CURRENT COMMENT.

Taranaki Daily News, 21 December 1929, Page 1 (Supplement)

CURRENT COMMENT.

OTHER POINTS OF VIEW.

(By

M.O.S.)

' The Baptist College at Birmingham, Alabama, has discharged its professor of biology. because he refused to accept the story of Jonah and the whale. It certainly was a large mouthful to swallow. o • ■» * - On the other hand, the Baptist College 1 may be quite right. Anything is possible in this world of strange contradictions. Once uppn a time our forefathers believed we owed our existence .jo Adam and Eve who lived in a Mesopotamian garden-orchard. Then Darwin shattered the fond illusion by the discovery that our first parents were arboricUlous creatures. And now comes Dr. Henry F. Osborn, zoologist and palaeontologist, to tell us that everybody’ is wrong—except himself, of course. He has observed signs of an oasis in the sandswept Gobi Desert. That was the birthplace of the human race, he says. The doctor’s address is New York. However, just as we were being comforted by the learned doctor’s assertion that we are hot refined apes, Professor Elliott Smith, of London, produced some more incontrovertible evidence that we bear distinct resemblances to the gorilla. In fact, we are so like him that it is absurd to deny he is our cousin, he declares.

This .is science. We poor mortals should be very grateful for what the scientists hre doing for us.

On thinking the matter over though, one is inclined to agree with the processor's theory of a zoological ancestry. Some 'men always did remind me of something else . . i , Then one must reinember that bewhiskerdd Bolsheviks are still torturing and shooting evangelists; the Chinese have entered another phase of their eternal war and are filling rivers With, corpses; Dusseldorf has its Ripper. But—one almost forgot—gorillas are paid to be very gentle creatures. # - * # * It seems, therefore, that we must fall back on the Adam and Eve theory after ip.ll. Here, too, is a wonderful opportunity for . Dr. Osborn to prove himself a “hundred per cent. American.” It certainly wasn’t very patriotic of him to state as a scientific fact that the Gobi Desert was the cradle of mankind. Absurd I Utterly absurd! One must agree jvith Professor Smith. ‘ # « n n No doubt it is only their native modesty that has prevented the Americans long ago telling the world, the '■ true story about Adam and Eve. It is useless to conceal any longer the fact that the United States is the cradle of everything Worth while on this earth. It was the United States that sent a reporter to discover the ' Bouth Pole, with some slight assistance, from Commander Byrd; it was the United ’ States that Won the greatest war and presented the largest bill in history; it was the United States that invented the Fourteen Points, the Kel-logg-Paet, the Almighty Dollar, gasolene • and chewing gum; and it was the United States that produced the greatest Englishman, George Washington. « # # * So why not unfurl the Stars and IBtripes above the one and only Garden oi Eden, down Cincinnati way? Having ’ signed the pledge and subscribed to the Monroe Doctrine, Mr. and Mrs. Adam ioould bo made really comfortable on a small!allotment while the company promoters took but patent rights and issued real estate prospectuses. Then Al. Jolson could shuffle all his movable parts iind .sing “And Adam sinned and Eve Sinned in Cincinnati.” # # # v # , This would be a truly noble achievement for the world’s greatest nation. « * # # I ’Unfortunately, however, the position has been further complicated by the discovery near Peking of the skull of Mr. Sinanthropus. Pekinensis. As Peking is nearer the Gobi Desert than are either America or it appears jtliat this Pekinensis fellow has deliberately turned up at that spot because of an arrangement with Dr. Osborn. The fact that Mr. P—. died a million years ago indicates that the doctor is a spiritualist as well as a palaeontologist. # # * « New Zealand is one of the few countries that has not yet claimed to be the cradle of the human race, though .the fact that it invented the Plunket Society shows its thoughts are turned in the right direction. There" is no need to despair, however. After all, we have our moa bones and our tuataras and, if the* worst comes, we have our Tourist League. When the present competition in New Plymouth is over the League might consider conducting a missing link competition at, say, threepence a vote. The male beauties* now so prominently In the public eye would, of course, be debarred from entering this, contest.

Where is Portia? ..... ID was announced by cable the other Say that the British Treasury had just paid the United States £18,759,000, of Which £5,400,000 represented the repayment of principal. The total, payment Bince the refunding of the British debt jto America is now £2-24,800,000, of which only £34,800,000 represents repayment of principal. The amount still outstanding is £885,"200,000. * * * #

. Heard in the Supreme Court at New Plymouth recently:

“I shall place brick on brick and straw on straw and build an overwhelming edifice ”

* “They are duckshoving, your Honour ”

“They wha—, divided it up among .them, your Honour. . . .”

Personally, I always did find it diflijult to understand legal argument.