THE COMMON ROUND.

Otago Witness, Issue 4038, 4 August 1931, Page 23

THE COMMON ROUND.

By

Wayfarer.

Dunedin, as we (or somebody like us) have previously remarked about Dunedin (or some other place), is no mean city. The Dunedin City Council, which is responsible for the lack of meanness of Dunedin, has no mean task. Directly, or by deputies, it has to keep watch, amongst other things, on liabilities amounting to £2,918,891; on assets of £3,885,677; on a population of some seventy thousands; on 15,227 acres of land with a capital value of £18,687,500; on gasworks worth £349,642; on 21 four-wheel closed trams, on 6 four-wheel open trams, on 26 four-wheel combination trams, on 13 eight-wheel combination trams —in short, upon some 56 four wheel and 13 eight wheel trams and etceteras, not to mention a four-wheel sprinkler of 18,000 gallons capacity. In fact, if one did not know the Dunedin City Council one might think that with trams, acres, gasworks, people, dancing in the Town Hall, ornamental rockeries in the Octagon, and all its other worries, it has its work cut out. One, assuming that these Councillors are hut human, might think they would have no time to give to other vital but extraneous matters affecting the good name and high moral standing of Dunedin. But not so—these are not men but supermen, who know all things, hear all things, see all things, or if they cannot see them, smell them : — Cr Begg said that it had been reported to him that a portion of the library had been closed on the previous morning owing to a very offensive smell. He had been told that the effect on some of the assistants had been such that it had been necessary to send them home. The Mayor said that the cause of the smell had been a rat which had been poisoned. The poison was supposed to “ eat the rat up,” but it had failed to do so. The matter had been reported to him, and he had had the cause of the smell removed.

It is a wise Mayor and a most prudent Council that can realise this great truth—that a rat in the library floor is a greater matter than an overdraft in the savings bank. Combination tram cars and fifteen thousand acres can look after themselves, but if the rat refuseth to be eaten up of itself, then the Council, if it be an alert Council, must do the job. For the rat, as Tennyson has reminded us,- has potentialities for the devouring of cities:— Ah, little rat that borest in the dyke Thy hole by night to let the bound less deep Down upon far-off cities while they dance— Or dream. Ah, little rat, even thy corrupt, exanimate body may cause a sickness in the temple of Minerva, and a great creaking of the municipal machine!

If any still were disposed to think a rat in the flooring a subject unfitted to . the weightiest deliberations of the weightiest citizens, it might convince them of the trouble a rat can do if we recall the fuss that once was made oyer a rat behind a curtain. May we, without becoming tiresome, note down the incident, which has always appealed as the prettiest fancy in “ Hamlet”: — Queen: What wilt thou do? thou wii not murder me? Help, help, ho! Pol (Behind): What, ho! help, help help!

Ham (Drawing): How now! a rat? Dead, for a ducat, dead! Makes a pass through the arras Pol (Behind): O, I am slain! Queen: O me, what hast thou done? Ham: Nay, I know not; is it the king? Queen: O, what a rash and bloody deed is this!

It is then, the gentle reader may recall, that Hamlet, discovering Polonius lying dead beneath the curtain, even as the other historical rat reposed beneath the library floor, declaims, even as the Mayor may have done when the cause of the smell was removed: “ Thon wretched, fash, intruding fool, farewell! ' To give full dramatic effect to the Dun edin version we should nominate a chorus of Scots librarians, carpenters, council lors, book-borrowers, city refuse removers and the rest repeating strongly without • “Farewell, a long farewell, thou rash and bloody deed ! ” [Exeunt omnes.]

A visitor recently returned from a tour abroad relates a story which should not be lost to posterity. Her wandering took her, with a female companion, into the wilds of Kansas and eventually, in a semi-official capacity, to the fine up-and coming town of Salina, population 20,000. American hospitality was all that the wanderer could hope for, and among other treats the kind-hearted Salinans escorted the visitors to the office of the loca! newsheet, where they watched the wheels, such as they were, spin round, and were granted an interview with the lady editor. Further along on their travels a copy of the newspaper containing an account of their visit caught up with them. In gush ing prose the lady editor told her readers of the strange, charming New Zealand women who had wandered into the civilisation of the prairies, and confessed that actually New Zealanders were just ordin ary folk like Americans—they wore the same sort of clothes, they read the same books, saw the same movies, and had running water and radio attached to their homes. There was, in fact, she confided

in a final paragraph, only one way in which New Zealand women differ from American—“ they speak English toith a foreign accent.”

It is often stated in insulting terms even until some people seem to believe it, that Governments, with particular reference, of course, to our own, are not amenable to the dictates of democracy. The word implies government by the people, and the cynical ask: “ But would the people, if they governed themselves, reduce their wages, increase the income tax, and raise the cost of tobacco?” In fact, it is openly questioned, is it not government by the Government that we enjoy, with the people the object of gov ernmental convenience? But, turning for enlightenment to unbiased sources, w<’ learn that the Government, indeed, is itself governed by the laws, and that it is willing, nay eager, to amend al] the laws that govern it so soon as time per mits and democracy is ready to abandon the most democratic of its tastes. Ex cerpt (from the potent South Dunedin W.C.T.U., the Voice of Anthoiity) :— Mrs read the following extract from the Good Templars’ Guide:-- “ That this lodge (Star of Melrose, No 12) draws the Prime Minister’s atten tion to the Licensing Act. which com pels the Government to license breweries and distilleries, and requests the Prime Minister to introduce legislation amend ing the Act so as to empower the Gov eminent to refuse licenses in the public interest.” Under date May 9 the Prime Minister acknowledging the receipt of the resolution, wrote: “I shall be glad to arrange for it to be borne in mind for con sideration.” And yet it has sometimes been darkly hinted that diplomacy is dead! Personally we have yet to hear of a fairer answer than that. Poss'ibly Parliament will be the next body to go down on its knees, this time to pray that the breweries be changed into lending institutions. The Board of Control of the Otago University Students’ Union has forbidden smoking in the women’s common room. In elghteen-seventy eight, Or its vicinity, Ladies had but one vice— Their cup of tea ; And men—if they were gentlemen — Smoked pipes in privacy. By nineteen one or two Or thereabouts. Gentlemen smoked abroad, And were not louts; By belching fumes their wives could tell, Their whereabouts. And now the lady wields A cigarette ; Matrons and chaperons must smoke— Or glumly fret; Girl babies learn when in Their bassinet. But, echo answers, But where can student girls Inhale the fume. If it is common in The common room? “ Bankrupt Flaxmiller—Destruction by Fire—Main Reason for Failure.” Thus the headlines in an Auckland newspaper. It seems to be a fairly adequate reason. From a resume of weather reports to be wirelessed to mariners: “The reports contain observations of barometric pressure in inches, air temperature in degrees (F.), wind direction and force (Beaufort scale), and the state of the sea in plain language.” Obviously - the report on the condition of the ocean will not be given anywhere near the children’s session. From a relief worker’s diary:— 1921—hauling away rocks to make a garden. 1931 —hauling them back to make a garden. Air-Commodore Kingsford Smith is preparing for a record-breaking flight to England and back. Suitable sporting newspaper heading: “Fresh Attempt for the Title.” English newspapers express the opinion that a reduction of war debt burdens is necessary but public opinion in the United States is not yet ripe. In Germany, however, it is becoming positively rotten.