THE COMMON ROUND

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18544, 3 May 1922, Page 2

THE COMMON ROUND

By Wayfaeeb. Now that the armament race is stopped, the only remaining obstacle to universal peace is the’human race. “De more you knows,” said Uncle Eben, “de more you finds out dat _ you didn’t know what you thought you did.” The statement by Mr Justice Cullen, of New South Wales, this week that the first people who went to Australia “went there involuntarily - ’ is to be commended as. an admirable example of delicacy of expression. A characteristic pronouncement by the Health Department is that which it has issued on the. subject of the provisions made in the dominion for the treatment of tuberculosis. Indicted by a Southern doctor on the grounds of neglect on its part, it triumphantly asserts that there are two sanatoria in the North Island available for patients from the North Island hospitals. Certainly a sadder, and perhaps a wiser, man now is the person who, appealing lost week to the Court of Appeal against the •harshness of a sentence of nine months’ imprisonment which had been- inflicted on him, had the sentence increased to 15 months’ imprisonment because the court considered he had been insufficiently punished by the original sentence. A slum in criminal appeals is to be apprehended. One of the best of the “book titles” that has been going about is “No More Income Tax,” by Sonia Rumour. But in-come-tax payers in the United Kingdom are looking 'for some relief, and, though the super-tax is being re-imposed in New South Wales, there seems a prospect of a slight reduction in New Zealand at some period this century. .! ' l “Years have shown me,” wrote a respected member of the teaching profession last week, on announcing his retirement after a long period of/service, “only how orudei our methods of education arc, and how far practice lags behind theory.” For instance, have these methods resulted in a perfecting of the knowledge which coal-miners possess of decirrtal fractions and ?ropqrtion ? They must understand both ructions and proportion to realise' the meaning of a special order issued by the Arbitration Court providing that the ex cess rates of remuneration over and above the standard rates as fixed and defined by each of the awards in the industry shall be diminished in the ratio which 57.76 bears to 41.21. Lord Randolph 1 Churchill is said to have.. when Chancellor of the Exchequer, anxiously inquired from a Treasury official, “what these d—-d dots meant” when a table of' figures worked out to a few places in decimals was placed before him. What puzzled the Chancellor is now . a matter with which the coalminers in New' Zealand are expected to be familiar. Bv all accounts this is to be a great year for “Rugby.” The attendances at the football matches last Saturday point to the ' existence already of a large measure of public interest in the game—-a public in* , terost not diminished by the recent occurrence of a rather childish demonstration of feeling over a question of control in the nursery. But we are far, as yet, from the point when numbers of people, unable to see a game, have to be content with “hearing” it! This was the recent experience of 15,000 people who were unable to secure admission to a Cup-tie match in London in the English “Soccer” competition. The crowd outside followed the game vicariously, as it were. The roars of cheers, the sighs, the exclamations of praise or disappointment, all conveyed to' them the fluctuations of the struggle within, and not a little of its thrills. "It was a clinking good game,” remarked one man, who had travelled from the other side of London, as ■he returned in the train. After the. other passengers bad discussed the m’atoh for quite a long period, he was appealed to upon a certain point, and he said, "I didn’t see it. But 1 heard it I” A member of the detective force in the dominion, in philosophic mood, declared the other day that “there are . one or two certainties in life—death and finger-prints.” The idea which the officer intended to convey, though apparent, was not very felicitously,'’ expressed. But that is neither here nor there. ‘‘Sanfarian,” as the soldiers learnt to say in France. It is the idea itself that matters. Even as to it, there is room for hyper-criticism. Is death one of the certainties in life? Rather, :s not life non-existent when death occurs?, If death is a certainty in life, so also is ' birth. Without birth there cannot 'be death. _ Birth and death, may, perhaps, be said, in mathematical formula, to cancel each other. That leaves the infallibility of finger-prints as a test of identity as one, of the few certainties in life. The accumulation of evidence in support of the method. of identification by finger-prints is impressive. It was purely, upon', the .proof of identity afforded by finger-prints that the guilt of a murderer at Auckland was established a year or two ago. The evidence of finger-prints has its , negative as well as its positive value in the detection of crime. It was only a few days ago that an important business establishpaent in New Zealand was the scene of a visitation by an unauthorised intruder. An investigation of the premises by the police revealed the presence of finger-prints on a. roller-top desk. This was a gratifying discovery, promising a valuable clue to the identity of the “wanted” individual Alas for the expectations that were confidently based upon this evidence—the finger-prints, when carefully examined, proved to be those of the manager of the establishment! Mr Justice Shearman, of the English High Court of' Justice, expressed the opinion a few weeks ago that the world nowadays reads too many newspapers and too few books. But this is one of those “obiter dicta” which are not to be taken too seriously. His Lordship was at the time speaking at the annual meeting of the Booksellers’ Provident Institution. Necessarily be had to say something that would be agreeable to the booksellers. He commended their high sense of lawfulness. He had, he said, never seen a bookseller in the., dock, which, as everyone knows, is the greatest leveller in the world. . Moreover, Mr Justice Shearman is not an unprejudiced witness in favour of bookselling and book-reading. He has himself written a book. The summer before last he was hunting the bookstalls in the market-place at Norwich, where he bought a Newgate Calendar, and then noticed a first edition of his own work. “It was well thumbed,” he continued, “and 1 said, ‘How much is this?’ The man said, ’Ninepence.’—(Laughter.) I suppose he must .have noticed some expression on my face—l never do command an upearance of opulence—so he said, ‘Well, sixpence. —(Laughter.) If it was not so much knocked about it might fetch eighteenpence.’—(Laughter.) On reflection I became quite consoled. I was proud of that bpqk. It had been well thumbed.” The true test of when a book had been enjoyed) he added, was when it showed signs of wear; he had seen in a quite respectable house a copy of his work which had never been cut.—(Laughter.) , A story which is told in an American paper suggests that if Mr Gladstone had’ gone to,the House of Lords /ho predecessor of Viscount Jelliooe as Governor-General of New Zealand would have been differently named. Mr Gladstone, it is asserted, would have accepted an earldom, which was twice offered to him by Queen Victoria, if obstacles had Dpt been' placed in the/way of his securing the title upon which he had set his heart.. He had made it kpown that he proposed to- assume the style of Earl of Liverpool, Liverpool a city , which he had been so closely identified by long standing family and political associations. But on this desire becoming known to Lord Hawkesbury, who" was at the time Lord Steward of- the royal household and high in the favour of Queen Victoria, he at once filed objections, on the ground that the title of Lord Liverpool had belonged to his mother’s father, and that by reason of this relationship he had a lien on it in the event of its. being revived. So strenuous were the. protests of Lord Hawkesbury, especially at court, that Mr Gladstone declared that since he could not be Earl of Liverpool ho preferred to remain a commoner, and he withdrew his acceptance of the peerage. The hopes and expectations of Lord Hatvkosbury were realised when, some years after Queen Victoria’s, death, the earldom of Liverpool was revived in his favour by King Edward.