People and Their Doings.

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 142, 17 June 1931, Page 6

People and Their Doings.

Mr Coolidge Refused to Unveil Harding Memorial : What Lord Lonsdale is said to have done with Pictures of the Kaiser : Where did Joseph Hamlet get his Degree?

»J<HE UNVEILING of the Hardir.memorial recalls the fact that at 1/ ■ time of its completion no one could be found who would undertake the ceremony. Mr Coolidge refused, and those who were responsible for its erection declared that unless President Hoover would honour the dead man, no one should dedicate the memorial. The desire of many people to bury the late President’s memory in oblivion coincided with the fact that Mr Harding’s life and death were being widely discussed in America. It was understood that he died from the effects of ptomaine poisoning, but wild rumours about his end circulated at the time. These found expressioh in a book, “ The Strange Death of President Harding,” by Gaston B. Means, which became a best seller in the United States. 9 OF $F *J*HE BOOK attaches a sinister significance to the fact that Mrs Harding was alone with her husband for a f«w minutes before he expired. Mrs’ Harding herself died at Marion in November, 1924. Mr Means, who acted as her private detective and professes to have received her confidence, conveys his allegations in suggestive phrases which have no meaning at all if they do not’ mean that a wife, jealous of her husband’s national and domestic honour, encompassed or hastened his end for the dual purpose of saving him from impending impeachment and preventing him from retiring into seclusion with his illegitimate child. Mr Means, an investigator of the Department of Justice, ‘ emerged from prison—where he had served three years for violation of the liquor laws—to make his startling allegations, which, it must be said, are no more than biased deductions from certain wild utterances credited to Mrs Harding. si? CANDIDATE in a by-election to fill a vacancy on the Glasgow City Council was asked his opinion of birth control, and gave the following reply: “As a practising Puritan, like St Paul, I am an advocate of celibacy. Unfortunately (also' like St Paul), knowing men and women as I do, I know that principles must be modified by certain expediencies. Consequently, I would rather that rates were used to prevent children being born into the squalor of overcrowded homes in Garng&d than that these very homes should be taxed and rated to pay for the amenities of Mosspark, where le petit bourgeois practice birth control so that visitors may have the spare bedroom at the week-end.”

A LITERARY SENSATION has been caused by the action of Lord Lonsdale in issuing a warning to the publishers of the memoirs of the late Prince von Bulow that he may take legal proceedings. This volume of memoirs, the publication of which has now been postponed, was to have been issued by Putnam’s at 255, and it has already appeared in Germany, France and America. Prince von Bulow writes: “The Kaiser was tremendously keen on this man who in many respects* was the typical jovial English nobleman. He was, indeed, a jolly good fellow, but he was also the bete noir of Edward VII., who . . . did not think it at all proper that the Kaiser should be intimate with him ... It was a fine trait in the Kaiser that he was loyal to his friends, but he should not have been loyal at the cost of policy, as was the case with his friendship with Lord Lonsdale. Also he should have made some distinction between German friends, who could be addressed, treated and guarded as good comrades, and a frivolous foreigner who could not be expected to stand by his Majesty if the drums beat to war with England. “When in 1914 England declared war on Germany, it was reported in the newspapers that Lord Lonsdale, who had been present with the Kaiser at many German manoeuvres on sea and land, had turned all the pictures which he had of the Kaiser in his castle with their faces to the wall! ”

SJS pRINCE VO.V BULOW does not confine his bitterness to Englishmen, and German statesmen are also attacked with a scathing pen. The Dreyfus affair specially occupied him in 1898, and the following is his account concerning it: “I was told that we never had anything to do with Dreyfus and that he was entirely innocent. The real culprit was probably Major Esterhazy ... I felt it a duty both of humanity and of common sense, to do everything possible to lighten the lot of the unfortunate Dreyfus. On the other hand, there could be no justification for denouncing Esterhazy, for the simple reason that a Government which betrays its agents and spies will not easily find any more.”

A most amusing note is introduced by the story of the time that the Kaiser designed a battleship. The Kaiser sent his construction plan and design to Admiral Brin, the Italian Minister of Marine, and it was returned with a letter which read: “ The ship which your Majesty has designed would be the mightiest and most terrible

and also the loveliest battleship ever seen. This wonderful vessel has only one fault. If she were put on the water she would sink like a lump of leadl ” 9 1 9 & CORRESPONDENT writes:—When and where did Mr Joseph Hamlet get his degree of Bachelor of Economics? The information is not available. He never claimed the title while in New Zealand, and indeed the University Of New Zealand does not confer such a degree, although the Sydney University has one. Mr Hamlet may have taken the course at Sydney. 9 @ NEW ZEALANDER, Mr D. N. MacDiarmid, of New Plymouth, has received word of his inclusion in the King’s Birthday Honours. He heard through the cabled congratulations of Sir Johh Maffey, Governor-General of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. ' He has been awarded the M.B.E. Mr Mac Diarmid, who has been associated with the work of the Sudan United Mission in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan for the past eighteen years, hajs returned to settle in .New Zealand, where it is his intention to enter the Presbyterian ministry. He was one of the first to open up the work of the Sudan United Mission in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, under the influence of which tribes which were dangerously hostile and warlike rapidly became peaceable and amenable to law and order. With the assistance of his wife. Dr Phoebe Mac Diarmid, who recently received the degree of D.Litt. for her distinguished work in reducing a hitherto unknown language to writing, Mr Mac Diarmid has done much valuable translation work. At the begining of this year they carried out, at the request of the Government, a comprehensive language survey over an area in the Kordofan province, about the size of the South Island. OF 9 SIXTY YEARS AGO. (From the "Star” of June 17, 1871.) Football.—The annual match between the College and Christchurch Clubs will be played next Saturday, weather permitting, on Cranmer Square. The match will be played according to Christchurch Club rules. Sides: —Man to man up to 22 a-side; over 22 a-side. College 2 to 1. Dunedin, June 15, 4.35 p.m.—The Hon Mr J. M'Lean’s motion in the Provincial Council, requesting the Canterbury Government to remove restrictions on stock crossing the Waitaki, failing which Otago to adopt a retaliatory process, was carried. To-day was observed as a holiday in Dunedin, being the annual Fast-Day of the Presbyterian Church.