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Otago Daily Times, Issue 18295, 12 July 1921, Page 4

“The Youth is their oldest tradition. It has been going on now for three hundred years./’ So wrote the author of “A Woman of Ko Importance.'' Hut three hundred years will not take us back to the day of the bad King John, Runnymede, the bold English barons, and Magna Carta, of which one copy, wonderful to think, still remains in the British Museum, injured by age and fire, but with the royal seal still .hanging from the bro\jTi shrivelled parchment. Well may the historian olxserve: “It is impossible to gaze without reverence on the earliest monument of English freedom, the great Charter to which from age to age patriots have looked back as the basis of English liberty.” Such a contemplation takes us back ’ not three hundred years, but over six centuries. Since after all this lapse of time a proposal to perpetuate Magna Carta Day comes from the United States, the query may be prompted. What has America to do with this famous charter of liberty ? Reflection' will show that the question is after all but a superficial one. As a nation the British are not prone to make a fuss over even their most cherished institutions and traditions. But since the blessings .esident in Magna Carta undoubtedly did cross the Atlantic with the British colonists, it must be generally gratifying to the Empire to find the circumstances of their abiding presence cordially recognised by good Americans who have no truck w|th the hyphenated and anti-British section of the great population of the United States. The merit of the proposal to-per-petuate by suitable celebration June 15 as Magna Carta Day is discovered in the impulse behind it. This is nothing less than the promotion of the solidarity of the English-speaking nations. Every endeavour to weave closer bonds of friendship and understanding between the United States and the British Empire must assert a strong claim to support. Undoubtedly there are influences which, given opportunity, would make trouble between the two branches of the Englishspeaking race. It is agreeable to find American thinkers expressing eloquent recognition of the “vast political heritage” which all English-speaking nations owe to Great Britain, and to find evidence of a* strong body of feeling in the United States in favour of a closer union of the English-speaking peoples. The American proposal recognises seven such nations, for it gives the dominions full national, status. The movement to secure them all an annual commemoration day in common, with the object indicated, soems to be one that well deserves to command success.

Economy may even have royal impulse. Was there not a king implicated in Hamlet’s “Thrift, thrift Horatio! The funeral baked meals did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables?” Yet the practice of economy or thrift is most generally regarded, it is to be feared, as but an old-fashioned virtue, and is accordingly more honoured in the breach than in the observance. The gospel of thrift is practised more or less in obscurity, and those who preach it as part of the righteousness that oxaltcth a nation arc not much heeded. The thriftless continue to lean upon the thrifty and are quite pleased with themselves. Some groat intellects have felt constrained, however, to urge wider recognition of the value of thrift as a national virtue. And occasions which discover others less mature bent to the consideration of this topic must be of interest. At root this is perhaps an educational matter. At Utica, Oneida County, Now York, the YTM.C.A., with a former secretary of the Dunedin branch of that organisation as moving spirit, has been instituting a Thrift Essay Competition on n comprehensive scale, by way of

“r. practical application of education.” Thirteen high school'; took part in the contest, 549 essays were received, and in all 63 prizes, contributed by local firms,

individuals, and banks were distributed. Evidently, therefore, much local interest was aroused by the competition. The two essays winning the county award were both by girls, and as published seem to be quite admirable. In one it is observed : “Those who have never been obliged to economise continually depend on someone else for their needs. This is why so many immigrants succeed where Amer'icans fail.” It is claimed that the contest has shown the value of introducing into class-room work subjects which touch very closely actual conditions in the lives of the pupils. No doubt the claim is a perfectly sound one. Is it superfluous to add that in New Zealand there is need for exercise of the homely virtue of thrift in this year of grace 1921 ?

To the average layman accustomed to accept the phenomena of life as he finds them the mentality of the scientist a mystery which demands reverence. Yet the scientific mind is*.sometimes capable of astonishing departures from common sense An illustration in point comes from America. It seems that scientists of Columbia University, the American Museum of Natural History, and the New York Zoological Park solemnly essayed to conduct a conclusive experiment to decide the question of whether or not animals like music. Their own ideas of music, may be imagined from their procedure. To the “ Zoo ” in New iork they took with them, *of all things, a jazz band. There is no record of any vote cf thanks being passed by the denizens of the “Zoo” for a pleasant entertainment. Tire “music” was first tried, it is related, on the monkey-house, but Bedlam there ensued with the first notes. The monkeys for the most part screamed and shook w’ith rage the bars of the cages, while others manifested unmistakable signs of distress. In the lion’s house again “ every lion’s hair bristled, and the great beasts tried to get at the musicians whose noise they drowned with their roars.” Elsewhere there was no better reception. “At the first notes of a one-step ‘ Mrs Murphy ’, the hippopotamus, and her son ‘ Caleb ’ dived into their tank and stayed under water till the band left. . . . Wolves

howled their disapproval and the polar bear retreated trembling into his cage as trombone, saxophone, cornet, clarionet, violin, and drums-burst into a medley of popular airs. A goat made straight for his tormentors head down, bent on butting them.” The only symptom of ;n----terest or pleasure on the part of the inhabitants of the Zoo ” appears to have come from some elephants, and, alas for the hopes of the scientists, it was explained that these had formerly belonged to a circus. It will be agreed that if the scientists had a disappointing afternoon they had themselves to blame, and got off lightly enough. Probably the idea of a jazz band as the modern equivalent of Orpheus with his lute is one that would occur only to the highly trained mind of the scientist.