8008 AND WRITERS

Waikato Times, Volume 117, Issue 19606, 19 June 1935, Page 4

8008 AND WRITERS

COMMENTS AND EXTRACTS. “ It Is a sad fact that when women take to the habits or men they reduce men to their own level. No man would have dreamt of smoking- in a concertroom or a theatre in the days when women, if they smoked at all, smoked only In the privacy of their rooms and took care to blow the fumes up the chimney. But immediately after women took to tobacco-pulling in public their own manners fell to pieces and the manners of men' fell with them.” —St. John Ervine.

THE EX-KAISER. HOW HE ABDICATED. SUSPECTED TREACHERY. Major Gert von Hindenburg, in a biography of his uncle, the late German President, "Hindenburg, 18471934,” gives fresh details of the exKalser’s abdication. After recalling the ex-Kaiser's resolution to march back to Berlin at the head of his troops and the events that led Prince Max of Baden to make an unauthorised announcement of the Emperor’s abdication, the author describes how this momentous news was received at the. German G.H.Q. at Spa: The Kaiser would not listen to reason. . . . He became so obsessed by his conviction of Prince Max’s treachery that he flew into a towering rage and bringing his fist down heavily on the table lie roared: “So that is the way I have been treated by my last Chancellor.” At daybreak next morning he set out for the Dutch frontier. The author reveals that many years before his death Hindenburg had chosen his epitaph, for he had declared: “ On my grave there is to be merely a rough stone, on which only 1 Hindenburg ’ is to be engraved; nothing modern, elaborate, or gaudy. On the other side of it you oan write: ‘ Letters no longer accepted,’ for since 1914 I have been tormented with them too much.” ENGLAND IN THE FIFTIES. ! AS SEEN BY FRENCHMAN. A DELICIOUS PICTURE. “ A Frenchman See the English in the ’Fifties,” by Valerie Pirie, from the French of Francis Wey, Is a delicious glimpse into the not too distant past. M. Wey, following a couple of visits to England after the Great Exhibition ■of 1851, published ” Les Anglais ehez eux,” of which this is an illustrated translation.

He soon found out: “ . . . how incongruous it was for a gentleman to be residing in Leicester Square, or for the matter of that in any part of that neighbourhood. ... A visitor, with social aspirations, residing there would run the risk of creating a very unfavourable impression.” Ho therefore moved. He did more: he passed on his discovery with some good advice: “I really think,” he says, “ that considering how prejudiced Londoners arc, his Eminence Cardinal Wiseman, who lives there, would be well advised in the interests of the

Catholic movement, to follow my example.” He is as good as that all through. But you will have to read for yourself of the shocking effect of the Nelson statue on the Gallic mind, for it cannot be, quoted here. , ; PATHOS IN LITERATURE. MOST MOVING SENTENCE. QUOTATION FROM “VANITY FAIR.” What is the most moving- sentence in literature? The question was asked recently in a speech by Sir John Simon. He answered himself by quoting from the Waterloo chapter In “ Vanity Fair": “Darkness came down on the held and city: and Amelia was praying for George, who was lying on his faco, dead, with a bullet through his heart." A FIRST NOVEL. ■BY NEW ZEALAND AUTHOR. There is plenty of local colour in “ Power of Circumstance,” a first novel by R. Orr-Lambert. The scene opens at Otago University, then changes to Christchurch—Waitaki Boys’ High School, Invercargill, Auckland, Napier at the time of the earthquake, then Sydney and Melbourne, Later Ashburton is the setting. Then the hero goes to Oxford and finally to Zanzibar. Though the style is immature, the story is interesting.

BOOK ON NEW ZEALAND. SOME VALUABLE INFORMATION. “ Touring in New Zealand." By A. J. Harrop, is a guide book on a scale its price does not suggest, says a London paper. Most people do not know enough of their own country to map out a week’s tour for a stranger, but Dr. Harrop spent 11 years in England before returning home and his outlook is that of the visitor from overseas. \ He does not confine himself to mere sight-seeing, but gives invaluable information about such things as libraries —the finest private collection of the manuscripts and books of Dumas is at Whangarei—winter sports, fishing, food, clothes and local customs, j The illustrations are excellent. MENUS FOR MINDS. OUTLINED BY LONDON PAPER. The following list is given by a London paper as “ menus for minds ": "The Duty of Empires,” by Leonard Barnes; “ Queen Victoria,” by E. F. Benson; “John Gully and his Times," by Bernard Darwin;' “The Johanna Maria,” by Arthur van Schenel, translated from the Dutch by Brian \V. Downs; “A Frenchman Sees England in the Fifties,” by Valerie Pirie; “ Fifty Years in Publio Health," by Sir Arthur Newsholme; “In Search of History,” by Vincent Sheean; "A Falcon on St. Paul’s," by J. Wentw’orth Day; “ Land of Women,” by Katarina von Dombrowskl; “Saturday Island,” by Hugh Brooke; " Jake,” by Naomi Royde-Smith; “Don’t You Weep, Don’t You Moan,” by Richard Coleman.

ROCKET TRIP TO MOON. GREAT POSSIBILITIES. BECOME ACCOMPLISHED FACT* When one is contemplating- the usa of rockets as a means of propulsion, everything depends on the manner in which the subject is regarded. Apparently the only hook on rocket flight in the well-stocked library of the British Patent Office is filed under “ Fireworks.”

A Classification of this kind makes no appeal to Charles G. Philip, the author of “ Stratosphere and Rooket Flight,” for he has an eager optimism in relation to the future possibilities of “ astronautics ” or “ space flight ” that is never in. doubt. He states thr position at which the experimenters and theorists have arrived.

In a speculative way he regards It as “ fairly certain that as a preliminary to interplanetary travel the conquest of the moon will be first attempted.” But he does not overlook the obstacles to space flight. “ Sooner or later,” he says, “ the day will arrive when rocket travel will become an accomplished fact, but the progress will be very gradual in the interim.” There would first be an altitude rocket, containing instruments only; then small mail-carrying rookets, graduating to a trans-Atlantio service; then the first passenger-carrying rocket vehicle; then the inter-terres-trial space ship; and lastly the interplanetary ship. Colliding with Meteors. Mr Philip discusses the possibility of rocket vehicles colliding with meteors, the danger of being frozen or .roasted alive in inter-stellar.-, space, and the problem of some entirely unforeseen sickness or disease that may be caused by the almost total removal of gravitation.

And to ensure a safe landing on another planet there must be considerable skill. “It is more than probable,” he thinks, “ that many an early pioneer will meet his death landing on the moon, unless some satisfactory means of overcoming this difficulty Is discovered.”