And Now Let’s Look at Munich

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 526, 1 December 1928, Page 29

And Now Let’s Look at Munich

(Continued from page 26) litres he completely covered the blank page and had to mix the figures up with all the musical items on the other side. And, just as he had finished, some one unfeelingly put a be»r mug down ou all his beautiful arithmetic an! ruined it. So now I shall never know, with any degree of accuracy, what the awful facts were. I have never had occasion to regret that beer drinking was not included among my social gifts until I was confronted with an immense Munich mug whose contents sheer politeness made it rather necessary for me to swallow. For I have not, so to speak, a drop of

beer in my veins; the ancestral heritage was a stronger potion. But to the beauty of beer I can at least pay an aesthetic tribute, and I certainly do admire the froth that, like a little white lace cap, sits on top of its amber transparency, and into which, when drinking, one literally takes a nose dive. Also I must say I like this sort of community consumption of a comparatively harmless beverage. It is sociable, it is democratic, it is cheap recreation for tired men and women who have worked hard all day. It is an opportunity for people with views to air them, and probably have them corrected by the majority. It is a chance for people with no views at all to imbibe knowledge from a neighbour. It is Bohemianism in its best sense, and without self-consciousness. And surely, I cannot help thinking, in this great building _ with its hundreds of happy, orderly people, with its warmth and its light and its magnificent music —surely here is something that our fanatical friends .tell us is an impossibility. Here, for all the world to see, is the phenomenon of drink (and plenty of it) without “degradation.” I do not believe overmuch in any theories concerning the human brain. It was once seriously thought that a light-weighted brain necessarily belonged to a dull-witted person; but it has been definitely proved that weight has nothing to do with intelligence. So, too, it must he quite unfair to judge human intelligence by externals — how,' merely by looking at the size and shape of a head can one possibly tell what the mind is up to? One might as reasonably try to measure an ant’s uncanny intelligence by the shape of an ant-hill. Still, one would like to know why the German skull differs so widely—in both senses —from our own, and why the -average German, viewed sideways, so strongly resembles an Easter Island statue, whose head has practically no hack to it. Apart from prejudice, we must admit that the Germans are a very clever people, who have given the world great geniuses; and whether we like him or not we cannot" deny that the German of the masses is essentially a Pacific creature, is what is called moral, is extremely kindly and industrious, and is passionately fond of books, flowers and music. But he has very little sense of humour. Perhaps—if after all one may advance a theory—perhaps Humour inhabits a peculiar little attic of its own, somewhere at the rear of the House of Wisdom!