Topics of the Week.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXIV, Issue VI, 10 February 1900, Page 253

Topics of the Week.

DRAWING CLOSER. The tide of Imperialism rises higher every day throughout the colony, and little places which were always regarded as away from even the minor channels of current public feeling are in a state of flood. Indeed, it seems not unlikely that before long we shall have become more fervid in our patriotism, more devoted in our loyalty, and more abandoned in our generosity than the folks in the Old Country. We have been taught to regard the true nerve centre of Imperialism as situated in Great Britain itself, but one is sometimes tempted to think that it has siiifted to the colonies. We appear to be so active in our enthusiasm, so deeply moved. To borrow a homely simile, we know very well that it is the dog that wags the tail, and not the tail that wags the dog, though the restlessness of .the caudal appendage might suggest that the vital force of the animal had its seat there: but really in the case of the colonies and the Mother Country, the law that holds good with the canine is by no means so well established. The forces of Imperialism are working just as strongly at the circumference as at the centre of the Empire. All around, on all sides, marked centripetal tendencies are drawing the colonies inwards. Now, the general tendency throughout nature is rather the reverse. The young birds and beasts leave the parent house and never return; the hive year after year sends off its swarms, which form communities quire ajarr from the original one. To pass to the history of colonial development in the past, one finds similar tendencies at work. The American colonies wrenched themselves apart from the Motherland; and many predicted that sooner or later these colonies of to-day would follow America's example. But on the contrary! we find not a trace of the disintegrating spirit, but a. stronger desire than ever to cleave to the old land. Out of the perfect independence in which we have been nurtured since our birth as colonies has eome the true Imperial spirit. The germ of it was really planted when the Mother Country gave us the government of these lands into our own hands, reserving nothing, it may be said, but the right to protect us in time of danger. Events are daily proving how great has been the success of that experiment in colony making, and justifying the policy of non-interference.

THE MOST POPULAR COLONIAL PASTIME. What is really the most popular of our pastimes in this colony? At first sight the answer seems obvious, and the universal verdict would give the pride of place to either football or cricket. But, while these are unquestionably in one sense the national games, I doubt if they really are the most popular from the point of view of number of people playing them, and from the enthusiasm manifested in the games by players. Both cricket and footbail are, if one may so express it, spectacular games, anil rely more for their popularity on the number of persons who gather to witness the games, than on the actual number of persons who enthusiastically engage in them. In the football season a larg-e section of the community in these colonies centres its entire interest in life on football, but 90 per cent, of these enthusiasts have never played the game themselves, and are interested in football only as spectators, and, of course, critics. The same, to a more modified extent, prevails in cricket, and I really think that if we were to decide what is the most popular pastime from the number actually interested in the same from a playing- standpoint, we should have to give the palm to bowls! The oldest of all English pastimes, bowls, has taken a hold in the colonies ■which seems to increase every year, and so far as New Zealand is concerned we believe that in proportion to her inhabitants there are more greens and more players within her shores than in any other portion of Her Majesty's dominions. The evergrowing popularity of the ancient game in this colony is easy to understand. Our climatic conditions (especially in the North) are extremely favourable thereto, in the first place.

The sub-tropical heat and relaxing effect of our summer months incline attention to a game which combines the most extreme exercise of sk’ll and the maximum of excitement, with the minimum of violent physical exertion, such as has to be exercised in cricket, tennis, and in its season football. The only possible rival of bowls in the direction of mild exercise combined with skill is golf, and though we hear much of the "golf fever,” etc., that game can never be mentioned in the same breath with bowls, so far as general popularity is concerned. Golf is essentially a game of the classes. In New Zealand we have no aristocracy, nor have we any “gentry” in the sense that word is used in county circles in England—no class, that is to say, which claims and is accorded a certain position from the circumstance of birth, quite apart from wealth or other worldly circumstances. Our only classes are the small ones we set up for ourselves, which depend on the various amounts of money owned by individuals. Golf, then, in New Zealand is the game of our moneyoeraey, and of the moneyoeraey alone. Bowls, on the other hand, is unfettered by any such restrictions, and it is no small part of its value to the commonwealth that its whole tendency is to utterly break down the vulgar distinctions and barriers of wealth, out of which we with sueh execrable taste are perpetually endeavouring to build up local class distinctions, in absurd imitation of those which exist from natural causes in the Old Country. This is no doubt another reason for its constantly increasing popularity. The game is, moreover, remarkable at the present time for the generosity it brings out in the matter of giving trophies for competition. 1 do not think there is any game or pastime which can compare in this matter, even in the most distant manner, with bowls. One is perpetually hearing of this and that wellknown firm making some splend’d presentation for competition by one or other of the clubs in the colony. Obviously. then, bowls makes men generous and open-handed. The game has by no means always been regarded with such favour as it is at present. It was at one time regarded as a godless and Wicked form of amusement, and bowling greens and bowling alleys were held up to execration as places of vice and debauchery. No doubt some of them were no better than they should be. but the real reason for the suppression of the greens in the reign of Henry 111., was that the King feared that so much time was being devoted to the fascinations of bowls that the young men would neglect the practice of archery, in which our army had always excelled, and which was of the most paramount importance. Edward 111. and Henry VII. confirmed laws against bowling in public places. Anyone worth over £ l(»0 a year could be granted a license to play privately in their own grounds, hut publie alleys were supposed to be sternly suppressed. No doubt the law was constantly evaded, and, indeed, pretty generally' disregarded. but in the reign of George 11. offenders were committed to prison, and bowling alleys were once and for all stamped out. A species of ninepins reigned in its stead for a short time, but soon died down. As soon as the game was outlawed for the common people it became highly fashionable in what Mr Toole would call the “hupper suedes": indeed towards the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth no gentleman’s grounds were considered complete without a green. But as a club or popular game bowls did not revive till well on into the present century', though there was a bowling club established in Glasgow, and called the Willowbank Club, at the very commencement of the present century. It is, however, only in the last decade that bowling has gained the enormous hold it now has on the affections of the publie, a hold which, judging from the Century’ Tournament, now drawing to its close, is destined to increase as enormously in the future as it has in the past.

THE VERY LATEST PROHIBITION PLATFORM. It is frequently asserted that the proudest boast of n Britisher is that he never knows when he is beaten. In eonnnon fairness to that hnrdfighting body, the Prohibition Lea-

gue, it must be admitted that the fanatics of the temperance movement are imbued with this characteristic to a truly remarkable extent. Not only are they satisfied with the terrific thrashing bestowed on them at the recent licensing and general elections, but they have actually convinced themselves that the aforesaid thrashings—which were of the completest description—were in reality glorious victories, and on the strength of these they are now setting up a platform, which exeels all previous efforts in the direction of absolutism and thorough going tyranny. They now propose the unconditional amendment of the Constitution of New Zealand, on the basis:—“That no person shall, within the colony of New Zealand, manufacture for sale, or for gift, any intoxicating liquor, or import any of the same for the sale or gift, or to keep, or sell, or offer the same for sale or goft, barter, or trade, as a beverage. The House of Rep resen taives shall by law prescribe regulations for the enforcement of the provisions of this article, and shall thereby’ provide suitable penalties for the violation thereof.”

So far as the manufacture of beer, wine or spirits in the colony is concerned, the first clause is clear enough. It must cease absolutely'. The breweries must be closed, the hop fields destroyed, the vineyards allowed to relapse into a state pf wilderness, and the cider orchards bo left unreservedly to the attentions o' the codlin moth. It is when we come to the matter of importing, that matters pick up a certain interest. This clause is by no means so clear as the former, but as I read it, 1 take it that if this arrangement becomes the law of the land, I may not import any inspiriting and intoxicating liquor to sell, give, barter, or exchange, but that 1 may do so for my own personal consumption if I do so choose.

If this is so—and this is the way the clause will read to most persons. New Zealand will become a country with singularly' quaint customs. Those of us who like what Mr Swiveller termed a “modest quencher,” will be restricted by law to a perpetual “lone hand” or as it is known in the rich vocabulary of colonial slang—“a slinter.” Should y'ou come to spend the evening with me, 1 should have to outrage my hos pitable intentions and mix my toddy before your very eyes without offering you anything stronger than say a decoction of the lemon peel which I had cut up for the flavouring of my own special brew. At a dinner party the host would be the only person able to drink a glass of claret, .and had I bidden you to an oyster supper, I should be in the unhappy position of having to finish the stout myself. Of course this would soon breed a change of habits. People who liked a moderate amount of alcoholic refreshment. would most assuredly not be bluffed out of it by the prohibition tyrants, so the custom would rapidly be established of each guest bringing his or her own “refreshment.” No doubt, the prohibitionists will insiet on some means of ensuring that the individual receptacles for liquor belong- to the persons drinking therefrom, ami we shall see. the vast demijohn of Mr Hardcase with his name emblazoned thereon, while Miss Oldmaid’s modest little, containing “just the smallest, taste,” will also have to have set forth therein her full name ami address. The ease of husband and wife will too be peculiar, for they will both have to import their individual supplies, and if Mrs Jones takes nothing but claret (or gin) and contracts a violent cold, her affectionate husband will be a criminal and a breaker of the law if he allows her to make a comfortable hot and curative toddy out of his whisky. To be serious, however. I have treated this sulvject in a comic strain because it is impossible to treat so preposterous a platform seriously. The “reductio ad absurdnm” is the only method one can employ in such a ease. But if one admits for a moment that such a platform could be carried and ths constitution altered so that alcohol was absolutely unprocurable save as a drug in New Zealand, cannot the prohibitionists see the danger that we should run of an increase in the morphia, the cocaine, the hadesh, and other drug habits? There arc men and women who require some stimulant or sedative, and nlcohol in different cases supplies either of these. If these be forcibly withheld be sure nature will insist, and the innate eussedneKs of human nature will provide a different and perhaps a substitute which will perhaps bo worse Laajl the original evil.

THE STRENGTH OF SILENCE.

Are we British becoming a nervous people and losing that fine sang froid which was always regarded as one of the chief characteristics of the race? 1 confess I have some difficulty in answering that query when all around tue and throughout the Empire 1 hear and see such evidences of apprehension and unrest as the war has occasioned. Whenever the Boers score a trifling success we are in the dumps, and the cablegrams announce a similar depression of spirits in the Old Country. Or, if it is the other way about and the news comes that the Boers have suffered a defeat, our exaltation is correspondingly exaggerated. Surely such demonstrativeness is rather French than British. The typical Briton of the old days was a man not easily moved from his calm equanimity. Like the hero of Horace’s ode, he was a self-contained mortal whose well-balanced mind neither success nor defeat could greatly affect. If he did a noble thing, he was nobly unconscious of his merit, or at anyrate it was one of the traditions of the race that he should appear to be unconscious. He met danger with brave indifference, accepted victory or the reverse with stoical calmness, cherished a supreme confidence in himself, and for the rest was generally silent- under all circumstances. That was the Englishman of the past, and we still tell ourselves that he is • the Englishman of to-day; but in the very vehemence of our protestations there is the note of weakness. As Mr Sidney Low recently pointed out in an article in the "Fortnightly,” it is not suggestive of a calm, selfcontained spirit in the nation when the people are constantly congratulating themselves on their calmness. As if, even at the most critical moment that has yet passed in South Africa there was the least reason that we should wax hysterical. Englishmen love to tell the story of Drake, who when interrupted in a game of bowls by the news that the great Armada was bearing down on England, cheerily declared that there was plenty of time to finish the game and beat the Armada afterwards. There is the spirit that Englishmen admire. And it did not pass away with the Armada days; for in the never-to-be-forgotten storm of foreign and domestic complications which threatened England at the end of last century, the nation displayed the same quiet belief in itself. The excess at one time of despondent outcry and at another of loud jubilation, which has accompanied the later stages of the war does not suggest that strong placidity, but rather tempts one to think that the nation is suffering from an attack of nerves—certainly' an un-British complaint. Can it be that with access of wealth and power and luxury and ease we have lost something of the virile character that belonged to the old John Bull? Or is it merely that, like other civilized peoples, we have fallen a victim to the habit of loquacity that forces us to declare ourselves on every occasion and to make public our every mood instead of husbanding our strength in silence? But whatever the fault, I have a strong belief that it only requires the shock of a really great crisis for the nation to concentrate itself and to meet the danger that threatens in that calm and fearless spirit in which their ancestors encountered the slings and arrows of apparently outrageous fortune. The talk, the bluster and the fluster, the needless depths to which we allow ourselves to fall, or the absurd heights to which we are raised are but surface phenomena, born of superficial tendencies.

A MODERN HELEN.

Only last week Italy and Turkey were nigh coming to loggerheads over a young Italian girl who had been placed in the seclusion of a Turkish officer’s harem. The Turks declared that the lady, Sylvia Gemiti, had embraced Islamism before she took up her abode in the seraglio, but the Italian version of the story is that the woman was put there against her will, and the Italian Government sent an ultimatum to the Porte declaring that unless the maiden was given up. Italy would know the reason why. The Porte after some fluster saw fit to give way. There is quite a romantic flavour about the incident. One does not nowadays find a woman so obviously, and directly the casus belli, though indirectly the sex may still wield a potentinfluence in the diplomacies of the

world. It is for gold or territory, or national honour that modern wars are waged, and there is small chanee of a repetition of that tedious affair of Troy which is the example par excellence of a woman's war. Not, I believe, that we are less chivalrous than the people of those days, but we would find easier methods of settling a quarrel over a kidnapped girl t'han fighting for ten solid years with her kidnap-’ pers. As a fact I doubt very much whether Helen, although Homer represents her as the initial cause of that struggle, had really so very much to do with it. In those days they- ’had little else besides fighting with which to occupy themselves, and were glad of any excuse for a quarrel. Besides they had not the short cuts to wealth that we enjoy, and looting an enemy’s city afforded one of the surest ways of amassing a fortune. After all one can 'hardly suppose that all the heroes were so interested in the domestic scandal of Menelaus’ household that they would cheerfully spend a decade of their lives to avenge the insult putupon the gentleman by that impudent youth Paris. Depend upon it they had their eye on the loot. In t'his modern version of an old tale it would seem that the lady played quite as important a part as in the original. There is nothing to suggest that the Italians were picking this quarrel with “the Unspeakable” from ulterior motives. Their one object was to rescue their Sylvia Gemiti from the Turkish harem. The matter seems too trivial to give ground for actual hostilities, but the Turk, although he has not the most exalted notions of woman-kind is singularly touchy, as to any interference with that part of his domestic establishment of which Sylvia had become a part, and it seemed not impossible that there might be serious trouble. Wars may have their origin in small beginnings, and who could say that the wrongs of this modern Helen might not have set a-going that dreaded international imbroglio in Europe as those of 'her prototype disturbed the ancient world.