A.M. AND P.M

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 74, Issue 143, 19 June 1931, Page 6

A.M. AND P.M

|S THERE any logical reason why the day should be recorded in two halves, ante meridian and post meridian" Why not adopt a 24-hour day? Why lay pondering in the still hours of the night as to whether you have read aright the time-table for to-morrow’s departure? Does the train go at 7 a.m. or 7 p.m.? There could be no mistake if you had read 19 o’clock. Of course we are quite used to a.m. and p.m. for they accompany us from the cradle to the grave. But is use the only criterion? Or shall we try to improve upon it? Lord Newton recently tried his hand at getting an improvement by moving in the House of Lords “that in accordance with the recommendation of the Home Office in 1919 the Minister of Transport should invite the Railway Companies to adopt the 24-hour method of expressing time from a certain date, and that it should be simultaneously introduced into the Post Office. Lord Banbury opposed on the ground of expense, but Lord Moynihan was more ingenious. His Lordship suggested that laws should embody not so much what was suitable, as what was customary, hence his support of the present day divided into two halves. “No greater mistake can be made.” he said “than to suppose that the people of this country desire to live under good laws. They desire to live under laws which they make themselves. ’ But does tlie latter proposition exclude the former? Not necessarily, surely! And is Lord Moynihan’s contention correct in any ease? Do not the people desire good lairs, but find the fear of innovation the monument, of inertia which blocks the way? So it is that the seemingly simple proposition of abolishing a.m. and p.m. involves a basis principle of jurisprudence.