THE FRETFUL PORCUPINE

Observer, Volume XXXV, Issue 13, 5 December 1914, Page 16

THE FRETFUL PORCUPINE

THE Prohibition Party are making much capital out of Lord Kitchener's advice to soldiers about wine and women. Lord Kitchener "advised" but didn't "order." He did not stop the making of 150,000 gallons of overproof rum for the troops and he isn't going to stop the soldiers' rations of spirits. The idea that Lord Kitchener imposed total abstinence on British isoldiers is quite wrong. In the latest Home papers Tommies are seen teaching the French the art of drinking beer, for the Frenchman is a wine drinker and has to acquire the taste for "hop tea." Lord Kitchener does not enforce prohibition because his officers can enforce anything they like wherever British troops are. They can close canteens, put hotels "out of bounds," reduce rum rations and generally administer the alcohol business. The British Army saves lives with rum. The writer knows this to be a fact. It has also sent stricken soldiers back to their wives and families after having "fed them on champagne," the only nourishment capable of assimilation in some cases. The idea that British soldiers are drunken hogs, too weak to resist drink and stronger to fight than any .soldiers on earth is an insult to the Army. If the liquor business of any country was run as ably as the liquor business is run in the British Army—there would be nothing for the Prohibition Party to do. The accusation of the Party will cause thousands of New Zealanders to leave in the top line next week. ® ® ® , Medical men have made learned dissertations about the eye trouble prevalent among the troops in Samoa. A gentleman who is at present in Auckland and who has lived in the islands most of his life declares that the affection is the common everyday "sandy blight," a

complaint known to all the natives of the islands and to every Australian bushman. The glare from the hot ground is the cause. The natives turn the eyelids back and scrape the granulations off gently with a piece of grass. All Australians use eye water. Henry Lawson tells a yarn of two mates. They camped in a travellers' hut and Bill had sandy blight the worst way. Next day Jim developed it. Rooting round the hut Jim found in one of the bunks a bottle labelled "Eye Water." He seized Bill and laying him on a bunk dropped some in his eyes. "What's in it?" asked Bill. "I dunno," said Jim—"but if it blinds you, I won't use any on. meeelf!" © <© ® "Penny R." writes: —I send the following' advertisement clipped from that intensely respectable family paper, the "Star' r : — "War, War.—Ladies, Thousands of Victories by losing Orange Lily.—Mr Dewar, Health Specialist, 5 and. 6, Strand Arcade. Phone 4108." You will agree with me that to interfere with business is not the province of any respectable family paper. © @> ®J Mr Tewsley probably blessed a small Stanley Bay boy last week, for the boy caused him to have a large meeting. Stanley Bay is the quietest spot in the district, but when a small boy suddenly pierced the startled air with cries of "Ring the firebelll" Oh, ring the firebell —our house is burning!" many hundreds of excited Stanleyites (and others) abandoned their prohibibition literature, threw their Sunday tracts down and burst into the open." They ' invaded" the burning premises and found a citizen in pyjamas engaged with a bucket and the boy still demanding a solo on the firebell. In the meantime someone produced a bit of smouldering refuse and declared the danger over. An intrepid J.P. bolted towards the firebell with loud oooees demanding that, it be stopped, but the campan.o.k>siy continued until the "double grandsires" had been played to a standstill. Happily the Devonport Fire Brigade did climb the steep ascent and prevented the destruction of the house. An hour later the vehicles of the Brigade were hauled back by an immensely enthusiastic crowd of small boys, yelling lustily the refrain of "It's— a — Long — Way — to Tip-per-arrv!" The crowd having gathered

naturally turned in to. see Mr Tewsley. Mr Tewsley should move a vote of thanks to the boy. ® @ © Quite naturally both the Licenseers and the No Licenseers are flooding the country with pictorial and other literature. The License party is showing a cartoon depicting strong young New Zealand bound hand and foot to a chair with "No License" tied across his mouth. The -gentleman who has done the tying is a typical ho licenseer with shabby bell-topper and with his black gloves and umbrella at his feet. Behind the poor young victim of No License stands a figure of "Justice" protesting at the prohibitionist's action. The whole thing is unconvincing. That is not the question, however. The poster is imported from England by the License party and is the work of Messrs Waterlow Brothers and Layton, London. One merely desires to know whether the Licensing party is aware that printing of all kinds is done in New Zealand. © & # There is a good story concerning a bit of quiet diplomacy told in a letter which an Auckland resident has just received from a friend who is employed in the General Post Office in London. It concerns the Austrian Ambassador, and relates how his presence in London for more than a week after war had been declared between Britain and Austria's ally, Germany was rendered entirely useless to the Germans. Austria being officially at peace with Britain it was impossible to interfere with the free communication between the Ambassador and Vienna, while it was morally certain that he was transmitting in his cypher messages, news that it was of importance to the German side. What was done was to "relay" his cypher messages at the General Post Office, to which they were conducted by diverting the direct wire, and then to carefully "mess up" the cypher. "Vienna must have thought the old man was drunk!" was the comment of the postal official who related the story. "Tangata":—An excellent comment on the difference between the male and the female of the human species is afforded by a recent picture in an English paper. Six men and a boy are crowded on a car seat, everyone eagerly devouring war news. The one lady in the car is reading sweetly oblivious to distant blood and battle, "East Lynne Don't sneer at women for it. It s natural and God-given. A woman remains undisturbed by war and interested in straight front corsets and new clothes until war hits her or her men folk. The inability of a woman to worry herself about 100,----000 men who have been torn to shreds is nature's protection just as surely as quills are nature's protection for porcupines. I travel to

and from my home to the grocer's shop where I work on harbour ferries. • * * The men sit and glower over the war news or talk it. They also discuss elections. Sport has died as a subject for post-breakfast discussion. The women group together in the sunny end of the boat and (this is only common to Auckland women) preen themselves and become busy with their manicure scissors. I don't quite know why they don't bring wash-basins and hairbrushes with them. Bits of conversation float over to the men's side. The word Him being a decisive and well aspirated word is most frequently caught. "Have you read the 'Saturday Wife,' by Victoria Cross—it's just perfectly lovely." Have you seen Minnie's new dress ?—pink eau de nil over a gabot of green satin on a pale background of fricasseed crepoline—awfully sweet." I wouldn't have 'em otherwise, bless 'em, but I wish Victoria Cross and their favourite authors would teach 'em not to do the manicure and massage acts in public. Reminds one so of cats. © &> ® Every elector decides on victory for the man he is going to vote for. Every restaurant, hotel, street corner, and club room during the pastweek has been the battle ground of the prophets. Every candidate for an Auckland seat has been returned in hotel bars with a swinging majority and every candidate has been sent to the right about by the same prophets. An ardent politician has just returned to Auckland. He was absorbing his first cup of tea on New Zealand soil for at least two years on Monday and he talked politics perpetually. "Grey Lynn?" he said between bites. "Grey Lynn will go to Payne—take it from me, he's a moral—a dead cert. He's a Massey man, anyhow, and deserves to get in!" "But he's a Liberal," said his astonished vis-a-vis. "Go on," yelled the other, "he's a Masseyite!" Then slowly, as if it was suddenly breaking on him, "At—least —he—was—last—time!" © © © Lexico:—How absurdly ignorant the daily paper man is of the things right under his nose is shown every day, but the 'Star" had the most delicious example of "not knowing" that I have seen for some time. Some Waihi miners were lately fined for taking naked lights in to the mine magazine. The inspector found them at "crib"—that is "tucker," "lunch," "toke," "tiffin," "food," "skoff," or anything else you like to call a meal. The poor old "Star" solemnly remarked in its "Table Talk" : "Three miners were fined £1 each for taking naked lights into the underground magazine of the Waihi mine. The inspector said he found them playing cribbage in the magazine." Couldn't somebody hand daily paper men a dictionary of common colonial terms.

Captain John O. Taswell Glossop, skipper of the H.M.S. Sydney, which settled the small account with Yon Miiller and the Emden, has had a large, bright knowledge of Australian waters for 26 years—so he's no chicken. He appeared in these waters as a midshipman in H.M.S. Orlando, but he remembers the old Calliope best. An Auckland relative of Captain Glossop recalls the fact that the sailor man was about the old Calliope when that warship, thanks to New Zealand coal, British grit and splendid seamanship, came out of the fearful Samoan hurrican that beat every other ship to matchwood. The relative who supplies the information can't remember whether Captain Glossop is 40 or 41. She says he looks less and is a bachelor—but that he is coming to New Zealand: "when the war is over."

Mr Massey obviously offended a number of Hawera people lately. There is apparently a good deal of feeling there still about the strike and in retort to heckling Mr Massey declared, "the farmers had done the fighting last year and would do it again." So last Sunday Dean Power took a hand in the pulpit, declaring that in 27 years he had never tried to influence a vote. He declared that Mr Massey's idea of a fighting speech seemed to be to hurl insults indiscriminately and declared that smart and insulting repartee is neither wit nor wisdom. The Dean's final declaration is worth reprinting. "I would urge my friends, the working men, to possess their souls in patience under every provocation. Their day is coming, please God, by a bloodless revolution—in other countries, perhaps, by a bloody one-—but when it does come no one, lam convinced, will have more reason to rejoice than the farmer. This is why I am also convinced that he is an enemy of his country, and of his kind, who would travel from electorate to electorate, stirring up strife between the farmer and his brother, the working man."

Mr W. H. Turnbull, the bright business man who is facing the Icy Herdman in Wellington North, hadn't the least idea of the tribulations of a candidate until he tackled the elections. It may be a pointer to probabilities in Windyville to know that the candidate declared that "apparently no man can get a clean run these times unless he is a Socialist or a "Red Fed." He must have struck a meeting where Henry Holland and R. 0. Fullbrook (who are both candidates) had the prevailing influence. It is much against a candidate in many electorates: 1. To be educated. 2. To be honest. 3. To have acquired a competence by hard work and business ability. Had Mr Turnbull a straight out fight with Mr Herdman he would have shaken some of the icicles from him.

A. R. Atkinson, lawyer and journalist — but mostly journalist — is blowing the loud bassoon in the interest of No Liquor. A. R. A. is an unfortunate advertisement for the goods he hawks, for he is never known to smile and he appears to believe that life without joy is the true business of every man. He has much capacity, however. If he cheered up he'd be a greater power in the land, but he is physically incapable of cheering up. This is the sort of thing Arthur Richard Atkinson gets off to Wellington audiences: —"if they asked who was the cause of all the terrible misery, crime, disease,, pauperism and death ? there was but one answer: 'Stand forth, thou moderate drinker, thou art the man!' " A. R. A. is a nephew of the late Sir Harry Atkinson and at the great public school of Clifton (England) he won the open classical scholarships at Corpus Christie, Oxford, and is full of acquired learning as well as a good deal of originality. But he never smiles. He was for a while M.P. for Wellington City but the city found it impossible to make him cheer up and fitted itself with less talent. A. R. A. is leader writer for Wellington "Post"—and a good one, too.

Interesting to know that the brilliant galaxy of Colonial talent in London which radiates from the centre of All High Commissioner fame Tarn Mackenzie is to be augmented by P. William Schreiner, from South Africa, who High Commissions the Dark Land in place of Sir T. R. Solomon, returned to store. Schreiner has some celebrity as a Cecil Rhodes man and later as Premier of the Cape Colony, but his more enduring fame is in being the brother of his own sister Olive. Olive amazed the world with brilliantly inspirational books on South Africa and her "Story of a South African Farm" is a true classic. Olive Schreiner burst into fireworks too over the concentration camps for women in South Africa and became very' accusative indeed. By the way, her little book, "Trooper Peter Halkett," a visionary yarn in which the Christ is made to walk the veldt, is not Olive's least claim to fame. If the writer had a clever sister like that he'd go in for cash politics too! $> @> S2> In the words of the Irishman, "There's some people who can't open their bloomin' mouth without putting their foot in it." This fact was exemplified at a political meeting at Epsom the other night when C. G. Major spoke on behalf of J. W. McLarin, the Opposition candidate for Manukau, who was unable to be present owing to illness. When Mr Major had finished there arose a man who said: "I wish to move a hearty vote of thanks to Mr Major for his address, I am sure-we are all sorry to hear of Mr McLarin's illness but we must make the best of what we can get!" And then he wondered why the crowd laughed. © © © We imagine that the pupils of the Wanganui Oolegiate School, the institution where they teach the young idea the latest thing in football, must be frothing with indignation. A Wellington daily the other day that "a Navy League ad : dress was given at the Wanganui Collegiate School on Thursday night." That would have been all right, but the paper in question had the effrontery to mention in the same par. that "the lecture was repeated with success the following evening at the Wereroa Training School." Ye Gods, how the tender pride of the Collegians must have smarted! * ® ® There are in our midst some would-be politicians who deserve to be kicked with the utmost vigour. It is not for any patriotic reason that many of them arrange for opening their meetings with the singing of the National Anthem; it's too much a matter of vote catching. The speaker in the last Parliament, the Hon. F. W. Lang, got off the National Anthem dodge at Ellerslie the other night, though, unforunately for him, the scheme did not work properly. The chairman introduced Mr Lang in the usual effulgent terms and then F. W. L. got to work. Five minutes later _ the chairman rose hurriedly and naively remarked: "There, I knew I'd forgotten something. Let's open the meeting by singing 'God Save the King.' " Wonder whether there will ever dawn the day when people will do things without ulterior motives?