DAY BY DAY

Waikato Times, Volume 94, Issue 14767, 5 October 1921, Page 4

DAY BY DAY

The Air Ministry announced the other day that planes had Bagdad prospected a new route

to from Jerusalem to BagJerusalem, clad across the desert. From Cairo there now comes some account of what has been acornplished, says the Manchester Guardian. "These two great capitals of the past, and let us hope of the future, are divided by a bell, 600 miles wide, of almost impassable desert. The caravans o*f the ancients found one or two perilous ways across it, and these are marked on reliable maps by thin lines that alone disturb the blank surface of a terrible No-Man's-Land-The best of these, the time-honoured way from Jerusalem to Bagdad throughout the centuries, went north to Damascus before it struck across, and took 1200 miles in its course. But the aeroplane can And a way where the camel cannot. Three planes, scouting overhead for a convoy of armoured cars, fitted with wireless, below, havestruck as nearly as possible straight across this appalling waste, and their bird's-eye view has seen a way through trackless, waterless desolation and through mazes of sand mountains which have defied and killed the adventurer by land. As a result the distance between Jerusalem and Bagdad has been halved, and a virtual bee-line which runs through Amman and Ramadie may now take Hie place of the Jonpcr way painfully Mind by the travellers and merchant <>f old. It should perform a finer task than any j r war —the helping of trade intercourse and mutual understanding in a land lo whose future these are allimportant."

The fuss being made of Charlie Chaplin

in his native London brings Rewards sharply before that sector lion of humanity which Brains. uses its brains the agelong question of disproportionate rewards. Here is a gentleman whose claim to fame is a funny smile, slack trousers, and feet which turn out at an angle of 180 degrees (during business hours). ' He is paid more "each year for these gifts than Koch made for saving Europe, and in all the years he lived before he did so. Mozart was buried in a pauper's grave; Shakespeare, though he retired to a comfortable country life, received less money during his years of toil than Chaplin makes each month. Milton sold his great epic for £5. The greatest of artists, musicians and poets struggled all their lives on pittances which would hardly pay the car-fares of a little vulgarian who plays the fool before the world. The kinema actor, if he ever becomes a "star," rapidly makes a fortune. He has world-advertisement in the films, a tremendous advantage over the thespian brother or sister, whose image is not multiplied by the movies. Girls whose only asset is a good photographic face rise to an opulence which the mere gifted actor on the slage cannot ever hope to reach. It is a fact that the greatest happiness a real artist has is in the exercise of his art. That, however, hardly compensates him when he sees'the Arbuckles making £IOOO a week, and the Chaplins arriving in London in the manner of the great conqueror. Why. he must ask himself, be an. artist on starvation wages when he can he a buffoon and become a millionaire? Fame after death is all very well, but it Is too lak; then.