THE COMMON ROUND

Otago Witness, Issue 4041, 25 August 1931, Page 34

THE COMMON ROUND

By

Wayfarer

The Irish Free-for-all State lias been the platform for another siege of Derry, and the lads have been out with their shillelaghs again. Ireland, the thought occurs, is a broth of a land to come from, but divil-an’-all if a bhoy wants to go back there. Even Mr Shaw, who can stomach Fabianism, Communism, Stalinism, and the terrors of Red bread, does not thrust the Red beard of his maturity on to Irish soil. Indeed, his opinion is apparently that of the Orangemen who found Donnybrook at Derry. Mr Shaw, it is said, recently received from a young lady a song entitled “ My Irish Daddy,” which went in part: — Tho’ my eyes have never rested on that dear, delightful land, Yet I know her hills and valleys are the work of Beauty’s hand ; And I'm sure there's angels’ laughter In each gleaming stream that flows— For my Irish daddy says it, and my Irish daddy knows. A touching exhibition, one admits, of faith in labels. And so thought Mr Shaw, who added a verse: — At last 1 went to Ireland, t’was raining cats and dogs, I found no music in the glens, nor purplv in the bogs; And as for angels’ laughter in the smelley Liffey’s tide I Well, my Irish Daddy said it; but the dear old humbug lied. The writing of verses, one thinks, is a strange conceit for a vegetarian.

Maestro Shaw, by the way, has at 75 conceived an even stranger conceit—or is it an inhibition?—which is to learn to play the piano. Possibly his purpose is to accompany his own song; or, more probably, to encourage amiable columnists in search of colour to vtfrite about him. At any rate an exchange assures us that he considers he has reached a time of life when he can devote serious attention to the one phase of art which, as a performer, he had previously rather neglected. The news invites a comment, but it shall be brief. While one deplores that Mr Shaw, having made politics, the drama, and even civilisation into his own likeness, should now be determined to do Backhaus, Hambourg, Gershwin, and Harvey out of their jobs, one must be patient with him. Little Mozart was a harpsichordist at three; young Beethoven a fiddler at five; Bach an embryonic musician while still a lad. Mr Shaw’s piano-playing peccadillo may charitably be ascribed, then, to mere boyish high spirits; nothing more serious than a minor juvenile depravity.

Speaking of Ireland drags the conversation around once more to bulls, and permits quotation from an editorial in the portly Manchester Guardian that has a distinctly bullish flavour: — The number of salmon exported from the Irish Free State was, in the latest year for which figures are available, about 10 per cent, greater than the number recorded as caught. This, coming from the Guardian, is surprising, but on reading further we learn that it is the Irishmen, not the Guardian, at fault. In short, it is estimated that about 60,000 salmon are poached in the Free State every year, and even this, as the Guardian gravely remarks, is probably an under-estimation, for one cannot imagine an Irishman sending all his fish to iparket. Out of respect for the nouility of the salmon, and his duty to his own appetite and the appetites of his relatives, he doubtless keeps a few to eat himself.

If our pen leads us unwillingly back to the Great Depression, it is because this is a topic upon which everyone seems to have plenty to say, from the retiring president of the Chamber of Commerce to the chatty fellow who tacks new soles on the very depressed bottoms of our boots. Speaking of the Chamber of Commerce makes one think, naturally, of resolutions and more resolutions. Here is an interesting one from Spalding’s Quarterly: — Resolved: That the continuous and increasing- depression of the manufacturing, commercial, and agricultural interests of this country, and the widespread distress of the working classes, are most alarming—manufacturers with out a market, shipping without freight, capital without investment, trade without profit, and farmers struggling under a system of high rents, with prices falling as the means of consumption by • the people fall; a working population rapidly increasing, and a daily decreasing demand for its labour; union houses overflowing as workshops are deserted: corn laws to restrain importation, and inducing a starving people to regard the laws of their country with a deep sense of injustice.

This is not, gentle reader, a terse note on what is happening to-day; it is a resolution passed by the Common Council of the City of London in 1842. We may take courage from the fact that the “hungry Forties” were lived down; now we have but to reach, perhaps, the 1932nd parallel.

But depressions have a history longer even than the Common Council'of London. Away back when our forefathers were still trouserlese, before the passage of the years was numbered as we reckon time to-day, the greatest Caesar was setting the greatest Forbes an example. In a history of the time we are told : — The question of debts, which had been pressing for solution for a long time,

played a leading part. He resolutely refused to consider the wholesale cancelling of debts. . . . But, allowing for the interest paid since the outbreak of the Civil Wars, he consented to debtors being relieved of 25 per cent. He also arranged that the rent of all dwelling houses should be cancelled for one year up to a limit of 500 denarii for the rest of Italy and 2000 for Rome. . . . The total demoralisation of the masses in Rome was as much due to the free dis‘tribution of bread as to any other cause Ctesar reduced the number of recipients by 50 per cent. . . . He endeavoured to deal with unemployment by sending 80.000 Roman citizens to overseas colonies. . . .

In fact, there is not much that Caisar did that has not been done, or tried, or at least contemplated, by the Ciesars of our own day, the Messieurs Hoover, Snowden, Scullin,* Lang, Forbes and Holland.

Practically anything will do to start an argument in America, especially if it concerns school books. In Tennessee they had the Scopes trial on the issue whether children should he told of the caudal attributes of their forbears; in Chicago “ Big Bill ” revealed a dreadful plot by which Great Britain intended to subvert the United States with royalist propaganda; in Franklin, Pa., a terrible discovery has been made of an attempi bj’ the authors of a history of America to poison childish minds on the liquor question. Here is one offending paragraph : — During the seventeenth century the people of Europe did not drink water as a beverage as we do to-day. When they came as colonists to the New Work! they continued to drink the same beverage - that they had been used to in E tit ope, that is, whenever they could get it. In many cases, however, they were forced to drink water and were actually surprised that no ill effects

came of it. There would have been in the latter part of this paragraph an excellent tin solicited testimonial for the New Zea land Alliance’s use in the coming months, had it not been decided to allow us to drink the same beverage as the early colonists for three years more.

The really shocking part of the his tory comes later, however, when it is stated:—

Nearly all the colonists drank strong liquor. . . . Here is a sad story. The New England colonists made most of the ruin. They took it to Africa and bought negroes with it, they took the negroes to the West Indies and exchanged them for molasses to make more rum to buy more negroes to get morg. molasses to make more rum. There was no end to this cycle.

Indeed, with the aid of Mr Capone the rum cyclists who have inherited from the New England colonists are, from what one can hear, pedalling as hard as ever in the speakeasies to-day. And like the human race, it is a good or a bad race as opinion inclines. The only thing is for the brewers and distillers to make more rum to sell to the rum-hounds to pay taxes on to the Government, to fill the coffers to create more prosperity to give more wages to pay to the rum-hounds to buy rum from the distillers to . . . but you can pedal this push-bike as well as ‘ Wayfarer.”

A Chicago dress-designer is introducing anti-depression styles in women’s apparel. Dunedin husbands advocate four yards of sackcloth, the hair sprinkled with ashes to tone.

A measure has been introduced in Turkey prescribing a certain standard of education and culture for newspaper men. This represents a base attack upon the traditions of the press.