PROVERBS.

New Zealand Times, Volume XLIX, Issue 11251, 1 July 1922, Page 11

PROVERBS.

Proverbs are wisdom condensed. In theory they are infallible. In practice they leave something to be desired. For example, “Forewarned is forearmed.'’ Sir Henry Wilson and Dr Kathenau were forewarned, yet they were murdered in the public streets. It « always difficult to take warnings seriously, for, beyond doubt, cranks who never mean anything are fond of threatening everything. But history has proved over and over again that even cranks sometimes are in deadly earnest. At the top level of authority they have nailed three successes. Three American Presidents fell to three cranks—Lincoln to a war crank ; Garfield to an office-seeking crank; McKinley to an Anarchist crank. But murder is not a monopoly of cranks. Sane criminals placed a warning before the world with" the Czar Alexander 11., with President Carnot, and the beautiful Empress of Austria. In both categories there are records of lowerplaced victims, but a 3 quotation would fill a volume, it is enough to cite from Presidential and imperial level. The two murders the world is shuddering over to-day should make one proverb, at all events, a 6 infallible in practice as in theory.

“Union is strength’’ is another maxim of ancient wisdom. It was hoary when old JEsop told that little, hardy fable of the bundle of sticks. The new party in Dominion politics began by embracing this maxim, dropped it-, and then dropped out of sight? Why? There are over 900 reasons. You will find them in a block in the poll of the North Dunedin voting the other day. These nine hundred reasons Bpell the breaking of the famous unity maxim. It is a reason of over 900 man-power, taking man according to the electoral law which, flying in the face of nature, declares man to he the same as woman. There may he, probably are, other reasons for the breach of the ancient law of wisdom, but when a 900 man-power goes nnder against 6000, it is not a matter of life and death to go on searching.