LOCAL GOSSIP.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 20058, 22 September 1928, Page 1 (Supplement)

LOCAL GOSSIP.

BY IIEECCTIO. Tbe airmen have been greeted tumult- j Bously, Tom Heeney has been welcomed home. What on earth aro we going to do for excitement now, or how on earth are we going to settle back into a humdrum existence again ? Even a perfectly good transport quarrel that promised to save at least Auckland from boredom has had all tho sting token out of it by the latest decision of tlio City Council. Life is going to bo very dull for a while, the All Blacks won't be arriving home for some time yet, carrying half the ash-can with thein, and the general election can't be hurried up beyond a certain point. The outlook does not seem a bit encouraging. The only alleviation of tho general drabness is promised to tho family man, who, ofter, all, 'can anticipate a season of excitement spiced with danger. The time ©f spring cleaning is at hand. A member of the Mount Albert Borough Council raised his voice' in protest when it was proposed that the purchasing committee should buy a horse to replace one on the council staff that had lost its enthusiasm for work. He did not object to the buying of a horse in this mechanical age 011 the ground that it was an anachronism. No; he said the purchasing committee did not know enough to be able to buy a horse. "It takes an expert," he said. Now this is quite wrong. Anybody can buy a horse. It is one of tho easiest things in the world to do. Only let it be known you want a horse, and the sellers will descend on you like bees on a honey pot; perhaps it would be more accurate to say like a wolf on the fold, or like a hawk on a pigeon. What the protesting member meant was that it takes an expert—or a very lucky man, or perhaps, both—to buy a good horse. And that is true. The spirit of David Harum is not dead. Down in Wanganui they think eightpence is too mucii to pay lor a railwayStation cup oi tea and a railway-station sandwich. Indeed, they go iunner, describing it as an iniquitous cliarge. Yet, as a ruie, it is quite good tea, and quite a good sandwich and at worst the two combine to relieve the monotony of a long railway journey. l ; 'ew travellers in this happy-go-lucky country really to consider cost m such circumstances. They plunge off the train, plunge into the crowd at the counter, buy their refreshment, bolt it 10 the shortest possible time, and go off recking little of the insult they have offered their digestions or the injustice done their bank accounts. It has remained for Wanganui to discover the inequity and the iniquity. Mowever the department remains unmoved. It points out that a reduction of the price to sixpence wouid wipe out the little bi of profit made cn the tea and sandwich. To stand firm in this way is perhaps one means of helping to make the ralhv pav. A subtler policy—perhaps a sutler policy, too—would be to reduce . the charge, and then, when nobody was looking to reduce the size of the cup and tho sandwich a little more than in strict proportion. Until it has cortsidered this, the department cannot claim to have e:splor every possible business method of pleasm 0 the public and making a. pront. " Three cargoes of phosphates from different parts'" of the world will reaci Auckland this week. So ran a paragraph that appeared the other day. lho cargoes ships carry have figured in the songs of poets and the musin D s jf philosophers. Peacocks and ivory; the spices of the East, fragrant cargoes of tea from India and China, even the bairels of sperm oil from the whaling groun so the South have been surrounded with an aura of romances. Nobody has bothered much* about the phosphate cargo carried bv these unpretentious ships that plod their way down the long sea lanes to away New Zealand. Phosphate, in its most marketable and useful form-com-mercial "super" —is a. grey uninteresting looking powder. Yet it embodies a tiue. romance, a romance ot modem day., > more significant than that conveyed by peacocks and ivory, or sandalwood and spices, or even sperm oil. Phosphate rock, reft from the earth m Nauru or Ocean Island, Arabia or Morocco, comes all the way to New Zealand to vitalise pastures, to make the _ grass K find its ultimate expression m lamb and butter and other products of the pasture, sent on a return journey even longer than that which the phosphate took. By virtue of the phosphate from Morocco rent to New Zealand the citizen of London or of Manchester or of Birmingham butters his bread or sits down on Sunday to a joint of prime home-grown lamb, Yet nobody sees any romance in these cargoes of phosphate. They are merely nn expression of the way chemistry, a science of the moderns, joins hands with agriculture, an art of the ancients, and commerce and ocean transport combine to feed the millions of Great Britain who have deserted the country-side .or tle beauties of the factory town, there is no romance in this. - The cinema is the only home of romance, and Hollywood its Mecca. Oh yes, this is a world that realises itself all right. People with consciences have been trying to right past wrongs anonymously to such an extent that six remittances of "conscience money" have been acknowledged in a recent Gazette. lhe state of'mind that makes it seem no misdemeanour, but rather an admirable prool of astuteness, with a dash of spoi'u in it, to beat a Government department is only too common. It is the product ol a clouded outlook, of course. Ihat, old Louis of France who said lhe State! lam the State!" expressed a principle which could be repeated much more accurately by every citizen in a self-governing country. What _ meant was, " I alone am the State. Ihe citizen of to-day can say "I am 'he State" without tho limitation, and ye with truth; or a least he could if democratic institutions worked perfectly. When, therefore, he beats the State for some payment due to it, ho is beating himself. Failure to appreciate this is tne root cause of those delinquencies sometimes but, one suspects, not always—compensated for by the payment of conscience money. What then, is the condition of mind that prompts the remittance of the sum involved ? Does the defaulter, lying awake in tho still watches of the night, say to himself, " I have injured the State, therefore myself, and must repair the damage as quickly as I can ? Not likely. That is a logical process, and human nature is illogical. Does lie say to himself, "I might be found out, theie fore I had better put myself on side . Possibly, even though it is doubtful whether the act of reparation would put liirn right in tho eyes of the law. Yet, it is most probable, though people of cynical tendencies would think in money merely says to himself. I have done a wrong, and must put "t right as belt I can for my ow n comfort of mind and self respect.'* There are still people like that. Of course the £2O sent to the Land and Income Tax Department _ inav have come from a farmer, who, convinced ty the arguments used that it is wrong f°r farmers to be exempt from income tax, lias paid what he wo"''' have paid *f he had had to pay it. But this is °ot really very probable.