SANDY’S CORNER

Wanganui Chronicle, 25 February 1947, Page 4

SANDY’S CORNER

PEARL HARBOUR. After all that has been written, said and condemned about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, on December 7, 1941, the Jap excuse for it is a corker: "Clerical error, honourable sir,” is how the Japs would have us believe the attack was made without warning. That excuse shows imagination far beyond anything the office boy, who had a grandmother who died conveniently for him, ever heard of. WHAT IS A HYMN? No matter, what band wins the New Zealand Brass Bands championship, no matter how many people cram Cook's Gardens next Saturday (Quickstep Day), the present New Zealand contest will go down into history wltij something of a cloistered atmosphere clinging to it, because, bandsmen, from the North Cape to the Bluff, are now loking up dictionaries, and any authority they can lay hand to. to answer the question: 'What is a Hymn?" When you look up the authorities they can take you right back to the early Chinese dynasties and to St. Augustine wiln his generally accepted definition: "Praise to God With Song?” Some very clear and easily understandable language will no doubt be found to explain to bandsmen just what a hymn is. But will that get over the difficulty the New Zealand Brass Bands Association is facing to-day? It will help to determine what is and what is not a hymn, and if a band docs not play a hymn it should be disqualified and without compunction. If the four bands who were disqualified on Sunday had each played ”I'll Walk Alone’!" or "Saturday Night is the Loneliest Night in the Week,” "Coming in on a Wing and a Prayer," nobody would quibble at them being put out; but if what they played were hymns, and the bands concerned can prove they were hymns, why should the whole band be wiped off the slate because somebody missed putting pen to paper? Some penalty should be imposed if a technical breach is committed, but the whole band should not be disqualilied. What would happen it a band was disqualified for a drummer having two buttons of his tunic undone on Quickstep Day? It would appear that the disqualification in Wanganui will do good, even though it was not tactfully handled. It would have been better far to have been able to say: “So and so band got lull marks for playing such and such a tune, bui was disqualified because, in the opinion of the contest committee, what they played was not a hymn." or, "so and so band would have won the contest but lor the fact that they omitted to put on the score sheet the source o! the hymn and to send the words in; that cost them In points! From the point of view of the general public, and very ver> often the public is not far wrong when it comes lo the simple answer lor a difficult question, the bands who were disqualilied on the ground that what they plated were not hymns, should have had a chance to prove that they were. Wliat would it matter if that chance came their way before, or after, the judge announced his marks?