THE WEEK.

Otago Witness, Issue 2253, 6 May 1897, Page 29

THE WEEK.

" Xunquam aliuu natura, ahud sapientia di-xit. "Good nature and good sense must ever join."

— JIM'XNAL.

The correspondence of the Hon. John M'Keczie with Mr Gaorge A Hopeless Hutchison, member for Blunderer. Patea, has been called " ex-

traordinary " ; and it deserves the name. On the part of the Minister for Lands it is extraordinary — that in his position as a Minister, or in any position at all, he should commit himself in print to a letter of the kind. In a public speech delivered in a suburb of Wellington Mr M'Kenzie had declared that "if anyone wanted to hear any more about Bushy Park he was prepared to give him a letter to his son's solicitors, and he could see the deeds for himself." Now we may say at once that we have no curiosity whatever to see those deeds. If there is anything about the Busby Park transaction — and we confess that as information leaks out" it is beginning to assume an ugly 100k — we should hope that there are means of getting at all the facts without prying into private deeds. But when Mr M'Kenzie chooses a public opportunity to offer anyone the right to look at these deeds, we must assume that he intended to be as good as his word. It was rather a stupid offer to make, but it is well to bear in mind that he had a very clear object in making it. There was an election pending, and he

" I was endeavouriDg to influence bis audience in favour of the Government candidate. The Bushy Park affair had been brought into discußßion between the combatants, and no doubt the facts which Mr Atkinson could lay before the electors were very damaging to the Government cause. It was essential that Mr M'Kenzie Should refute them, and as he could not refute them — for they still stand nakedly demanding refutation — he did the next best thing he could — that is, blnstericgly offer to show anyone the deeds, with a confused notion of favourably influencing his simple audience by the open candour of the offer. Very likely the deeds would prove little, except, indeed, that Mr Atkinson was right iv saying no money had passed in thp purchase of the land, and that Mr M'KeDzie himself had been completely hoodwinking them in saying that thousands of pounds had so passed. Bat having once made the offer, Mr Hutchison, as one of the public, had a perfect right to accept it, and Mr M'Kenzie should have submitted the documents at once. As it is he has managed — clumsily, it must be admitted— to delude his audience at Newtown and evade his undertaking to the public. As to the terms of his letter about • trueblooded Highlanders and Sassenach loons, perhaps the less said the better. The stuff was evidently intended- as a joke, and^the joke designed to gat him out of an exceedingly tight place. He no doubt said to himself : " It would be very awkward to give up those deeds, and my offer was never intended to be accepted. I'll tarn the thing off into a, joke, and then the deeds will drop out of notice." But there are some men in this world who should never venture on a joke, and unhappily Mr M'Keszie is one of them. Sydney Smith's remark about a hatchet being necessary to get a joke into the bead of a Scotchman may not be true of the race, but it is eteraally true of the particular individual. Mr M'Kenzie's joke was ghaßtly. It had a most mournful effect on the whole colony, since every soul in it could not bat feel that the man who wrote that letter was absurdly and dangerously out of place as fi MinUter of the Orowu. His lateßt production is at least smart and bears convincing evidence that he has placed the correspondence in other hands — which is indication of wisdom of a kind.

We hare already said that the more information we. get about the An Bushy Park transaction the Exposure. uglier it looks. The defaces

of the transaction is that tha estate was sold privately to the MK«KziB Bros, because there was no prospeco of a sale to anyone else, no inquiries having been made for the property. Now what are we to say of this audacious statement in view of the business telegrams published in the leading columns of the Otago Daily Times of 28th nlr. and reprinted elaewhere in -this iasuo 1 One of the telegrams — that received frem the chairman of the Assets Company — is so romarkablo that we need offer no apology for setting it before our readers again. Lafc it be understood that in December last a man desirous of purchasing Bushy Park instructed a Dunediin agent to ask the Assets Board what prico t'asy put upon the estate, or if they would lease it. Thereupon the ageot wired to the chairman of the board (Mr Todd), and promptly received the following answer : —

December 9, 1896. We intend offering property for sale, by auction about March next. Will not lease.

Geo. Todd, Auckland. Within a few weeks of the receipt of thi3 telegram the intending purchaser finds that the e3tato has been quietly handed over to the M'Keaziß Bros. I What was the man to think of such a proceeding ? What are the public to think of it ? Certain men are entrusted by the colony to « sell to the best advantage certain properties the value of which the colony has guaranteed. They put an advertisement in the newspapers notifying in general terms that the said properties are for sale. Then a probable purchaser appears on the seene — there js oaly too much reason to believe there were more than one — and not only is no attempt made to come to terms with him, but he is actually put off — what is vulgarly called " bluffed '' — by a cock-and-bull story about an auction sale which never takes place. For, of course, when the inquirer for the property was told by such an authority that; it was going to be sold by auction hs would give himself no further concern about it until the auction day arrived. He was quite safe to have bis chance — as he would naturally but erroneously think. And is it not significant that while Mr Seddon should (at Pecone, for the information was refused in Parliament) give extracts from the various official reports showing that there was no prospect of a sale outside the M'Kenzie Bros., nothing whatever should be said of the inquiring purchasar here mentioned ? " Dare anyone say a word against these officials ? " exclaimed Mr Seddon in virtuous indignation. Tbe answer is a sad one. The officials in question, including the Land Purchase Board, which reported against the property for settlement, are nearly all practically Government nominees, and Government officials nowadays are expected to study aoove all things the interests of the Government. A single-minded regard for the interests of the colony doesn't count.

Of all the books o£ travel that have ever be6B written, there are few, we imagine, that can be said to

Dr Nansen.

excel in interest Dr Nansen's

"Farthest North," the record of his three years' expedition to the Arctic regions. Those who have read the same daring traveller's account of his trip across Greenland (he was the first to cross that forlorn country ) some eight or nine years ago will expect to find his latest book one of surpassing interest, and they will certainly not be disappointed either in his powers as an explorer or as a narrator. It is rare indeed that a human being is found endowed with such a splendid union of gifts, mental and physical, as Dr Nansen is. His daring, his perfect intrepidity, have been equalled before ; it would be a libel on the human race to say that they have not. But for the perfect union of qualities that make a man a born leader of his fellowmen and enable him to accomplish tasks for whicb even the most daring are unequal, there havc-b^m

few indeed like him. He deviseel himself a new theory for crossing the Arctic circle. He devised, after years of patient, thought, the class of ship that could carry him across. He spent unwearied thought over her equipment down to the minutest detail. He established over his companions the most perfect control, and won from them the completest confidence, though himself only of an age — he is but 33 now — when the judgment is hardly considered mature. He was at once the most philosophic, the most scientific, and the most practical man of tbe expedition. For simplicity, directness, and the power of sustaining interest where monotony of the day and the year would ordinarily be the unvarying rule, his style of narration leaves nothing to be desired. And the crowning glory of modesty is cast over the story he has to tell from the first page to the last. What he achieved and what he suffered ia gathered inevitably from the book, but the tacts reveal them rather than the statement of the man himself. The book is a possession for a library, and tells as much about the Arctic regions as we are likely to know during the present generation. It is doubtful whether the man who shall reach the Pole will be able to tell us any more. ~

. The thought which passes through the mind of the reader on laying down the book iB that everything happened exactly as everything might be expected to happen ; that from the data and the premises supplied by Dr Nansen the success of the undertaking was to be clearly foreseen. Ths facts were very much otherwise indeed. When Dr Nansen started on his extraordinary enterprise most people thought him an enthusiastic madman. We remember writing in that strain in these columns. His whole scheme was built up on the fact that some trilling articles belonging to the unfortunate Jeanette, the vessel of De Lang's American expedition crushed in t*je ica near tha New Siberian Islands in 1881, were some years afterwards found on the south-east coast o£ Greenland. Dr Nanaen argued that to get there they must have drifted through the Arctic circle, and that where they would drift a vessel built to withstand the ice would also drift. With that daxing theory firmly embedded in his mind he had tbe Fram — the name signifies " onward '' — specially built under his own eye — built so that when nipped with the ico she would use under the pressure as the pack descended. With this veasel, a dozen men, and five years' provisions, he sailed through the Kav& Sea as near as he could get to the region of the Jeanette disaster, and there, hemmed in by the ice, he moored his vessel to a huge floe and patiently waited to be drifted across tbe dreaded region. This faith iv himself and hia daring conception was sublime, and it was splendidly rewarded. At the end of rather more than three years the Fram quietly entered the port of bar departure ia Norway, never having used steam, which indeed would have been oE no avail in, ifae giant clutches in which she was hald, train fche day pho was moored to tue lea until it was tinie to burst herself free of her bonds in sight of opon ocean to the south.

i .A cursory raview such as this would lead to

the fcelier that the expeai-

I The Region tion, however brilliantly ceaof oeivftd and • iiitccQsefully j Eternal Ice. executed, was on the whsle ! rather a tame affair. That j would be a great mistake Tbe iateresl; in j following its movements from day to day and year to year never flagg. It is trae that life on board the 3ram was on the wkola, and' for persosss dwelling in the regions of ' eternal ico, comfortable. The previsions were j excellent and varied. Thehaalth of the men ! remained from first to last perfect, so perfect that the doctor of the expedition had to take to physicking the Eskimo dog« — some 30 odd — for lack of patients. In the course of a month or two a sense of security established itself in tbe minds of all when it was found that the roariaga aud bellowings of the ice floes as they crushed themaelves agaiesc the sturdy little vessel meant no inj evitable or even special danger to them, i They had abuarlance of work and exercise j even throughout the loag Arctic night. They i could keeo themselves warm in their saloon

and barths, sometimes even without a stove, with the tsmperaEure ranging from 20deg to oOdeg bslow zero. They had an excallent llbrarj ; they played cards, and improvised concerts. They royally kepi each other's birthdays, and right royally the national festivals of Norway. On " Oonstitation Day " they would march in grand procession round their ice-bcund vessel, with much waving of flags and firing of guns and some degree of speechmaking, Their first Christmas dinner might be envied in New Zealaad, and Dr Nansen sets it out with mnch gusto : — They will be thinking much of us ju^t now at home and giving many a pitying sigh ovr-v all the hardships we are enduring in this cold, cheerless, icy region. Bui I am afraid their compassion would cool if they could look in upon us, bear the merriment that goes oc, and see all our comfort and good cheer. . . . Jusb listen to to-day's dinner menu : (1) Oxrail soup ; (2) fish pudding with potatoes and melted butter ; (3) roast of reindeer, with peas, French beans, potatoes, and cranberry jam ; (4) cloudberries with cream ; (5) c.ike and marzioan \

The above was washed down with a famous Norwegian beer, and the evening was wound tip with fruit preserves, gingerbread, vanilla cakes, cocoanufc macaroons, and figs, almonds, and raisins. In the summer there was abundance of bear bunting to break the monotony. The electric light, worked by a windmill on deck, curiously marked in that desolate region the progress of science in our age. Here we have the bright side of the expedition. The dreary monotony, the almost everlasting night, the uncertainty as to whither they were drifting, the distressing calms and head winds (for the evidence seems to be that there was no special set current, but merely such as was iormed by the prevailing winds) ; the backward driftings, and the eternal necessity for being on the watch for disaster which would compel abandonment of their stout ship — these things give a glimpsa of the other side of the picture. And for Dr Nansen himself and one chosen companion, Johansen, terrible hardships and privations were in store. Finding that the ship would not drift within somo hundreds of miles o? tha v.Aa ahonirb if, did drift to

a point nearer than any other expedfo tiw had reached), the pair started off with dogs and Bledges, 'bidding farewell to companions they were not destined to see until nearly two years' later: both parties strangely enough reaching Norway almost simultaneously. Nansen and Johansen made for the Pole, and toiled under most desperate difficulties to get there, aotually reaching a point 200 miles nearer than any human being had penetrated before. What they endursd, creeping at night into a hard frozen reindeer bag, and trusting to the warmth of their own closely pent-up bodies to dry their frozen garments, must be read in order to be understood. Even in that desperats region they had their festive occasion. Here is one pathetic entry, for Nanoen's diary was kept regularly written up in the reindeer bag : —

April I*. Easter Eve. ... I thought we had better in the circumstances [hopeless difficulties with the icej pitch our tenfc and have a festive Easter Eve. In addition, I wished to reckon our latitude, longitude, our observation for time, and our variation. The tent up, and Johansen attending to the dogs, I crept into the bag; but lying thawing in this frozen receptacle, with frozen clothes and shoes, and simultaneously working out an observation -and looking up logarithms with tender frost-blUea fingers, is not pleasureable, even if the temperature is only 22deg below zero. Meanwhile, wo bad a festive. Easter Eve, and regaled ourselves with the following delicacies — hot whey and water, fish aw yratln (this was fish powder.), stewed red whortlobecrifis and litne juice gro^ (lime juice tablets in hot water). Simply a splendid dinner, and having feasted our filJ, we«at last at 2 o'clock crepe in under cover.

How the two men journeyed for 15 long months ia this terrible region ; how they had to kill one faithful dog after another to feed the others ; how at lsngbh they reached ths desolate, ice-covered regions of Franz JoscC Land (calibrating the occasion by a rare feast on "a piece of, chocolate"); and how they there happily foil in with an English exploring party — these are now matters of history. Dr Na.naen aud his companions have done much for scientific exploration, and though they have not reached the Pole they have certainly shown feow it can be readied at aoma future time. Bab perhaps tho most valuable Imsoa to be learnt from this remarkable record of their wanderings is the lessen that courage and endurance aud stern determination and unflagging hope will surmount every kind of difficulty and counteract every tendency to despair. The faith which remoras j-aouataiaa is after all faith in oneself.

Svkkyone admits that there is an evil side to the party system in politic?, though whether the evil it doss is not more than counterbalanced by the advantages is a question that has not yet been decided. Perhaps the real fact is, that while the system is ia itself good, the human instruments by which It must be worked occasionally degrade I-'. and destroy its usefulness. Party is onw thing and faction ia quite another : when the responsible leader of a party descends so fay as to use the mere weapons of faction it i> the man who is to be condemned and not the system. Wo don't condemn k. steam angiae because it is ignorar.fcW and dangerously driven; wa dismiss tfew driver. Sir William Ilarcouvt is the | leader of a great Euglish party, but IS is difficult to conceive a grosser lnlsusepE the i authority entrusted to him than the position he took up in the Transvaal debate, aa reported in the cables oi Monday. Ku threatened a determined resistance to vrba'v he termed the war opsrationß now going on at the Cape, accusing Mr Chamberlain of pro vokiog a racial war in South Africa. All thij because nn ex^a regiment was beiug seci. to the Cape and some expenditure was going; on to improve the defence conditions of ths; colony. Wfaen Mr Chamberlain denounced*. ■ the language ot the leader of the Opposition as pernicious, dangerous, and unpatriotic, ha probablf never used a choicer selection e£ adjective* in his life, sad bio adjectives ara generally effective enough. There i;; all tha difference in the world between rushing into a fooiieh war and slowly and deliberately taking steps for the defence of the empire. The one leads to unmitigated disaster ; the other works in the interests of peace. If any one thing stands out clearer than another in the African policy of Groat Britain ft" is, the extraordinary coasidcration and forbearance with which the Transvaal has been treated. The control over the foreign policy, of th&u country is established by treaty, and yet it is found that President Krnger has been ■ surreptitiously entering" into, conventions with foreign nations more or lessbofttila to the suzerain. Wo have only to consider how Germany, Franco, or REQ3ia would act undar similar circumstances to recognise the forbearance of the mother country. In the hour oS the triumph of his party tba Premiership was uassed over the head of Sir William Haicourfc because he was destitute of principle ; and the lorgcr ke loads the less confidence there would appear to be in his statesmanship, for it seems clear that he woul'l never have subsided as he did under fche angry retorts of Mr Chamberlain and Mr Balfour had he not felfc that he had placed himself in a hopelessly false position.

There is probably no more mischievous crazes to get hold of a people than tha?; which goes by the name of " the war spirit/ History teems with illustrations of the dire disasters and desperate evils that spring from it. The latest instance is that oi Greece, where the rise and progress (downward) of the war spirit may be traced within the compass of a few months. First, there^ is the st^ge of national emotion, ebullition* of feeling which may have no very definite aim. Then comes tbe phase of national swagger, coupled with intense resentment against such as attempt to exercise a cool judgment. Then there' is a furious cry for war, whicb, in the absence of a still, strong man, is generally followed by a plunge into it. Finally, there is misery, depopulation, exhaustion, and perhaps irretrievable disaster, with abject demands for mediation from nations who were.- regarded with contempt because they did not also lose their heads under the influence of the craze. Nob very long ago a tuneful poet of the second order gave a charming picture of Greece which would be difficult to recognise at the present moment :

A shepherd's crook, a coat of fleece,

A grazing floek — the sense of peace ; The lons' sweet silence— this is Greeoa-

The description is poetical no doabt;, even when Greece is sober, but it reads grimly enough when Greece is drunk — and suffering a recovery. The war spirit in a nation is one which may be cheaply indulged in, and that is where the mischief of it comes in. It costs nothing to furiously demand war, for as a rule the persona who most furiously demand ifc are those who will not be called upon to take part in it, and who will not see it, indeed, except in so far as it is depicted in the illustrated papers. It is when the war spirit is abroad that the repressing influence of a strong man is wanted ; but, unhappily, no such man wa? forthcoming in Greece. He is a rare bird anywhere. The present war does mischief in two different directions. It must paralyse the influence of Greece, which might have been an influence for good ; and it must increase to some extent — perhaps very largely— the prestige of the Turk, whoae influence in Europe is wholly for bad, in spite of the discipline and the humanity which for once seem to have been maintained in the Turkish army.