LOCAL GOSSIP

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22166, 20 July 1935, Page 1 (Supplement)

LOCAL GOSSIP

JIV MERCtfTIO

This. apparently I>y the evidence of the figures, has boon a very mild winter bo far. Lots of people will bo ready to say they haven't, noticed it, but mere opinion, unsupported by recorded observations, is notoriously unreliable about any question affecting the climate. Consequently it must be taken as established that it has been a mild winter; and any opinion to the contrary merely brands the objector as a poor, miserable, thin-blooded weakling without a touch of the ruggedness that made his forefathers what they were, or were not, as the ca.se may have been. Deciduous trees, at all, events, must have decided that it has been a mild winter, for some have been observed which have not yet ghed their summer coats; and somo have hardly even begun to do it. It must be rather bewildering for a wellintentioned tree of regular habits to bo transported to a country like this, where there is no real encouragement in the seasons to go through the proper motions of turning all colours in tho autumn, then going all bare and remaining so until spring sends out the summons for a new costume —a summons, incidentally, to which humans of the female sex are not entirely deaf. No wonder, under tho conditions they find here, with so little of the rigour of winter to givo them an enforced rest, they—the trees, that is—run violently to wood and acquire all the pests and most of the diseases that ever' have afflicted trees.

A visitor lately returned from the [United States has remarked on the use there of " eiderdown " bed covers filled ■with wool instead of down or feathers, or whatever may be required to constitute the genuine article, true to label. Naturally he asks why we don't do this in New Zealand. The answer is that New Zealand seems to enjoy importing expensive things which might be produced from the sea or soil—or often acceptable substitutes might be. .Witness the many, many tinned foods and so forth that can be bought across the counter of any grocer's shop. It might not be feasible to try growing all of them here. Producing pineapples, for instance, would scarcely be a profitable industry; but there are many things bought at a great price from overseas which need never be. The cause is not laziness. It is only in part want of enterprise and imagination. It reaches down deeper than that, to the superstition still lingering in many minds that the imported article must necessarily be the best. In many lines it may be, and unavoidably so. But that should not prevent sturdy selfsufficiency in other directions where it would be possible, profitable and desirable.

At one time people used to save up to buy a piano. It was the sign manual of the complete home as well as the hall mark of domestic dignity.. It may not have been used much, but it was solid above all, respectable. Bad times came and often the piano had to go-. More often the newly married did without this household altarSurely it is the most substantial sign so far recorded of better days that the home piano is coming back into favour. People got into the habit of mocking at other signs "we had turned the corner," but the new piano next, door cannot be laughed off —especially >hile the apell of novelty invites its excruciating use.

John Citizen has had good cause for self-searching this week. Both in Wellington and Auckland authorities have been talking about the malnutrition of children. It semes that seven out of ten suffer from insufficient or improper feeding. " Not so that you would notice it," mutters John Citizen in puzzlement as he reflects on the vigour and all too boisterous spirit of his own tn.o —two girls and a boy. He cheers op on this thought until he hears a doctor's dread verdict: "Already we are a B grade people physically, wit. 1 all the signs of increasing degeneration." This sounds serious, but if New Zealanders are B grade, what nation h A grade ? he wonders. As for increasing degeneration, he simply cannot discern it in the sturdy Grammar boys and girls who fill all the standing room in the tram every morning or in the groups of small children who play and laugh their way to primary schools. Both girls and boys—the girls especially—are better physical specimens than in his school days. They had bogeymen then and they have them to-day. Their new names are Degeneration and Malnutrition, and the purpose is good if their terrors are exaggerated.

They discovered down at Gore during their jubilee proceedings that the tone and spirit of the borough council are not what they used to be. Records show examples of a member apologising to the mayor because of language used at tie previous meeting and of a proposed by-law under which a member spoken to twice by the mayor rnighi; be fined £5 if he did not thereupon sit down. is quite true things like that don t often happen nowadays. It iis common to believe we are all the better for it. Maybe our manners are, but are we reaily? Is it because the community has grown more polite, or because it has lost the courage of its convictions and its backbone? It would not be right to sigh for the language of vesteiyear, if it needed an apology after the heat of controversy had died down; 011

the other hand, is tho representative of the people who obediently resumes his seat at the first. word of reproof the chap to uphold tho rights of the public and the liberties we are suj>JWsed to have inherited from our ancestors of glorious memory? Would a John Hampden, who went to gaol in defence of his principles, have sat down the first word, if ho believed he was <>n his foot in a just cause? Not likely, fot in this extremely polite and wellbehaved age that seems to be tho tendency., it makes life a general quesfe'n mark.

The jungle of words in which public speakers clothe their thoughts (or conthe lack of them) has lately been cleverly pilloried in Punch. The idea '!? go back to robust English, the hving Anglo-Saxon, rather than the Imported circumlocutions derived from ■k*tin and Greek. It sounds all very Well, breezy and vigorous, but sometimes' the results are unfortunate. An instance occurred at the Wellington pj'ication Board this week. Instead of telling another member ho was mis'®prese.nting tho case, or perverting 'he truth, or any of the pleasant ea pliemisms for prevarication, one *P«iker broke into rude and simple »■ < Anglo-Saxon with the old, unmistakable Ipword "Liar." The result, of course, not as happy as might be exwhich goes to show that, despite ■•to) general inclination, Punch should «ot always be taken too seriously.