Topics of the Week.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXIII, Issue XVI, 14 October 1899, Page 670

Topics of the Week.

THE FURY OF BATTLE. At the time of writing the chances are all on the side of war, and in favour of the colonial contingents taking a hand in it. The Queensland and N.Z. Forces are actually under orders to proceed to Capetown before the end of the month, and the men of the other contingents are living in hourly hope that they shall be called upon too. There was a possibility that, in the event of war, only the Queenslanders would be accorded the honour of serving under the Imperial flag and dyeing the sod or Africa with their blood. It is not to be supposed for an instant that the Army authorities are in such dire need of men that they require aid from this part of the globe. The colonies knew this when they made their offers, which are merely meant to be an evidence of the solidarity of the Empire. If the aid were accepted it was quite understood that it would be out of compliment to the patriotic spirit that prompted us to tender assistance. And if that was the position, it was not impossible that the Imperial authorities might feel they had done enough when they availed themselves of the active services of the colony that first offered them? The mere suspicion of such a thing was enough to make the warm blood of our New Zealand contingent run cold. To think that they were to be deprived of the opportunity of wringing the necks of the recalcitrant Boers while that privilege was extended to the Queenslanders! Was it not preposterous. shameful, monstrous? If you do not happen to be one of the chosen you may not see the matter in that light. You may regard it as an extremely lucky business for the men of our contingent if the Imperial authorities never require them to leave New Zealand and face the deadly bullets of the Transvaalers. Of course, it’s easy, for you to think in that coldblooded, unfeeling way. for you never probably had a ghost of a show of going to South Africa, and being picked off by- a Mauser ami buried in a hero's grave. I understand that the regulations disqualifying married men and men under 23 years from? offering their services have given great offence in many quarters. Is it supposed that the martial fire is not properly aglow in the youthful bosom before the age of twenty-three, or that it dies out in the breast of a man as soon as he gets married? There are scores of youngsters barely twenty-one who are as eager for the fray as seasoned warriors, and I am afraid to calculate the number of married men who would gladly get away from their—from their—l mean, would be most pleased to have a trip to South Africa, lest I should underestimate it. Why because a man is very young or married should he be debarred from these innocent excitements? It seems hardly fair, especially in the case of the latter class. Youth and inexperience might be allowed to be an obstacle, but why marriage ? ® ® ® KRUGER AND SELF - DECEPTION. How far is it possible for human beings of average intellectuality to deceive themselves? This question, in some farm or another, must have occurred more than once recently to most of us in reading the reports from the Transvaal. Is it possible, we ask ourselves, that a man of Kruger's shrewdness and clearness of vision can really believe that the Almighty will resolutely interfere with the coming war so that England will once more be forced to eat the leek at the bands of those who thrashed her so handsomely at Majuba Hill? At the first moment one is inclined to join in the well nigh universal chorus amongst Britishers that obstinate Oom Paul is an outrageous hypocrite, and that his three hour prayers and ostentatious faith in the Almighty are as insulting to our intellect—as a nation-—as are his boasts of power and perpetual attempts at bluff are to our national might. But if we consider what we have read of the peculiar religious temperament of the Boers, if we remember the more than half familiar manner in which the Almighty is appealed to in conversation, and His aid evoked in the performance of the commonest daily tasks, we shall get a less exaggerated view of what was probably a mere casual observa-

tion on the part of the President. Such a declaration as he is reported to have made as to “the Lord turning back the English bullets” would have been extraordinary and sensational on the part of an English general, but as everyone brought into contact with men of this stamp of religious belief and conversation knows, to Kruger and the Boers it meant, and means, little more than the cry we all of us raise in every battle into which we enter, be it right or wrong, namely, “Dieu et notre droit.” We all of us, moreover, in the every day struggles of our lives, deceive, or try and deceive, ourselves in much the same sort of manner. When thinking of plunging into any venture, or of taking any risk, do we not always almost unconsciously assume that we will be the fortunate ones? Someone must almost inevitably come to grief we know, but we believe something — Providence Fortune, or what you will—will pull us personally through. In going into a hot engagement it is always the other poor fellows who will get knocked over. We admit our chances on paper are equal, but in our inmost hearts we have a settled belief that something will carry us through. So it is with Kruger, only after the fashion of his countrymen, whose daily talk reeks with familiar references, allusions and exclamations concerning the Deity, lie says in broad hyperbole what we only think. Was it not Fronde who remarked so powerfully on the mingled piteousness and humour of two great nations sending up national prayers and receiving through their respective clergy divine blessings before their efforts'to mutually destroy each other? Not merely do we unconsciously deceive ourselves daily into the belief that we ourselves are, so to say. more special charges of Providence than our fellows, but also, like Kruger, we are extraordinarily prone to cozen ourselves into the firm assurance that our side js the right side. It is really amazing how self-credulous we are on such points, and how even the best men and women can deceive themselves on the samel And those whom we usually pronounce rogues or liars or romancers, are they not sometimes obviously 'victims of an exaggerated form of this disease of self-deception which overcomes us all to a greater or less extent ? Surely the reader knows some ingenious liar—no, the word is ugly, call it romancer —who has so constantly repeated his fabrications as to really believe them to be true? Such men, and their name, more the pity, is legion, are as incapable of realising that they are doing an idiotic, as well as an immoral thing in telling palpable falsehoods, as Kruger is of seeing that his blatant announcements of confidence in Divine aid are both blasphemous and absurd. It is, after all, a mere question of degree, and, as was said at the commenceemnt of this article, it is really extremely hard to know to what extent self-deception may not be carried, or when it will cease to be recognisable to ourselves. We English, or rather British, never stop to think if we are in the right in the matter of wars; we always take it for granted we must be. Are we not British? Speaking of the right side in battles one may, in conclusion, perhaps repeat a somewhat old yarn of the Peninsular War. A number of the women camp followers were talking piously of the coming battle. “May the Lord fight on the side of the right,” said one matron. “The De’il lie on you for your wicked wish,” responded another. “May the Scots triumph, richt or wrung.” ® ® ® POLITICS IN THE SHADE. The various candidates for Parliamentary honours, excepting those unfortunates who are detained in Wellington by their legislative duties, are now busy endeavouring to enlighten the constituencies on matters politicail. But the discouraging fact to these gentlemen is that the public are not in the least interested in politics at this moment. The vast majority of us who have no personal advantage to gain from a change of representation in the House, are infinitely less interested in the result of the electoral campaign than in the upshot of the threatened war in South Africa. The question most of us are pondering just now is not will Seddon go back to power, or will he not? but will the Boers be wiped

out in the first act, or will they give the British some stiff work to do before they yield? It is unfortunate for politicians that this Boer business should have cropped up on the eve of an election. It is so calculated to distract the people's minds from the consideration of those vexed party issues which constitute the very lifeblood of the election battles. If I were a candidate in these times, when we are all infected with the war spirit, I should not waste my speech on advocating this reform, or attacking that abuse. Were I an Oppotionist, I would leave the misdoings of the present Government, their Bills, their unredeemed pledges—the stock-in-trade of every candidate on that side —to whomsoever cared to take them up, and 1 should go in holus-bolus for a war-like programme. My speeches would be battle-songs calculated to rouse the public ardour as it had never been roused before. I believe the secret of a successful election lies in being able to awaken the fighting spirit in the electors and enlist it on your side. Folks are by no means so desperately interested in measures as they pretend. If you examine into their motives you will certainly find that they Wellcome an election mainly because it gives an opportunity for fighting, and they will usually be disposed to give their support, not to the man who shows the most wisdom, but to the one that is the most skilful fighter. In truth, we are all in love with fighting, and the fighter is the man after our hearts. I believe that if a candidate got up a first-class melodramatic speech on the Transvaal, and illustrated it with limelight views, he would do as much to further his chances at the election as by the ordinary course of speeches. Speaking of limelight views reminds me of a suggestion I have thrown out before in these columns with regard to the conduct of election campaigns, but which I am not aware has ever been acted upon. Why shoulld not the usually tame .and uninteresting election speech be made attractive by the introduction of pictorial views, and probably musical items? The Opposition, I . understand, are anxious to gain listeners to their recitals of the Government’s iniquities. What would they say to the exhibition on the screen of clever caricatures of the Ministry and its policy, and topical songs ridiculing both the leaders and the rank and file of the Liberal party? ® ® ® SYBARITISM OF PHYSICAL DEGENERACY.

A petition was presented to Parliament last week from the Lyttelton Lumpers’ and Wharf Labourers’ Association complaining that the weight of the ordinary saek of grain (240 pounds) was more than a man of ordinary strength could lift and tackle, and praying that Parliament would take steps to have the weight of the sacks reduced to 200 pounds. The petitioners, in explanation, said that the 2401 b sacks were killing loads and prevented many men from engaging in the lumpers’ occupation. I wonder if this complaint is to be regarded as an evidence of the physical degeneracy of the race, or of an increasing luxuriousness on the part of the workers. So far as I know, the sack of grain is no larger to-day than it was in the past, and no heavier in New Zealand than it is in England, yet in the old times, when they had not the wonderful labour-lessening appliances we possess, there was no petitioning Parliament to make the load lighter. Certain it is that wheat, or other grain, came to be put up in sacks of the present size, because in that size it formed what is looked upon as a fair burden for the average man to tackle. If, then, the present day labourer finds the load too much for him, the obvious inference is either that his back is not strong enough for it or that he considers the exertion of the strength necessary to handle it more than his employers have a right to expect of him. Explain it as you please, you cannot escape the conclusion that the worker of to-day is physically or mentally a new type. He can't, or he won’t work as his predecessors did. Whether it is due to physical degeneracy or to a raising of the standard of working, it comes to the same thing in so far that the tendency is for the modern labourer to put a less amount of foot pounds power into his work. But it’s by no means the same thing in the matter of ultimate results. I don’t like the idea of degeneracy, though it is impossible to ignore it altogether. I much rather prefer to believe that the cry for lighter bunlens comes, not of weaker backs, but of a disinclination

to heavy labour; and here in New Zealand, and in Australia, too, there is no denying the plain fact that there is a growing disinclination in that direction. We have as brawny, stalwart sons as any to be found in the Old Land, prominent in all athletic exercises. But they don’t like hard manual work any more than the Greek or Roman youth loved it. You find the same characteristic in all classes, even the lumpers, as we see, among the rest. The general impression has been that lumpers were something of the nature of hydraulic lifts, ami that it did not matter what size of a load you piled on their backs. Wonderful to relate, they, too, have their ideas, at least, in the matter of avoirdupois weight, and know a difference between a 2401 b sack and one of 2001 b. ® ® ® ADVERSITY—THE BEST SCHOOL FOR COOKERY'.

A writer in the “ Quarterly Review ” gives an explanation of the superiority of French eooks over English ones, which if not absolutely correct is at least both ingenious and plausible. “ French and English started fair in the Dark Ages,” says he, “ but the English, safe from invasion after the Conquest, even through the ferment of civil strife, lived in tolerable plenty. On the hand distracted France was frequently reduced to extremity of famine. It is impossible to exaggerate the misery of the lower orders under the exactions of the Crown and the Barons, when the land was being ravaged by Shearers and Flayers. Dire necessity was the mother of strange resource ; the starved peasant took to dressing snakes ami frogs, snails and beetles ; for his pot herbs he gathered docks and nettles from the ditches ; he scrambled for acorns and beech-mast with the swine of his seigneur and threw scruples to the winds. Everywhere the rustic was learning the first principles of cookery in the hardest of schools, and the burghers in the cities, almost constantly besieged, enjoyed almost equal advantages. They made salmis of rats and fricassees of mice ; they feasted on horses, eats and dogs ; they became experts in the manipulation of carrion.” If it was indeed through such tribulation that the French learned culinary wisdom, we here in these colonies might as well make up our minds to national indigestion, for we are never likely to pass through the same course of training that the French have had. And judging from our own case there seems to be a good deal in the theory the above writer advances. The " average colonial housewife can roast a leg of mutton or sirloin of beef, boil a rib or grill a steak or chop. But beyond the skill involved in these simple operations what does she know of the higher mysteries of the divine art ? And the reason for her ignorance is as plain as day. She has never been driven to devote the least study to the matter. The chops and steaks were always easily obtainable from the butcher ; they' came ready to be dropped into the pan ; and beyond the removal of the paper in which they were wrapped the viands received no preparation whatever. Obviously there can be no art in such cookery ; the savage treats the steak he has cut from the animal he has just slain in precisely the same summary way, and hence never rises to anything beyond grilled steak. And it is not to be expected that the colonial housewife left to herself will make any advance either. She will continue in the routine in which she has been accustomed to travel, the weary round in which the same familiar rotation of steak, chops, boiled mutton and roast beef are found with little variation—except when she is incited by a cookery book or a friend to make a hasty experiment. Undertaken under such circumstances the experiment is probably a failure and the disheartened housewife takes refuge once more in the old routine to which she will become more and more absolutely attached as time goes on. Perhaps nothing less than a famine every five years or so would make good cooks of us.