LOCAL GOSSIP.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20288, 22 June 1929, Page 1 (Supplement)

LOCAL GOSSIP.

When the, earth trembles, great chasms o p en in it,' hilis crash down in debris, and bui'.dings totter, man is made aware with more than ordinary clarity that he is a puny creatine before tho forces of nature. That lesson has been taught during the ■week by devastation, terror, and a death roll There is always something aweSomo and tornblo in an earthquake, bo it never so mild a shock. It comes unheralded, there is no means of estimating its duration, and when tho shock ceases there is no certainty tho upheaval is over; there may always bo more, and worso, to follow. It brings, too, such a sense of helplessness. Nvnen storms rage there is always, or almost always, some haven of refuge./ \Vhen fire threatens, those menaced can light it or flee from it. An earthquake cannot be attacked, shelter may be worse peril than lack of shelter. The best to bo done is to make for an open spaco 'and wait. Even the safety ©f the open can sometimes bo a delusion Little wonder that from ancient times earth tremors have had gathered round them a great body of superstitious fear Yet if priniitivo man dreaded earthquakes, modern inan' has himself created the conditions which make their menace the greatest. If nobody lived in cities, .if nobody burrowed into tho earth for minerals, if there were no roads or bridges or railways, or great buildings and towers, earthquakes would be neithei so materially destructive ncr such a threat to' life. Primitive man, unencumbered, without fixed property, could flee lightly and easily from the perils of tho upheaval All these points are illustrated by the calamity of the week The peril of civilis ation is pointed, but that neither brings back the dead, relieves the sufferer, nor makes good the material loss It is for civilisation to do what it can to alleviate the distress and comfort the bereaved.

Riding in tramcars, if you do ride tn tramcars, you may have noticed, if you do notice things, certain little metal receptacles fastened to the sides them, neatly labelled " Please take one." Unfortunately nowadays there isn't one to take. There used to be programmes of band concerts, of organ recitals and all kinds of exciting things 111 the good old days when the City Council owned the tramcars./Oh, ves, it is already possible to talk of the good old days of City Council ownership. Tho Transport Board will only have to wait a year or so to be told that things were ever so much better under council management—and that is said without attacking anything the board has done or is likely to do. But it duglit to do something about these empty receptacles. It has no concert programmes and nowadays no loan propaganda to distribute. It had better fill them with cigarettes, and so make itself, and- tram travelling, really popular.

There is a gentleman iu Canada feeling very sad about the tariff conditions and trade treaties which circumscribe industry, both primary and secondary, in that gieat Dominion. Ho is an active politician. Experience ol others with the sani3 disqualification ot a political cause to plead suggests he is not really so sad as he Bounds. Be that as it may, his lemaiiis aro chiefly interesting at this end of the world because" he mentions New Zealand butter, and that untiring worker m ..the cause of New Zealand prosperity the New Zealand cow It is not fair, according to him, that the Canadian dairyman should set- his market hammered by New Zealand competition, because in this favoured /land the cows can be pastured all the year round. In Canada, of course, they have to be stabled and stall fed when the snow covers the eart : i. Now that is ingenious and original. It is something the New Zealand dairy farmer would never have thought of never. He usually reckons he has a pretty hard time of it making ends meet, keeping up the payments on his mortgage, and turning out an article that can bo safely sold to the great British public as tho finest-home-brew Ho has not realised that ho is a favoured creature, whose output deserves to be treated like the product of sweated labour just because the cows can have a bite oi grass all the year You always have to go abroad to learn the truth about yourself.

v Those still able to scrape up recollections of the' news stories regularly sent to the Rome Forum by the late G. J. Caesar —featured daily as "1* rom our special representative at heaaquarteis - will remember how the thread of the narrative was always being broken by tho statement that the troops had gone into winter quarters. The Roman maids and matrons seem to ha\'e been very remiss in, the matter of knitting socks and mitlefis, so this plan was evidently adopted to save the legionaries from contracting chilblains. Anyway, o build a well fortified camp, lay in a good stock' of firewood, and call ott hostilities while the weafrher was bad seemed an excellent way of managing a war. This preamble serves to introduce the suggestion that things are not o.one badly in that branch of tho navy usually making Auckland its homo port. Iwo ot the warships have just sailed on a tour months' cruise of the Pacific Islands. They will be away until October. H may be true, it probably is true, that duty call's them thither. Everyone knows that with tho'navy duty always comes first. Even scJ,. when the call of tropic seas reinforces the call of c * u ' , y at this season of the year, who would not answer ? The navy can be a hard task-mis-tress. Navy discipline lias not become proverbial for nothing. * Everything done at the double and nothing left half done are the golden rules in the ships which fly the white ensign. All very true, but when the ships cask off their moorings -and sail for the warm breezes and tropic seas of the Pacific at this season o? the year, who could not forbear a sigh to think his parerrts were so shortsighted as not to send him to sea :

llow strange comestic life must bo in Syria! It was disclosed during the hearing of a case before a Wellington magistrate that there the mother :s Usually the head of the household. The "magistrate said he liad heard of that being so in other countries, too. A much travelled or a well-read man that magistrate must lie. However, magistrates are like that. They have all kinds of recondite information at their command, ver> different from judges, who, on principle, never know anything i? until a witness 01 a member of the bar tells them about it. A rather curious position arises in Court procedure. One day a map' may appear as counsel, expected to, and able to, inform the judge ?| about all details of life and being m the country. Next day, perhaps, he is n judge himself, wholly innocent and Uninformed, relying on another gcntlcpian at the bar to tell him how money ; .is put on tlio totalisator, what the Stock Exchange is, or whether traffic keeps • to the left or the right. A judge is supposed to know nothing so that he may be wholly unprejudiced about everything. The illusion is well kept up, gjv; except that sometimes people suspect a j". d ge °f more worldly wisdom than he ' will admit. -But this is irrelevant to the main subject, the domestic system , ■ in Syria, where the mother is usually the head of the house. How very different from, New Zealand, where in well 'sgulated households father is the director-general, and fountain .of i||l authority, the one who always gets his v own way. In really ' well regulated households,-' of course, ho does as bo is fifetoto, in the innocent belief that he is j,v> getting his own way. IS; ' •