THE PEOPLE’S PEEP SHOW.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXII, Issue 816, 24 February 1910, Page 3

THE PEOPLE’S PEEP SHOW.

By 143. Smiles smooth the way —■ when gloom and laughter meet Gloom is defeated so, friend, laugh you now.

Laughter is a serious thing ; for the person who is laughed at is generally in trouble. You laugh at the comic career of a hat in a wind-swept street —because it is not your hat. If the hat finishes up under the wheel of a dray, laugh loudly—you do not have to buy the victim new head-gear. Come to think about it, many laughable things are happening in New Zealand at the moment, but we do not laugh at them. We do not indulge in paroxsyms of merriment at the subtle jest or the deeply-clever joke. But if a paid person attired in comic rags, and with a painted nose wanders on to a stage, smites his fellow-comedian with a stick, exclaiming with infinite genius, “’Ere we are ageu !” or “’Ave one yerself!’’ we explode. If the obviously ridiculous fails to force smiles or laughter out of us, we are unnatural. It is unfashionable to laugh loudly in the streets of Wellington, Dunedin, Auckland, Christchurch, London, Montreal, or in any city where coin chasing is the serious business of daily life and where gaiety and business must not mix. We are hurt at the sound of merriment in Cathedral Square, Lambton Quay, Queen Street, or the Octagon. A sonorous cackle, a hearty roar or a rib-shaking laugh brings us up “all standing,” and makes us feel sorry for the levity of a person who might just as well be correct and glum and business-like. A Maori generally laughs where, when, and how he likes, with no thoughts of the dreadful consequences. No Bill has yet been introduced for the suppression of laughter—but we are so serious a people during business hours that it may come. Several politicians one knows would hail with sober joy the suppression of joyful noise.

Even Kitchener smiles. Some people have gone so far as to invest the great war-lord with sardonic merriment. They talk about his “grim smiles,” his “thunderous brow,” and all the rest of it. If one of our mildestfaced philanthropists set out for the Pole, went pioneering, scalphunting ; ran an exploration party, or shot tigers with Theodore Roosevelt sure enough someone would find “grim determination,” ora “cold eye,” or a “square, massive jaw” in his faked press picture. Plenty of men who keep grocers shops or livery-stables are of grimmer appearance than Kitchener. Kitchener, for instance, could not be expected to laugh very loudly when that clever farmer de Wet, very nearly succeeded in capturing his special train. One may indulge in the supposition that K used his grim smile when he carefully escaped capture and went on conducting his campaign.

Kitchener comes to Wellington on the 24th as everybody knows. But lots of New Zealanders may not remember that it was on the morning of the 25th February of a bygone year that he paraded New Zealand , soldiers at Bothasberg, and said, “Well done!” He did not laugh then, because a number of men were digging holes in the brown veldt lor the reception of soldiers whose names will be whispered in many a New Zealand farm-house on the anniversary of that date. The comrades who are lelt will eat and drink in Wellington on that night, but they will not laugh when they remember the rush of the burghers, their women and their cattle across the railway line at Bothasberg on the dark, bloody night of long ago.

But Kitchener laughed at Wynberg. He had a habit of appearing anywhere at any time. This time he strolled carelessly down the Wynberg railway station platform. Indian “syceu” were entraining Argentine re-mounts; pig-headed, mule-footed, bad-tempered freaks. One pony had become part of the stationary scenery. He dug his toes into the loading-bank, made equine remarks of a vicious nature, and seemed to be the only part of the Army that was not mobile. Six Hindoos dragged at him, pushed him, swore, entreated, and perspired. They tried to induce a breach of his determination by means of sjamboks, swingle-trees, mule-traces, fragments of disselbooms, pieces of bullock whip handles, and sections of harness. Then, Kitchener came. Maybe no man there had ever seen the general before. He laughed fully and freely ; then he brushed aside the dark cloud of Hindoos with his long arms, put his big shoulder under the pony’s quarter, and heaved him into the horsetruck, A staff officer retrieved the general’s helmet from the loadingbank, the Hindoos humbly salaamed to the great sahib, and Kitchener faded forth upon his way.

Kitchener knows men. For the moment his head-quarters were at Bloemspruit, and there came into that abominably dusty railwaysiding a chopped-off regiment of colonials, ragged, filthy, tired, with pieces of firewood sticking out of their wallets, but nothing of any consequence in their stomachs or their haversacks. A young major was in command. He was very tired, very hungry, very thirsty, extremely dirty, and glad to be off “trek.” A staffofficer galloped over to him. “Who are you, sir?

“We are the Contingent of

mauding." “General Lord Kitchener will see you, sir.”

Then spoke Kitchener : “You will take command of a column, including your own men and will leave camp in twelve hours from now. Report to me when you are ready to move.” So the colonial officer, whom Kitchener had never before seen, bad little rest, but he had been picked for a dangerous enterprise because Kitchener liked the look of him. Kitchener is Kitchener because he knows men. Perhaps he laughed at his little joke ; but the men who were bumped by that column did not laugh.

Kitchener is a woman hater — perhaps. Perhaps not. This story is probably untrue, but It will serve. After the fall of Pretoria that city was socially gay. Many officers imported their wives. Kitchener objected, but Lady Roberts was there and she counted more than most fieldmarshals. Said an officer’s very aristocratic wife to Kitchener: “Isn’t it quite too charming that we have so many officers wives in Pretoria?”

“ Madam,” smiled Kitchener, “there should be no married soldiers. Women are a nuisance in a campaign.” “But.'my lord, soldiers don’t grow on blackberry bushes, do they ? Women really are necessary for recruiting. You cannot dig live soldiers out of a potato paddock, but many a dead one i? planted in one !”

Talking about Kitchener naturally reminds one that Kimberley was relieved ten years ago last Tuesday (February 15th). Seeing that New Zealand troops were the first to draw bridle in the Diamond City, a reminiscence seems reasonable. On that march nobody knew where he was going to. No ordinary soldier is ever told where he is bound for. He might want to increase his life insurance. All the troops knew was that they trotted and galloped hour after hour, through the long blistering day. with grass fires all around them. There was the great empty plains, the little empty water bottles, and the aching empty stomachs. And stomachs are more than glory on the march. Perhaps the people of Kimberley were glad to see the unshaven faces of the tired horsemen when the miserable mounts broke into a weak gallop for the first water.

Talking about laughter, and the fact that the other fellow’s misfortune germinates the joyous cackle, reminds one that the big Kimberley vlei (dam) produced disaster and merriment. When a large body of mounted men flounder wildly into a dam with a sticky bottom, one naturally looks for results. If a much over-loaded and weak horse crosses his legs in mud, he flounders. Several dozen horses duly floundered, and many soldiers waded ashore drinking as they went. Fortunate soldiers who remained mounted cackled uproariously, and scooped up soupy water in their hands, drinking with as much gusto as if the mud had run from the purest rill in the sweetest spot of New Zealand. And if a great number of men afterwards died of enteric—what then ? Some laughed before they died, and some did not die. Kimberley was relieved. That is the point.

Kimberley winked all day across the great veldt with its heliographs. Hence a story. At Klip River there was fighting; hard, murderous artillery duelling, cavalry charges, infantry advances, hill-storming. Scouts spied a heliograph winking its way up a kopje. It was the most curious little cuss of a helio ever seen ; a restless, creeping change-direction-to-the-right sort of dot and dash. Must be the enemy’s signaller, with his gear on his back, creeping up a hill. “ Out the scouts, and after it !”

Cautiously the scouts moved to the foot of the hill, three pairs ot keen eyes glued on the moving wink. Whimple volunteered to sneak up the hill. He sneaked back smiling broadly. In fact, he laughed uproariously.

“It’s one of our fellows!” he said. “ Go on !” doubted the others.

“Yes, he’s got a piece of bright biscuit-tin sewed to the seat of his pants with copper wire. It’s the only thing he could find for a patch !” No wonder the helio winked.

The gullibility of the public is food for laughter of the section that is uot gulled. For instance there is the strange story of Leo Arthur Coplan Borauoff, who was lately tried at Palmerston North, and who will rest at the expense of the State for three years. Boranoff, a criminal of wide ‘'repute” was always the most palpable, transparent and inartistic liar. In Wellington, where he made a good deal ot “hay,” the sun shone on him tor quite a while. He spelt his name differently each day, and remained unsuspected. He lectured to huge gatherings in the Town Hall on subjects he was hopelessly ignorant of, and he was wildly applauded. Socialist celebrities grasped _ his manly hand, and wept for his exile.

What a fine chap was Boranoff ! The daily papers hunted him down and wrote him up—column on column of adulation. This brave, true Russian exile, who was ameliorating the condition of everything in sight, was on a good wjcket, Nobody knew there were any Russians in Wellington until large, rough men with whiskers and muscles' invaded newspaper

offices and said Boranoff was a dreadful fraud ; that he was not a doctor, that he was nothing—nobody. Boranoff, spelling his name in a new style, wrote, protesting that these Russians were the frauds —not he. Some of the Czar’s subjects intimated pointedly that if L. A. C. Boranoff did not move out of Wellington at once, he should stay—in the morgue. Altogether it seemed that a clammy Boranoff might be found in a back alley with a Nihilist knife buried to the handle in his ribs. But no, nothing happened. The police asked Scotland Yard. The “Yard ” knew. Boranoff of the brotherhood of man was a criminal, a decadent; here were his finger-prints; and so on. Who’d have thought it ? Boranoff in his gaol will laugh. All criminals are proud of their success.

After all, it is nice to be trusting —if you are not a tradesman ; and fine to see the better side of your fellow-man —if be has a better side. If he has no better side, it probably is not his fault. You, being perfectly free from guilt of any kind, must try and clean his soul with your moral sandsoap. You see, good men (the solemn judges, the clever magistrates, the immaculate Js.P.) punish bad Boranoffs —but they don’t cure them. A moral leper is clapped into gaol tor a lew years.

Do you mend the puncture in your bike tyre by locking the tyre up in the washhouse? Do you fatten cockerels on tin-tacks ? We should not be very angry with Boranoff, but just a little sorry that he was served out with the wrong sort of brains. It is very kind and nice for ladies to take bunches of flowers to a condemned man, but it does not help the relatives of the slain, or the person he has killed. We flounder along, not knowing much, and learning little. Regarding the things that matter, the true instincts and the really beautiful we understand today exactly what people understood five thousand years ago. The ancients did not ride in aeroplanes ; but they built the pyramids. They had no motor cars; but they had the Colisseum, They had no nine-inch guns ; but they slew balf-a-million men in a battle. We merely vary methods a little as “the centuries creep’’ — that’s all.