THE COMMON ROUND.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19042, 12 December 1923, Page 2

THE COMMON ROUND.

Ei Watiabks.

“He is a fool who jumps into a ditch without measuring its depth.” “There’s many different sorts of courage. Some men will fight ’cause they ain’t got the pluck to run away.” Mr Stanley Baldwin’s friends in England seem now to be disputing whether lie was a brave man or merely a fool, to stake the life of his Government, with its “comfortable majority ot 77,'’ on the chance of a doubtfully popular issue at a genera] election. The organ, however, of Lord Beaver brook, one of the two Warwicks of British journalism, is perfectly clear on the point. It was a piece of “crass stupidity” on Mr Baldwin’s part to go to the country on the tariff reform issue ; it was an insane proceeding, based on “ridiculous miscalculations”; and so on. If only Lord Beaverbrook could have told Mr Baldwin before he determined upon making the plunge that dire disaster was sure to he his fate, how differently might history have been written! Or if ' only Mr Baldwin had consulted Lord Beaverbrook beforehand! 'Chat may have been the fatal omission. For lx>rd Beaverbrook aspires to fill tho shoes which Lord Northcliffe occupied in his lifetime. It was he who was a sort of intermediary in tho negotiations, mostly underground; that led to the downfall of Mr Asquith in 1916. He was Sir Max Aitken then; his elevation to the peerage followed in due course in 1918. Minor casualties in the general election at Home: Mr Newbold, “member for Moscow-,” defeated in' the Motherwell division of Glasgow, and Mr Saklatvala, who confesses a great admiration for Lenin and says, “Let us abolish the Union Jack,” ousted from the Battersea seat. Battersea, it may be recalled, was ,he seat which Mr John Burns; represented for many years. Mr John Burns would have been a member cf the labour Party u there had been such a thing in his time. Labour was not politically organisd when, a w'orking nan ol the working men, he entered Parliament in 1892, to hold the Battersea seat for 26 years, and he sat as a Liberal. lie was tho first working man to become a Cabinet Minister, as fie did under Sir Henry Campbe.ißannerman in 1905, am! he efficiently administered the Local Government department continuously from that year until 1914, when, with Lord Morley, he voluntarily retired from the Ministry upon the outbreak of war. It is said .oMiim, autobiographically no doubt, in “M ho s VVho that he “came into the wmild with a struggle, struggling now, and with prospects of continuing it.” This statement may bo economical of the truth. Mr Burns not only drew a substantial salary as a Cabinet "Minister for several years when it did not cost so much to live as it does at the present time, but he is now in the enjovment, like Mr Lloyd George, of an annuity of £2OOO under the will of Mr Andrew Carnegie. It was, however, about coloured people (like Mr Saklatvala) and Battersea that I had in tend eel to. write the last note—not about John Burns and his history. Even John Burns, though in Battersea he must have been a figure as familiar as the town clock, was not always recognised. There is the story of his escorting a coloured B ; shop through Battersea, to tho accompanying nods and greetings of his constituents. And then <wo men passed. “There’s John Burns, said one of them. The other one looked, “is it’” he asked, “which one?” From the church notices in last Saturday’s papers: A special service, of interest, particularly to cricketers, will lie bold in tho . Dunrlas Street Methodist Church on Sunday. The Rev. E. O. B 1 aim res will speak on “The Second Innings.” From Monday’s Daily Times, under the particulars of the record score of Cansbrook (517 for three 'wickets) against Albion:— ' Bowling Analysis.—Blamires. 152 balls, 1 maiden, 127 runs, 1 wicket. . . It looks as, though the title of Hie address on the Sunday had been prematurely selected, and that it should nave been “The Fret Innings. By common consent, the rain which began" to fall gently on Monday morning and continued throughout the day was a blessing and a ' boon. The country had been crying out for it. Very beneficial, my farmer friends, say. but not nearly enough cf it. The town needed it. The gardens were thirsting for a soaking. And people in St. Kilda and Ros.yn, who pertorce have bad to deny themselves the domestic tub, hugged themselves with satisfaction over the prospect of the replenishing of the water supply. Some of them, anyhow. For there’ are queer people everywhere, and there may he some residents of Dunedin who would hail as a man and a brother the member of the House cf Commons (whether re-elected or not, I am unable to guv) w-lio, in the course last session of a debate on the housing problem, declared that he had. not a bath in his house and he got on all right! The bathless legislator ipay. as ho claims, have got on all right. But there was no reason why he should put on airs about it. He is’ not a pioneer. The proprietor of a newly-erected bungalow was showing a friend over his property. The friend was one of those ultra-refined, fastidious people who are apt to get on the nerves of the less finicky type—the type, you know, that constitutes the backbone of the Empire and all that. Inqiiisitive, too. Ho wanted to know where the bathroom was. He. was promptly and euectively rebuffed. “Bath!” snapped the proprietor of the bungalow. “M'e haven’t any children. You see, there is only me and the wife.” And why have a bathroom if there is no use for ’it? Expensive excrescences are not desirable even in a modern bungalow. 1 with latest labour-saving appliances, steel ceilings, sleeping balconies, etc. (vide advertisements). A lady inspector, called upon to visit a house in which there was a case of infectious disease, inquired if there was a bath on the premises. “Yes, miss,” replied the patient’s mother; “but although we have been in the house nearly three years, thank Gawd w'e haven’t had to " use it until this ’ere illness came along.” There is another downright disadvantage, when you come to think of it, about some of these new-fangled houses, of the kind into which it is proposed to put hard-working people under housing schemes. They are not handy. ,That was what an old woman found when she was rescued from a London shim and placed in a brand-new model lodginghouse. A week after her translation, the philanthropist who was responsible for it went to see her. He noticed that she was very unhappy. “Isn’t everything all right?”’he asked, anxiously. “Oh, yes, I s’pose so,” said the poor woman, sadly, “but there’s no denyin’ the old place was handy. When I wanted a bit of firewood’ I could always go and chop it out of the stairs, and here it’s all stone steps and iron railings.” From an American paper: There was more to that grand blow off than the more making of errors and baeo hits. When Grantham fumbled a chance that started the Sox on their way to n tie in the ninth. Kaufniunn. aheadv worked up by continually nagging with (he umpire, rode the kid second sicker hard. Tony’s nanny was gone. Had he kept his head he might have pulled through tho inning and saved himself, and there would have been no tenth round for Grantham, upset by what his slip had done in the ninth, to fumble and throw wild on one play. At a guess it is part of a report of a baseball match. We need educating about the ‘‘hall game”—that’s why I have made this extract —for the Giants are coming to show us pigmies how like baseball is to rounders.