THE CHANGING SCENE.

Press, Volume L, Issue 14975, 23 May 1914, Page 11

THE CHANGING SCENE.

(By M.C.K.I "My old,"' said the intelligent foreigner, "has ono hoard this statement here? To say that T did nat pay for the Dreadnought! Now this is abominable thing to say I When Sir Bart has offered the ship I tell mc, 'Hippolyte, do not grumble, because one lin» not asked theo to raako a .sacrifice heroic. Make the sacrifice. Rejoice, my infant, and cease for one week to drink the cocktail. The world regnrifc you with nttention. .stupefied. To thes water waggon for one week, march.' I havo made, tho sacrifice, and now on.i says that I have, contributed nothing. How ho is arrases!, this M.assey.' ,

'•Hut you misunderstand, Hippolyto," tho Wardito said. "Masscy says that the Dreadnought, was a tax on all tho people. He's v dreadful liar." •'But I thought lie was a Tory. .Not so? How then?"

"Sir Joseph explains that the nation did not pay, ,, said the "Wardite. "He took caro that tho burden fell on tho bank notes and on tho totolisator and on tho estates of rich people who died."

"But this is a joke, is it not? Sir Bart has mo assured that ho was the agent of all tho nation. "How this is magnificent!' cried all the world. 'Regard theso Now Zealauders, how they boar the burden, old and youup, fat and thin, tho blonde and tho brunette, tho infant and tho old age pensioner. Heroes of the most astonishing!' You heard them, my old: I heard them, and I feel I am of the bulldog breed; Sir Bart heard them, and floated a loan. And all this has been an imposition, by blue. "What to do? Problem difficult, for the spirits mediocre, as mc. How to pay for the applause of tho world entire*? It must that I become a bank, which is impossible, or that I become rich and die, which is horribly inconvenient, or that I become a bettor of course-horses. Ono must contribute, my old. Nothing for it but to buy totc-tickete. • This which annoy mo is that I have wasted my teetotnlism. I noi comprehend Sir Bart and his Imperialism. But I shall learn, perhaps: Not so?"

Tho Turkish Government has agroe-3 to recognise tho sect in Asia Minor .which bolievos that tho Dovil was permitted by the Creator to create tho present uuiverse. With tho tolerance of tho Turks nobody need concern himself: but it is to bo hoped that beforu fooling angry and astonished at tha creed of tho Devil-worshippers people will think a little of its surface, reasonableness. All of us at times havo felt; that on quite a largo number of points • tho construction of the universe- is not very admirable. In th* age of revolt, against settled conventions and authority, when tho spirit of progress i* abroad, and nobody is so mean as to do anything reverence, there are many who will believe, indeed, that a competent statesman could "make over tho universe into a really Rood article "in two days." Some of us have m our eye the very man for the, job. Liko most' Orientals, however, the .Devil-, worshippers go much too far. They are misled by tho prevalence of Parliaments; and politicians, but they overlook the , compensations. They see around-them wars Prohibitionists, hatpins, the novels , of Hall Came,, smallpox, suffragettes.X and Turks, and, in the most literal.:eenso of the word, they forget themselves. ■ . . , v / ■■■_''.;; ■■ y Without going Quito * ar , Asia Minor theologians, 1 share with Mr ; Russell and Mr Iskt and .th<V the party, a strong beief .that, Devid did' not create the world, he at any rate secured a lease of it on; JuJy,, 6th 1912. On that night, it wifl t>o remembered/ there wero meteors, . strange shapes in the , hc^f f> j^l^'--V tents dire, and in the htful Ell, or Mr iianan, or Mr Kussell might have been seen working out feverish sums in which X represented the 3iinjsteml wlarv, and V represented £100 a year -the problem being the difference between" X and Y. Yes, dia- , bolic happened that night, only'his great heart that prevents Mr Russell from concluding provisionally, that tho people in Asia Mmor mzy £ right Mr Massey is still in office; Sir Joseph Ward is fitill socking in vain for somebody to bclicvo that he could haro settled, tho Mexican trouble in two <■ days; tho public remains calm despite ? ; tho revolting fact that Mr* Herdman and Mr Allen can go about quite sately without wearing lightning conductors on their hats. There are rumours or ,-. an outbreak of criminal lunacy in Avon, in the eh Ape .of a decision to change the member. All this has a fishy look If thingn go on tike this much longer, wo Wardites Bhall form * . branch of the Asia Minor organisa-. tion. : • r V

\ great many of us are beginning to'think that if she is not careful Mrs O'Shca will let the cat out of the_bos respecting her relations with Mr -P*»-.. ncll. Already pooplo aro saying that there mu-st havo boon something >«- twecn them. .

"Yes, I repeat," eaid tho agent of ' tho National Peaco Council, "tbafc war is an obsolete and preposterous thing. War is not inevitable. Jf the men with whom thc ; decwion rest could, bo,convinced that vans wasteful and- ' unwise, war would never occur." ; Then ho took up his umbrella to go out. But being a thoughtful, man, ho reSoctcd that of all tho .obsolete and ■ preposterous things, r3in is tho. nioet obsolete, and tho most proposterons. ■3lore than that, it was not inevitable, but could bo cured if tho root causes could bo got at. If tho authority responsible for it could bo convinced of tho wastefulness aud unwisdom of rain, rain would never occur. Anyway, it was not raining just then. So ho threw tho umbrella into a corner and went down town. .

He ontcrcd tho insurance office, and was again seized with a fit of reflection, i'irc, ho sakl to himself, is antiquated and absurd, and in an enlightened age houses should not Luru down. To my that firo is inevitable is manifestly preposterous. Tf tho Veoplo whose houses bum down could Tjo shown that fires.arc wasteful and foolish, fires would never happen at all. This time, ho said, I derive tho actual benefit of . - saving £3 10s, and ho walked out of the ; offioo without renewing his policy .^ He was lat«.» going homo that. Bight, ;: and as he pondered upon the best way ••"."., of persuading the Japanese that war is .-J.} a silly game, he blundered into .& mail. This made him..sad/:an4;j^^^|§§§§

thinking about the tyrannical police t system, based as it is upon a recognition of crime. Crime is obsolete and ' absurd, he reflected. Inevitable? Non- . Bense. As soon as the. people who commit crime realise that it is wasteful and unwise, not to say wicked, crime } will cease. I am glad, he'said, as-he -turned into a dark road, that in this iffoad at any rate there are no police.' I At this point William Sikes rose up fwni of the dark, .slugged the philosopher |Jn the lamps, and went through his ! pockets. Half an hour later, as he painfully homo, a eou'-wester drenched him, and when he arrived at last at his address hw found the fire brigade squirting water on the de'iiTel .• -Something snapped in his head. <- 'I ■am an ass, 7, he said, and joined the tWardite party.

• Some of the newspapers hare printed f a letter in which a prominent English, ' pnffragist assures us that- we must not '■ think that the suffrage movement is not successful. Her point seems to be that appearance* are deceptive—that the monotonous prosecutions of the monotonous female rioters are misleading— that really and truly the suffragists are going to sweep the country at the next election. Everyone will agree with th« 3ndy who agrees that in this country, despite all the appearances to the contrary, tho Opposition are winning votes by the million. If anybody Bays that tho suffragist candidate, Mr Lansbury, was endwed under, it is a more than sufficient reply that Mrs Pankhurst threw a clothes-brush at Mr Asquith. and that another heroine successfully slashed the Rokeby Venus. So here; nobody wants to ignore the fnowing under of the "Liberals" at Grey and Lyttelton, hut nobody can pretend that Mr Atinore, the young house-painter, who was elected by the Reformers, suggests that Mr Allen is nn uneducated idiot, , and Mr Massey a fraud. Wellington slew rather savagely the "Liberal" and Bod Fed. candidates for tho Mayoralty, but what you must remember is that Mr Fisher was howled j down. The militant suffragettes may bo i derided, as tho "flying squadrons" are derided,, but have they not created a most wholesome uproar? In England tho opponents of the militants think that suffragist militancy has not con-; qnered the nation, just as here the silly Reformers think that Mr "Witty and Mr lsitt have not destroyed the Government. But, gust as in England, bo in Kow Zealand, we shall see.