CURRENT TOPICS

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 218, 14 August 1937, Page 8

CURRENT TOPICS

(By “Wayfarer.”)

The unlamented Kaiser used to say, “Me und Gott,” but his successor just says, “Me.”—Hamilton Spectator.

Letters to British papers insist hunting is really a kindness to the fox. Sounds liko one of Benito’s epistles to the Ethiopians.—Winnipeg Tribune.

The latest form of strike. A 20-year-old Christian villager sits proudly at the top of a date palm near Barisal, near Calcutta, and refuses to descend. The young man has lived in liis tree since January. He climbed up, it is believed, with his mind unhinged by unemployment, bent the leaves of the palm together, tied them into a sphere, and curled himself up inside. At first he was terrified of falling, but how he has become truculent and proud of his notoriety. He will not listen to an English missionary’s repeated pleas 40 him to come down. His mother brings him food every day which he hauls up on a string. m # m • •

Those who deplore the fact that Canada is becoming Americanised were given more fuel for their .verbal fire with the publication of United States Department of Commerce figures lor 1-936, which showed that 344,336 bound educational text books and 1,399,147 other bound books were exported to Canada, says a writer in the Toronto Star Weekly. These account: for 41 per cent, of the total book exports of the United States. “What, you ask,' are we going to do about it? Exactly nothing, for, in our humble opinion, no amount of reading ever did any country any harm. To bear this out we cite Australia and New Zealand, two progressive, apparently happy lands which, according to Publishers’ Weekly, have probably the largest book consumption per capita in the English-speaking world,” adds the commentator.

“Duke” Lufton, who was Lord Robert’s trumpeter on the famous Kaudahar march, died recently at Windsor in his 76th year. When 14 years old he joined the Dragoon Guards. In the following year lie saw service in India. At the end of the Kandahar march when Lord Roberts launched his attack which relieved the city, Lufton sounded the advance. Later lie was transferred to the 2nd Life Guards; and during his 44 year-s’ service with the army he took part in four campaigns without receiving a single wound. His nickname of “Duke” was given him because of his likeness to the Duke of Wellington. On his retirement in 1920 the Regiment presented him with a gold watch and chain, to which tne commanding officer added the diamond pin from his own tie.

The methods adopted liy the research worker and scientist are often intriguing. Professor A. C. Hardy, of University College, Hull, carried out a novel experiment recently in his researches into the distribution and other characteristics of insects which damage crops. To the side of a brakevan on a goods train travelling from York to Hull he attached a large net of fine muslin, which caught up a great variety of insects during the train’s journey. Professor Hardy told a reporter that insect pests exist 2000 feet above the ground and 150 miles out at sea. He hopes to extend his researches all over the country and to compile records of the proportionate distribution of various insects, the times of their appearance, and their density over different types of agricultural land. It is hoped eventually to correlate these records with meteorological conditions, so that farmers may be warned as to where and .at what times certain pests may be expected.

Tales of the sea as exciting as any novelist’s invention are recalled by the erection of a cairn at Liverpool, Nova Scotia, in memory of the privateers of that town who during the Napoleonic wars won fame and fortune defending their trade with the West Indies in ships fitted and armed at their own expense. The roll shows many famous names, including those of Enos Collins, who amassed a fortune of £1,500,000, chiefly through privateering, and Joseph Barss, who, sailing a brig called the Liverpool Packet, captured nineteen prizes in two cruises. But the greatest of them all was Alexander Godfrey, commander of the Rover, a 100-ton brig, which carried a crew of 55 Nova Scotians. Returning from a successful expedition in 1800, he was attacked by a Spanish schooner, the Ritta, which was more than twice the Rover’s size and was aided by three gunboats. The schooner approached the Rover on one Bide and the gunboats on the other, preparing to board, but so skilfully did Godfrey handle his vessel and her fourteen four-pounders that at the end of the engagement he boarded the Ritta and made her a prize, while the gunboats withdrew, too badly damaged for further resistance. Tbe Spaniard’s casualties numbered more than the crew of the Rover, who escaped unscathed. When news of this exploit reached England Godfrey was offered a commission in the Royal Navy. He declined, however, and returned to lus old business of trading. He died, unromantically, of yellow fever in Jamaica a few years later.

The fate of a “lost” medieval village and the reason why a great country house fell mysteriously into ruins during the 18th century—two queries which have troubled Yorkshire historians for many years —are dealt with in an interesting book which has just been published, states the London Morning Post.

The house was Tar.kersley Hall, near Sheffield, originally owned by Sir Thomas Wentworth, first Earl of Strafford, in the days of Charles I. A. survey completed in 1723 showed the great building in perfect condition and the extensive park to be well kept with a large herd of deer running in it. Nothing further is known of the history of Tankersley Hall for nearly 50 years. A survey made in 1772, however, indicates the site of the house as “ruins of old hall,” and a sketch accompanying it reveals that there was little of it left standing. “Suggestions have from time to time been made,” writes the compiler of the book, Mr T. Walter Hall, “te account for the decay or demolition of this fine old country seat within a period of less than 50 years; some have attributed it to the battle of Tankersley Moor, when tbe Earl of Newcastle defeated 2000 of the enemy; but this suggestion was evidently made without knowledge of the leqse to Sir Richard Fanshawe during the Commonwealth . . . It is difficult to believe that ruin so complete could have been the result of natural decay in less than half a century.” Mr Walter Hall suggests that tlife owners deliberately lot the house go! to ruin and partially demolished it in order to work coal and ironstone pits on' the estate. The fate of the “lost” medieval village of Siwardthorp, which was flourishing in,Yorkshire in 1336, has never been discovered. There is now no trace of the village, writes Mr Hall, and it was not mentioned in Domesday Book. The reason for its disappearance ia likely to remain a mystery.