THE COMMON ROUND.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19350, 10 December 1924, Page 2

THE COMMON ROUND.

By Wayfarer.

In the Homo Country, when the Mayoress presents the reigning Onief Magistrate with a fresh olive-branch, the traditional custom is to send the hot round and purchase a silver cradle. Mere councillors are not included in the pleasant compliment. It might come to bo an expensive business. But when a City Father does his paternal duty to Hie extent of twins—and not for the first time —I am inclined to think that the point should be waived. I should certainly like to contribute my mite towards the presentation of a silver cradle to the House of MacManus. Two mites indeed, seeing that the cradle will have to bo broadly built. Let us hope, at any rate, that the little interchange of amenities at the last council meeting will tend to smooth relationships, and also to rouse civic fathers to a renewed sense of their responsibilities. “In the Home Country”—so the last paragraph started. A correspondent, reviving an old controversy, asks for a justification of the term “Home” as applied cither to country or politics. “The Home Land! Home Politics!” he exclaims; “why not ‘Britain’ and ‘British politics’?” The point need not bo lightly dismissed; but may it not be retorted that Now Zealand is a part of Britain and that New Zealand politics are essentially British? The use of the word “British,” applied to the affairs of the Home Country (there I am again !) does not represent any clear distinction. The critic goes on to say; “New Zealand is my ‘home,’ and I rather resent the idea that I should bo obliged to seek my patriotic domicile many thousands of miles away.” My friend, I will not say that you are a proBoer or a pro-Gennan or the littlost of New Zealanders; but there is a nasty tang about your reference to a “domicile many thousands of miles away.” If you are not careful, you will be interned when the next war comes along. Meanwhile, letting you off lightly, I beseech you to allow some of us to retain just a tinge of a time-honoured “Homo” sentiment which, if not conclusively logical, is baaed on grounds of perennial solidity. I, for one, shall still use “Home.” sweet Home, in the old sense, when alluding to public affairs, while never, never forgetting the deep, intimate, domestic significance of the term.

Pathetic, with an almost majestic pathos, must appear those extracts from the opening article in the Clarion of October 24, five days before the great battle: According to our loud-speaking Liberal and Conservative opponents the cause of Labour is about to suffer a decisive set-back. It is to'be conclusively and finally defeated. . . Are we to suppose that this awful, resistless, majestic spirit of Divine Love can bo crushed and silenced by a reactionary vote at the election, that the Forces of Good will capitulate to the Forces of Evil, or that the Eeternal Verities will cease to be true, or that the mysterious and terrible march of Humanity through the Valley of the Darkness and the Shadow of Death upward toward tie Vic tory and the Light will come to hopeless and a shameful halt?

Please don’t neglect the capitals. The article is headed, in magnificent type, “The Cause that Cannot Fail,” and is adorned, by way of anti-climax, by portraits of Lord Haldane and Mr Wedgwood.

Is even Mr Bernard Shaw becoming somi-sensible? Is the most notorious ol I contemporary cranks destined to develop into a mere bourgeois moderate or opportunist ? Will he (he is not much older than Mr Baldwin or Mr Winston Churchill) bo pursued by photographic photographers os ho rushes along downing street, Bald-win-like, in bowler hat and with a cherrywood pipe stuck nonchalantly between his lips, to assume his un-philosophic Ministerial duties? These questions are in the lap of the gods, hut the indications are not wholly unpromising. We learn that Mr Shaw, honoured by remarkable cable importance. has been requesting the Moscow “Izvestia” to “tell Zenovieff that he must choose definitely between serious statesmanship and kinematograph schoolboy nonsense.” G. B. S., by the way, can never have been a schoolboy, though there- have been no limits to his nonsensical extravagancies. The paradoxical epigrammatist proceeds:— The proposition that the world should take its orders from a handful of Russian novices, who seem to gain their knowledge ..modern Socialism from pamphlets by "thd- libeifat 'revolutionists of IS4B to 1870, make even Lord Curzon and Mr Churchill appear to be comparatively extreme Modernists. Until Moscow learns to laugh at the Third International, and realises that wherever Socialism is a living force it boa left Karl Marx as far behind as modern science ' has left Moses, there will be nothing but misunderstandings, and a dozen negligible cranks in Russia will

correspond with the same number in England. “Cranks” is good; for there are cranks and cranks; but, as was said at starting, Mr Bernard Shaw seems to be doing his best to get into sane moods. I was never a “Shavian” (a silly word, 'by the way), but I always try to bo reconciliatory.

Lot it lie nermilted to me to pay a word of respectful and admiring tribute to the memory of the Rev. Alfred North. His grave, almost stern, face did not furnish an exact index to a most genial character. My personal acquaintance with him was (to my loss) very slight; but I once had the privilege of being his companion on a long walk, and during that afternoon ramble ho taught me as much about the beauty of the outskirts of Dunedin as any old identity (and I was but a novice) could know. If a highly respected clergyman, happily still with us, should chance to read these words, ho may remember a similar initiation to the hill scenery,—though it is many a year since ho told me about it. Of Mr North’s more strenuous interests, the altruistic enterprises which engrossed his life, it would not bo within my province to speak. And yet—how splendidly brave that Calcutta adventure was!

A vigilant friend, with a chaffing allusion to my fondness for dates, takes me, to task for forgetting that last Wednesday was the thirtieth anniversary of Robert Louis Stevenson's death. Peocavi, —though there is nothing specially sacrosanct in the term of thirty years. It is difficult to believe that R-L.S. (“the most beloved initials in modem literature ”) was laid to rest on the Samoan hill-top, overlooking the Road of Loving Hearts. Alive to-day he would be 74.—an almost inconceivable idea, for the thought of him is associated with perennial youth. And yet, thinking again, it is possible to picture him in septuagenarian venerability, with long white locks and breezy beard.—a sort of Walt Whitman, so to say, saluting the diurnal sun with “ shining morning face.” There he rests, however, on the tableland which, in the irony of fate, so many New Zealand soldiers have climbed. Under the deep and starry sky, Dig the grave and let me lie. Glad did I live and gladly die, And I laid me down with a will. This be the verse you carve for me— Here he lies where he longed to be: Home is the sailor, home from the sea, And the hunter home from the hill.’’ If I forgot to celebrate a thirtieth anniversary, I will atone by being exactly up to date in regard to a centenary. This is December 10, 1924. On December 10, 1824, George Macdonald, a novelist or some distinction and a not wholly negligible “ minor bard,” first saw the light of day. One or two of his novels (always touched with a mystic strain) still preserve their place; but “ Hilda and the Broken Gods,” which Dr Waddell, without his usual success, tried to make us love many years ago, is heavy stuff. There is good thought in it, but precious little poetry. An English journal, anticipating the centenary, observed some months ago:

At one time a Congregational minister, ho resigned and gave himself to writing. His novels, “ Robert Falconer ” and “ David Elginbrod,” onco enjoyed large sales, and he wrote some charming little fairy stories for children. But to-day lie is probably remembered, except in restricted circles, only by tho couplet: Where did you come from, baby dear? Out of the everywhere into the here.

I have read “ Robert Falconer,” but not “David Elginbrod.” Did the author quote the old epitaph?— “ I rest here—David Elginbrod. Have mercy on my soul, O God! As I would do if I were God And you were David Elginbrod.”

When working in the Gaywood 'recto. J gardens, near King's Lynn, recently a man named Knights picked up a bomb, which had been -unearthed by pigs, and it exploded in his hand. Hie arm and hand wore injured, and another man standing near by was stunned. Knight, who served during the war for four years, thought tit grenade was one used for extinguishing fires Monoplanes fitted with 12 engines each and airships carrying 120 passengers at a time are a suggested development in commerokl flying.