ADJUSTING THE CALENDAR.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19215, 2 January 1926, Page 1 (Supplement)

ADJUSTING THE CALENDAR.

AMERICAN AMENDMENT.

£r Katanga.

ihe American business-man has responded with tremendous eagerness to a request from tho League of Nations for suggestions as to calendar reform, that request having been made chiefly at his own instigation, "on purely business giounds. To rearrange the year, giving it a different number of months and even a different sort of week, has seemed easy lo him.

Ho has mc-t some obstinate lions in the path some figures in a remainder to his little sum in simple division that will not resolve themselves into any negotiable fraction; but he has brushed them aside with a colossal gesture. A few days still left over? H'm! Well, set them apart as memorial days for special observance by banks and bakeries. Let's see: one for Christ, one for this celebrity and that, and, to round out the list, one for ah, yes, of course, Henry Ford. It is not clear whether this disposition of these odd days is in ascending or descending order of magnitude, but what matters ? The innovator has put the world to rights, he thinks, and! beams through his horn-rimmed spectacles with benignity. Queer fellows, these American magnates, Generals and Colonels many of them, in a land that affects a scorn of titles. Indeed, like any of us, the business-man anywhere may be a queer fellow. Ho thinks h<) runs the world, but, instead, the world runs him. He is its veriest slavo, not its master. He studies its tiniest whims with tremendous anxiety, for he knows that they may make or break him. Ho is not above wiles to cajole them into acceptance of his commercial wishes, but he has found these wiles of limited efficiency—to use his' pet word.

The Fetish of Standardisation., Many American business-men ar:: quite sane and human in the best sens&j and that is a compliment of parts. These frankly deplore the dollar-devotees so assertive in their country—and in some others, let it be gently whispered—but the Mammonites are so numerous and so noisy a tribe there that they have entailed disrepute upon all their countrymen. A little unfortunate, historically viewed, but the fact is so.

No doubt this attempt to change the habits of the whole world is an inviting idea to the merchant mind. You see, things are so awkward for accounting, with odd-length months and such neglects of the doctrines of standardisation and interchangeable parts. And other feilows, so very old-fashioned and so very dead, made the calendar do what they wished. i There was Julius Caesar, who was always more or less in the wars, and made a bad end; about the only thing to his credit was that he conquered the Britons, and so gave America a precedent. He could not play any pranks with the sun, but, finding the spring festivals falling in the nominally summer months, ho tackled the calendar. Someday, Americans may manage the business better—bring the sun into the scope of the Monroe Doctrine, make a corner in sunshine, banish the " spots," and generally furbish Old Sol up a bit. Meanwhile the moon, obviously a back number in monthlies, can be respected or ignored at will.

Caesar's Hurdle Race. Caesar's adjusting "year of confusion," extended to 445 days, shows what a strong man may dare, although his ordinaiy year of 365 days was a concession to the sun. Did he not also organise a sort of hurdle race, with the jumps—the leap-years—-judiciously ? If he took liberties with the months, changing the number of their days, and leaving his proprietary mark upon "July"—a shrewd notion in name-patents—in honour of himself, why should not real up-to-date merchants go one better?

And there was another Roman, not half so well known as bis great-uncle Julius and certainly less wealthy than many an oil-king of to-day, who fiddled with the leap-years—thaaks to the pontiffs who bad made a mess of his uncle's instructions about them—and also readjusted the months and gave one of them his own name. To be sure, there are precedents in plenty. Indeed, Julius Caesar s inefficiency in overlooking eleven minutes and quite a little lot of seconds invited bettor men to try their hands. Stoffler and Pitatus of Verona —only one of them was a gentleman of Verona, it should be noted —did so, without cutting much ice; but Pope Gregory XIII. took a considerable part in mundane affairs. By his day the lapse of careless Julius had resulted in the arrival of the vernal equinox ten days ahead of schedule-time. As there did not seem much chance, in that backward ce J l " tury, of teaching an equinox manner*;, the only thing was to wipe out ten days from the calendar. As a deal in "futures, it was small compared with some American achievements, but it shows what determination can do, even in the Old World.

Gregory's Influence. True Gregory's success was not all he hoped.' Most European countries obeyed his edict, but Scotland took eighteen years to consider it, and England s suspicions of papal decrees in general were not overcome in this scientific instance foi nearly two hundred years. By that time, the need to make the difference eleven davs instead of ten had been realised-for 1700 had been wrongly treated as a .eapyear in following still the old style. The famous "24 George 11, an act for regulating the commencement of tne year and for correcting the calendar now in use," although possibly understood m Parliament, evoked a popular outci 7"Give us back our eleven days, was the angry demand that met statesmen going had lost something. Where a British Parliament stepped in, American business; men may surely not fear to tread, a - though with -a different purpose. _ I» precedents have any value in American Dusiness circles, there may be cited the first French republics abolition of the era ordinarily accepted to make way for a new era commencing on September 22, 1792 the date of the republic s founding. That was a drastic change. It is indeed that this edict is the inspiration of the recent American proposal, for in the new era's years, after allowing for twelve months of thirty days each, there were five complementary days, and these were to be kept as festivals in honour of Virtue, Genius, Labour, Opinion, Rewards, while every fourth year was to have a Revolution Day. Eaca month had its suggestive name, in keeping with its seasonable weather or pursuit, and was divided into three dscades. _ But, alas for that example: Napoleon abolished it with a stroke of Ins pen, and the Gregorian calendar camo back to France on January 1, 1806. But then, Napoleon was not so mighty a pan a '* ( v r all for . the British imprisoned him on bt. Helena till his death. Perhaps the New World "kings" may undo even this that he did in France, und get the whole world to adopt something like the calendar he rejected; and perhaps there is already a supply of new-calendar chronometers and standardised stationery waiting in American warehouses for distribution abroad, under strict agency. But they ought to stay there until America has joined the League of Nations,