The Press Friday, November 11, 1927. Summer Time.

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 19155, 11 November 1927, Page 8

The Press Friday, November 11, 1927. Summer Time.

It is not yet possible to say whether the alteration of the clock is, or is likely to be, as pleasant and beneficial as Mr Sidey's supporters have promised. We are still too far away from the summer solstice to have long hours of late sunlight, and nobody can have noticed any material change in the complexion of his evenings. By the end of the month the extra hour of daylight will be noticeable, but it is by no means certain that it will be generally used otherwise than in the | days before Mr Sidey's Act was passed. There are in the meantime two points which have not been much considered either by the promoter of the Bill or anyone else. The first concerns the fact that " daylight-saving " may be more desirable and more useful in high than in middle latitudes. People are accustomed ta think that New Zealand is antipodal to the United Kingdom, but this is a great error. The territory in the Northern Hemisphere which corresponds to New Zealand is an area stretching from Geneva southward through the Italian Riviera, and across the Mediterranean into Algeria. If Britain were to be transferred to this hemisphere, it would lie far south of Invercargill, and would stretch away towards the South Pole. A result of the difference between the latitudes of Auckland and Wick is that the summer twilight ends hours later in Wick than in Auckland while the dawn begins hours sooner. What may suit Great Britain, it is clear, will not necessarily suit New Zealand. The second point concerns the morning. Most people who have thought of the Sidey Act have paid more attention to the extra hour of daylight at the end of the day than to the abstraction of an hour from the morning, and in' England some people are not satisfied with the working of " summer time" in a ' bad season. When " summer time '* ended at the beginning of October The Times said that English people " are reminded by " the extra hour of morning sleep now "available that the value of time as " well as its passage is relative." " For "at least five out of the six months "of the compulsory exchange, even "an average citizen has been un- " doubtedly, so far as this present year " is concerned, a loser by the bargain." He gave up an hour of preckrrts morning -rest in exchange for an hour of so-called "daylight" at the end of a wet day. There are others besides the ordinary citizen, however:

There are certain temperaments to which the hours from, say, eight o 'clock to ten in the morning, are those of the best—sometimes the only—inspiration, not to be replaced by any substitutes !at the fag-end of the day. Let inoralI ists say what they will, and Cobbett j and Smiles roll out their lists of benefits from early rising, morning sleep brings invigoration to a man of this type and a spontaneous influx of ideas. The missing of these is one of the most fruitful of all reasons for "getting-up blues" and disgruntled breakfast-tables. To such a man it is of no use to pretend that the cold glimmer of six o 'clock in the morning is really seven. He knows better. In place of the cheery warmth of the risen sun he has waked unrefreshed in a half-light to a day's work for which he has been allowed no time to prepare himself- Even if, by some miracle, the sun should be already shilling, the "walk before breakfast"recommended by Spartan and sybarite alike is not for him. This spring of happy fancies and fresh ideals has been purloined by the clQck —and purloined during these last few months - without any compensation. A universal rule has been forced upon him willy-nilly that he should hurry in the morning so that the evening may bring a leisure he cannot use.

We in New Zealand, to be sure, can rely upon better weather than Providence allots to the Englishman, and in any case the " summer-time" period ia much'less than six months. But it may still be broadly true that by the time the clocks return to normal people will look back with discontent at the rising hour and without much thankfulness for the sunlight in the first portion of the evening l .