, more than the Jews, a people of waiiderere. Macaulay said that when the Pole should be reached a Scotchman would be found there. Had he been a more deeply read historian he would have had to add that an Irishman had been there before, but moved on. The Jew built him cities, and only took to the road of compulsion. Not liking strangers, but agreeably surprised to find them such" fools, ho has stayed out, spoiling an ever wider circle. But the Irish do not build cities. As long as the Irish were not molested they moved freely up and down their districts, collecting and dispersing, hating confinement. To the English freedom is the right to associate and amass: to the Irish to disperse and wander. Their lovely and flawless art is that of an inspired tinker. Architecture, the art of foundations, they never practised. A cell was large enough for an anchorite or a king, who had in common the instinctive knowledge that they were pilgrims. The Kelt may have invented the chariot. His harness we know to have bean magnificent. That for a man on the move was worth attention. His dress, too, was adorned with some of the finest jewellery ever wrought. But his house, of its appointment there is little evidence. The true' Irishman of culture has no home; he is equipped for the road. His unrivalled books, made for travel, are always fitted into satchels littlo less lovely than the masterpieces they hold. His harp is to bo slung over the shoulder. His bell has its case. His reliquary could bo held in the other hand. Everything is hand-size, for everything must conform' to the supreme need of his being—mobility. Free of thfe entanglement of fixtures, any psychic gust carries him lightly over frontiers. Faced with such a racial phenomenon, why say that emigration was forced on the Irish purely by economics? Before the first furrow was ploughed it was a need of his soul, it remains his dearest privilege, and let who will interfere with it at peril.