THE COMMON ROUND.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19249, 13 August 1924, Page 2

THE COMMON ROUND.

By W atfar'er. To bo read carefully: LONDON, August 7. Admiral Sir Percy Scott, commenting on the revived Jutland controversy, declared; “The truth about Jutland has never will be. Everything told about it is incorrect; therefore I am not participating in the controversy. Surely that terse and beautifully reported dictum might bo accepted as the finale of the two battles of Jutland—the battle at sea and the battle in print. “The truth about Jutland has never will be.” Splendidly put! 1 defy anyone to represent the mad muddledom of the controversy in more exquisitely lucid fashion. Lucid, that is. in the non-lucid sphere—just as everything is perfectly lucid in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. No one shall persuade me that this feat was performed by accident. lam more and more convinced that there is a super-saga-cious cherub sitting up aloft in a certain newspaper office to set our erring judgments on the right path.

By the wav', did you ever come across a Jutland fiend? There are other kinds of war fiends —fiends whose Bedlamite fancies haunt Gallipoli or the West Front or Mesopotamia—but the Jutland variety is the most malign of the pestiferous tribe. Ho carries a map of those northern seas — also a pencil and a bulging note-book and numerous pins. Let him once get those unholy belongings to work, with you in the vision of bis glittering eye, and you are a lost man, as was the Wedding Guest under the spell of the Ancient Mariner. Goldsmith’s martial veteran “shouldered his crutch and showed how fields were won”— an entertainment which (barring exceptional liars) might bo instructive —but Heaven protect us from the crank who devotes his life to explaining how fields ought to have been won 1

In the early days of the war there was a charming story about two old rustics who were discussing the conduct of military affairs. One was censorious, as age (and youth) will be : but the sager sage observed correctively—“lt’s all very well to talk like (hat, John; but Kitchener and French has a heap on their minds, and it’s not for yon and me to say anything that might embarrass them.” From a different point of view I object to having mv orthodox war-notions “embarrassed” by the heresies of new-fangled heterodoxy. No one is going to toll me at this time of day either (hat Lord Jellicoe messed matters up at Jutland or that Bill Adams did not win the Battle of Waterloo.

The 1924 general election may perhaps be regarded as over, though there is room for differences of opinion regarding the significance of the results. Acknowledgments for the figure of speech are due to Mr Solomon, who remarked at a football social on Saturday night that the tussle between League and Union had been marked by the excitement usually incident to a general election. The genial K.C. — author of the memorable phrase, “Dunedin for devilment”—certainly did not exaggerate. On the contrary, it may be doubted whether any political contest, since Dunedin became Dunedin, has equalled, in noint of all-embracing grip, the power of the Rugby versus League controversy which culminated at Tahuna Park on Saturday afternoon. Is “culminated” the same ns “finished”? In this case it is devotedly to bo hoped so—as in the case of Jutland. Mr Solomon, though a professional litigator, set an excellent example as a peacemaker. “They were brothers in sport, though, he added amidst laughter, they had during the last week been ‘brothers in law.’ He hoped yet to see them brothers in fact.” May it bo suggested that one or two of the subsequent speeches were not couched in quite similarly conciliatory tone? I. for one. am philosophically impartial. Give me Rugby League at Tahuna and Rugby Union at Carisbrook—but, please, not on the same day. It is an axiom, and must be a postulate, that you cannot be in two places at the same time.

Football controversies are all very well in their way, but Ranfurly versus Naseby is the really vital issue of the hour. I have been trying to keep a balanced mind in regard to a subject of Imperial import, hut Ranfurly has won me over to its side by appealing, with outrageous vigour, to, my poetic susceptibilities. While a part of Ranfurly is admittedly bare and barren there is a. belt of some 40 acres of land, encircled by trees that compare more than favourably as regards beauty with anything that Naseby _ can show, and this is where the hospital is to he built. These 40 acres are to be the great redeeming glory of Ranfurly in the future. Along their beautiful walks poets and romancers can be bred, and under their leafy shades ardent youth can kindle the gentle flame as well as in the “bowery hollows” of Naseby. Naseby has answered: the fight between Great and Little Pedlington still ocs ong pending the editorial closure; but, taking it for all in all, contemplating rival attractions, I have decided to go to Ranfurly for my next umbrageous and amorous holiday. Naseby must forgive me, and take consolation in the fact, if I mistake not, that Ranfurly was once a mere “Ewoburn.” Even now it does not know how to pronounce its own name. Emphasis on the first syllable, please. As the popular ex-Governor once remarked, “I don’t rhyme with ‘surly’.”

There was, according to the press report," a complete absence of the male sex” at Miss Gladys M'Gill’s lecture on Dress at the Otagc University last week. This circumstance is scarcely to be deplored,—especially if, as I am told, the discourse included some candid details not explicitly indicated in the report. It may h' assumed that tne recording angel was a ‘>dy; otherwise I should be constrained to- .tlush vicariously for the masculine scribe solitarily at the mercy of the ‘‘largo number of ladies present.” Male reporters themselves discard the puerile habit of blushing on or about their nineteenth birthday. Besides, blushing is ridiculously Victorian 1 myself, being oarly-Victorian and (as authoritatively assured) in my second childhood, should feel scandalously embarrassed if compelled to bear and report a feminine dictum that “dressing was of secondary importance,” though it might have passed muster in the Garden ot Eden. Why, cve.tr Mr Punch’s pungent notes on “Our Shameless Advertisers” give mo a hot quiver down my back. “The latter part of Miss M‘Gill’s remarks were devoted to underwear.” But enough !—I am being seduced from rny Victorian standards.

On the other hand, there was (it may be surmised) “a complete absence”, of the feminine sex at the Ragged Brothers’ weird corroboree. And these separate entertainments do not help the great Leap Year enterprise. They do not tend to the filling of the cradles, —which Mr Secldon once declared to be “the prolific problem of the hour.” But perhaps it was just as well that the Ragged and Orphaned Brotherhood did not invito (heir wives and mothers and sisters and sweethearts to the weird “function”—a word never to be used, in this connection, without protest. For the women would soon have detected the fraudulent element in the affair. Why. I met a returning Ragged Brother clothed sumptuously in an overcoat which must have cost him at least a fortnight’s screw. And it was precious little of “hot saveloys and potatoes and cabbage leaves” that I, a Ragged Brother anti urchin got when roaming between Charing Cross and (he Dark Arches, about eighty or ninety years ago. There is a lingering lend of a miscreant who killed his father and mother, and pleaded for mercy on the ground that he was an Orphan.

Once get mo on Yictorianism or proVictor! no ism, and I am hard* to shift. And surely those verses, written hy a pitted e\--A'isfralian. are dainty enough to deserve quoting; AN OLD, OLD LADY. I know a dame, a perfect dear, Cultured and nobly horn, tVho in her five-and-ninetioth year Still laughs old Time to scorn. ’Tin hard to realise as truth The simnle fact of pride That she had cut an early tooth Ere r.F.onUE the Fourth had died. From infant wails to childish charms Through Wilmam's reign she grew, And Colonels' held her in their arras Who fought at Waterloo. The cautious crinoline she wore To walk the croquet-ground; She travelled in a coach-and-four To see Victoria crowned. She lived wh'n England hurled her weight Avainst, the stout Redan; Within her dav on Delhi Gate The British flags un-ran. Ah! Youth that past her window goes Loud-iesting and alive; Ah! Careless Youth that little knows The thoughts of Ninety-Five! Her far-off friends of childhood dead, Her old companions gone. With gallant heart and high-held head She smiles and carries on.

Good luck to her, this brave old dame; Each sorrow bravely met, L oU rr may she play her dauntless gsrnt? Against the Scytheman yet! D W. H. O. May W H. Ogilvie, author of “F.ir Girls and Grey Horses” long live to write verses charged with such delectable insight! He is away from the Land of Wide Spaces where much of Ids inspiration-camo to him, but he has fully captured the old-world charm of the country of his birth.