OBITER DICTA.

Press, Volume LX, Issue 18231, 15 November 1924, Page 12

OBITER DICTA.

(By K.)

They arc a small company—few but way have timo or inclination to glanco at thoso notes to-day. This is a pity, becausa tho great majority, still believing that "tho best is vot to bo" at• Riccaiton, aro tho very pcoplo ( who ought to do tho glancing. Going to Kiccarton on ono of theso days *» that mood of stoical calm that makes Dean Ingo almost happy—for, like tho Dean, I know that tho worst will happen, and that tho incomo of Messrs Layem and Takom is duo to tho persistence with which tho public, brought .up on Tennyson (English poet who flourished in tho timo when England was a land flowing with" milk and water), faintly trusts tho larger hope—l met a scientist friend who had onco explained to mo exactly how the Mahatmas of physics ascertained that tho alpha uarticlo weighs a sextillionth part of .00685212 of a milligramme. He was much loaa happy than ono might havo expected. A horse, I should have thought, would bo easy for him. A horso is cvor so much larger than an alpha particle. Ho can bo seen with ' tho naked . eyo and timed with a common watch. He is a substantial quadruped; thero is nothing conjectural about him. His record, in races and on tho training track, can bo had by auy newspaper reader. «s'o resoarch at all, comparatively speaking, •is necessary for an exact estimate of the place ho will occupy at the business end of tho journey. All this I pointed out to the Mahatma, and asked him what dividend ho had collected. Ho sighed that ho had backed Winkle's Kebcl.' It naturally occurred to me that here was sooio fresh justification of my inability to believe what the scientist tells us about electronic magnitudes and velocities. Jf I ho can go so far wrong with a palpable, ponderable object liko a horse. . , .

But then it also occurred to me, on the'other hand, that if the scientist, skilled to the hundredth decimal in such difficult " things as electrons, cannot walk all with the complete contents of the tote, cannot even back a place, the ordinary man need not be amazed that he receives so few invitations to tho paying-out windows.

The spirit of Archbishop Julius's sermon on arbitration, reported in Monday's "Press," was so good that one wishes he had been a little clearer on some points of detail, "If we were responsible for the war," he said, "let us up and say so, Let us gay it straight out instead of -whispering it and murmuring it. . . .While I hold we were absolutely right, I don't deny our own responsibility. The question is, how; are we to place the responsibility for v the war! The war was due not so much, to Germany as itj was to the general drift of human opinion and human greed, and to.the system of diplomacy in Europe." His Grace appears to have neither affirmed nor denied, but that 'Britain bears any responsibility at all, a good many; of usr-ono of us at any Tate—will sturdily gainsay- Some people believe that the Trar wag duo to drink and betting, and others that it was only-the birth-thToe of ,jaz£, cocktails, and bobbed hair, and tho fault, i therefore, of tho modern girl. But these are questions for tho historian of the future; for us of to-day the problem is, Jhpw to prevent a repetition of it. His Grace recommends that :we. should tako care that our politics