WEEK.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXI, Issue XXIII, 3 December 1898, Page 710

WEEK.

THE Al ( KLAM) EXHIBITION. FIIIIE Auckland Exhibition will be 1 opened to-morrow (Thursday) by His Excellency the Governor. Expectations have been raised very high with regard to it. and the Executive Committee. and everyone who feels any responsibility for its success. ha<e been labouring hard to raise the show up to the same level. But it is always a difficult business to raise anything up to the pitch of expectation. The natural law of attraction is reversed in these cases, and the force of giavitv increases instead of decreases with distance. 'The experience of our remote forefathers on the plains of ( ha.ldea, when they set themselves to build a tower whose top would reach to heaven. has been that of their descendants ever since. Nobody can reasonably expect then that the Auckland Exhibition will be a brilliant exception to the rule. Let it be as fine as it may. it will do well if it comes up to the anticipations it has created. For the popular fancy now-a-days has been nourished on such rich food that it is well nigh impossible to surprise it. We have grown so familiar with marvels through reacting about them, even if we have not seen them all. that our imagination, starting from that vantage ground, has soared away into the empyrean). In the matter of exhibitions. Paris ami London have shown us such wonders that poor little fledgeling cities, far away from the heart of civilisation, have no chance to startle the public with the splendour or magnitude of their industrial and artistic displays. Yet. though such an exhibition as this of Auckland can make* no pretence to rival the wonders of Paris next year, the Aucklanders themselves feel no small degree of pride in the show. Probably in our little communities such an event occupies a much larger proportion of the public attention than similar shows do in flu* more populous centres of the* Old World. The people of Paris identify themselves to a surprising extent with any exhibition that may be going on in their city; but we colonials do it not a whit less, but rather more. If it should be your good fortune, dear reader, to be a visitor to Auckland during the next two months—which, next to being an Aucklander, is the best fate I can wish you for that time—you will not fail to remark that the whole population of the city feels itself part and parrel of the exhibition. Every man. woman, and child is. so to speak, on exhibition. and they let you know’ it too. A poor Southerner or a visitor from Australasia cannot but feel his inferiority at such a period as he meets in the street those crowds of faces all wearing that self-complacent look" of superiority which distinguishes ‘exhibits only.’ It is a look which says as plainly as the things in the Museum ’You may regard and admire me as much as you please, but you must not touch me.’ It would Im* folly to feel

any annoyance on that score. Yun must take it as |»art of the show, and submit also to have the beauties of the Queen of the North recited to you by every Aucklander you meet. Indeed. if you would like to pass as an individual of more than usual sagacity, it would be well to have a pocketful of notes of admiration with you with which to sprinkle your conversation. Also, it will not lie amiss to quote Kipling's apostrophe to Auckland, beginning ‘Last, loneliest, loveliest’ at

short intervals during your stay in the city: and above all things, do not forget that the citizen who takes you up into the mountain (Mount Eden) and shows you all the glories of Auckland. expects you to fall down and worship—not him precisely, but the landscape, and him indirectly as part proprietor of that wonderful scene.

A HAVEN OF BEST. ARE wc going mad? This ugly question has been forced upon the people of the neighbouring colony of Victoria by the statisticians, who declare that during the last 12 years the number of lunatics in Victoria has steadily increased at an alarming rate, and in spite of a falling off in the population. With a little knowledge of simple proportion it is easy for anyone to calculate how this condition of things must end unless it is checked. Of course the conversion of the entire colony into a race of blithering idiots —which is the ultimate logical outcome of such a tendency—is likely to be hindered in many ways; and hi any case it could be arrived at only after such a lapse of years that it need not greatly trouble the present generation. But long before that time the prevalence of a very large insane element in the community would produce marked results and exercise unmistakable inti iienee. The trouble and difficulty Mould probably reach its most acute phase when half the population was regarded by the other half as non compos mentis. Then as public opinion would be equally divided on the question of what constituted sanity and what insanity, fitness for an asylum and fitness to move abroad free from restraint, social conditions would present strange contradictions. You know what it is when a gentleman who has imbibed too freely is unceremoniously dragged off to the station in spite of his solemn assertions that he is ‘p’fec'ly shober.’ He naturally believes that he <s a much injured and totally misunderstood individual. but as unfortunately for him the largely prepondering physical and moral force is on the side of sobriety he has to submit. Under such conditions as we are supposing might arise in Victoria the position of the man who was “off his head" would be much the same as that of the common drunk with this great difference that he would have on his side quite as much publie opinion and physical force as those who sought to incarcerate him in the asylum. But long before it came to anything like a struggle between the two classes ideas as to what was insanity and what was not would have been greatly modified. The standards by which we judge of a man's capability to look after himself would lie very much lowered from what they now are. and even now they are not so absolute as they might be. ft is gen-

erally suspected that most of us have a little mental flaw somewhere, a rift within the lute; and probably in a much higher state of culture and civilisation than the present thousands who now pass as perfectly sane individuals would find themselves in lunatic asylums. How many of us have cause to be thankful that the standard of sanity is not higher than it is. And if any of us have any fear that it is inclined to be too high for us the sooner we move our household gods to Victoria the better. It is inevitable that the standard of sanity there will become more easy to pass as time goes on until at last the man who is regarded as a doddering simpleton here may pass as a moderately shrewd member of society in the neighbouring colony. In the hurry and stress of modern life when the strongest may have a break down it is certainly comforting to think that 1 here exists a haven to which we can retire if anything should happen to us - a haven where our little mental deficiencies will be generously ignored if indeed they do not actually bring distinction and honour.

THE QUALITY OF MERCY. IT is rumoured that the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Society is going to bring a ease against an officer of a Union steamer for shooting a porpoise in the French Pass. I had no idea that the society carried its tutelary functions so far. I always imagined that its control stopped with the shore, or at least was only extended to certain ocean birds. That it takes under its care the denizens of the vasty deep is probably news to most people, and many will be inclined to smile unsympathetically at the notion of the society constituting itself the protector of all the whales and little fishes. The general impression is that the inhabitants of the watery world lie entirely without the scope of its benevolence. To speak of cruelty on the part of man towards any member of the finny tribe sounds absurd. Does it ever occur to any of the disciples of Izaac Walton, usually the gentlest of men. that they are guilty of a want of consideration for the feelings of the salmon when they run him with hook and line up and down his native stream for hours at. a time? I have seen the dying schnapper with gasping mouth and fixed eyes make most eloquent, appeal in vain to Christian and philanthropic gentlemen to put- an end to its misery. Naturally, we terrestrial mammals have little sympathy with the true fishes: and the fact that we are more akin to such creatures as the whale, the dolphin, the porpoise, which are not true fishes, does not seem to beget

any particular feeling of compassion for them in our bosom. The poet understood this when he made the shooting of the albatross the cause of all the disaster that overtook the Ancient Mariner. Picture to yourself how superlatively ludicrous it would have been had the destruction of a mullet or a flat fish been represented as the cause of all the trouble. I yield to no one in my admiration of the work undertaken by the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and I have not the least, objection that it should protect the porpoises, though these are described as ‘the

most dreaded enemies of our food fishes.' The chief objection I see is the danger of the organisation extending its functions too far and becoming too sensitive in regard to animal life. It is not impossible to cultivate quite a Buddhistic reverence in that respect. My Uncle Toby, you remember, would not so much as kill a bluebottle. a particularly irritating insect on warm summer afternoons, if you happen to be bald or enjoying forty winks. Uncle Toby ehased the beast, and opening the window set it free with these memorable words, ‘There is room in the world, little fly. for both you and me.’ This is very beautiful to read of in cold weather when there are no flies, but I would not like to hear that the society had resolved to prosecute fly killers. If it went so far it might as well go a step further and take under its. arm—--1 pity the arm—that much-abused insect the common flea.

WHAT WE MAY EXPECT. THE prohibitionists intend to make a big fight next election. It is rumoured that they will run a candidate for almost every constituency in the colony. Of course if they have even a moderate degree of success it will mean the establishment of another party—a prohibition party—in the House, with persistent efforts after more liquor legislation. Should they prove very successful the result may be that we shall have very little but liquor legislation in Parliament. One almost trembles at the thought of with a strong anti-liquor party in Parliament would be like. We have prohibitionists in the House already, to be sure, but they confess to other political interests besides a desire to limit or annihilate the liquor trade. But the man who gets iuto Parliament on the prohibition ticket exclusively will be a prohibitionist and nothing more; and that will be more than

enough. His whole heart and soul, and head and tongue will be. devoted exclusively to the one object. No weak apostles of water will the men be who get into the House on the prohibition ticket; they would be useless in an election campaign—the party know that full well. So only the most, uncompromising and militant advocates of total abstinence will be put forward. The aggressive individuals of the party, the faddists who for years have been soaked and stewed in their fads, the men to whose minds anything is justifiable that favours or helps their own narrow way of thinking—these will be the candidates at the hustings. Judging from what 1 have heard from the lips of the most prominent of the class. 1 imagine that their advent en masse on the political field will scarcely improve the tone either at election meetings or in the House; and it may be questioned whether the entire absence of alcoholic persuasion from their candidature, or of alcoholic stimulus from their speeches in Parliament will atone for everything that they do give us. I pity those poor members who are not of their way of thinking if a strong prohibition party gets into the House, for it is there that these partisans of aqua pura will feel in duty bound to wage relentless war with liquor under any shape of waistcoat or in any human form. Bellamy’s, as it has been known, will have to go. It will surely become a mere place of coffee and fizzing drinks. But even before that the life of the member who takes ‘a drop of summat* when so disposed’ will become a burden to him. He will have to walk most warily, lest he should stumble.

Depend on it, if he should so much as trip on a bit of matting a finely coloured enlargement of the incident with notes will be forwarded to his constituents, and may cost him his seat. In the lobbies he will literally have to hold his breath in case the aroma of his slight, liquid refreshment at lunch should offend the keen nostril of his prohibition friend and give rise to reports.

FRANCE IN EXTREMIS. NOTHING shows more plainly the extent to which France is conscious of her waning power and inti uenee in Europe than some of the proposal which have recently been ventilated in the French press. The most extraordinary of these is that she should ally herself with Germany. With Germany of all Powers! Those who have sojourned in France at any time since 1871. and know the intensity of the hatred which has been carefully nursed in the tenderest bosoms against the Power that laid the French glory in the dust; those who know with what distrust, suspicion and envy the great neighbouring Empire is regarded and how the wound that was made in France’s side when the two provinces were torn from her has never been allowed to heal, but has been kept raw and tender, will find it hard to believe that that proposal was made even in jest. And even that such a bitter jest could be perpetrated seems well nigh incredible. But apparently there was no jest about it; the suggestion was made in all earnestness and accepted in the same spirit. To what a pass must not matters have come when such a thing is possible. It is as if I invited Bill Sykes, who had robbed me of all my plate and cash and knocked my wife and children insensible—it is as if I politely asked him to come in and share my bed and board just because 1 was afraid that some other cracksman had designs on my establishment. Of all the unnatural alliances this would surely be the most unnatural. We are not likely to see to what degree France would stoop to consummate it. because it is pretty clear that Germany has thoughts in another direction. That AngloA nieriean-German-Japanese coalition offers a great deal more to the ambitious Kaiser than any trumpery alliance with France. The latter has had another suggestion placed before her by one of her sons. He, Paul Cassagnac, urges that France should revive privateering rights with the view of circumventing Great Britain. Now, by the Treaty of Paris privateering was abolished over forty years ago. and we have lately seen in the Spanish American war that the Powers are not likely to agree to sanction the old arrangement again, which is of course to the advantage of a weak naval Power when her adversary happens to have such an enormous and wealthy marine eommeree as England has. The proposal is scarcely likely to be countenanced by France simply because she must be well aware that in these days when other nations besides England are largely interested in sea-borne commerce her scheme would not be likely to meet with general approval. She must think of some other plan to revive her drooping prestige.

HOW TO CURE POVERTY. MANY are the curious advertisements which the diligent reader of newspapers is sure to come across, but none I think is more calculated to excite genuine curiosity than the following, which I stumbled on the other day in the columns of a great American daily. It ran thus: — ‘Having successfully cured povertyin my own ease, I will teach others how to do the same. Address, with two eent. stamps.’ One's first impulse on reading this is to exclaim with Hamlet, ’tis a knavish piece of work. Certainly it has all the appearance of one of those baited hooks which our modern fishers of men—quite another class from the Galilean ones—leave dangling so temptingly in every newspaper for the fools to come along and swallow. You may think that the device is a very clumsy one; but I am not so sure of that. You have to consider, to begin with, that fools, not wise men. are the game, and the class is not a whit less numerous among the poor than among the rich, indeed, just as the sick are the very persons

to be most easily persuaded to try some quack cure-all. so the indigent tire probably the most credulous in the matter of recipes for acquiring a fortune. Hence there is every reason why the man who advertises to cure such a wide-spread and ever-present epidemic as poverty, should find as many eager clients as the man who professes to cure indigestion or ‘that tired feeling.’ We are supposing that this poverty cure is a fraud from first to last, just as I am afraid so many other cures are. But I am sure my readers will be interested to know that the supposition is perhaps rather gratuitous. There lies before me now an article on the mental eurists of the United States, a strange philosophic sect that has recently come into existence. One of the tenets of these people applies to this same matter of poverty, which they believe can be cured ’by a mere effort of thought. Their motto would seem to be ‘nothing is but thinking makes it so,’ and they tell you to ‘Think yourself rich and you will be. you are rich.’ ‘Spend every nickel as though

it had dollars behind it,’ advises a Chicago poverty-curist, ‘and every time you spend a penny assure yourself mentally that the wealth of all the world is yours for the asking.’ As to that maxim. ‘Think yourself rich and you will be rich, you are rich.’ there is a very great deal in it, no doubt, lioehefoucault, I think it is, argues that a man’s riches consists not in what he has but in what he is; and is that not the whole key note of Christianity? I am quite ready to concede that to a very large extent the mental state is everything and if we consisted of nothing but mind, the plan suggested would be entirely successful. But unfortunately we have a gross material body to take into account that requires a certain modicum of food and drink and raiment, and apart from which the brain cannot act. If a man cannot by taking thought add one cubit to his stature, it is equally certain that he cannot, by thinking ever so hard, bring a dinner to his table; and by no amount of skilful cogitation will a Barmecide feast satisfy the cravings of an empty stomach. Try the experiment if you doubt me. Bur, to go back again, notwithstanding all this, I verily believe that the poverty which is comparative and not absolute—and that is the commonest kind of poverty in this country; the poverty that consists not in being without sufficient food arid clothing and shelter, but in having less of the lesser and the greater luxuries of life than one’s neighbours—l verily believe that that poverty can be cured by a mental and moral effort. Whether there are many people who are capable of the necessary exertion however is another thing. For to be able to make it and to be ruled by it implies a spirit of high philosophy which few of us possess.