REQUIRED READING

New Zealand Listener, Volume 29, Issue 736, 21 August 1953, Page 16

REQUIRED READING

by

SUNDOWNER

JULY 30

NTIL this week I had refused to read The Cruel Sea. It was partly because I am a land-lubber, partly because I have been taken in too often by popularity. Now, if I could ever believe in compulsory reading, I would put it cn the list. There are some bad lapses in it-unnecessary slips into smartness, coarseness, empty patter. The political thinking -- about . Ireland, Australia, America, and in some degree Franceis on the lowest levels of national and social preiudice. The hook. ic

; also : too long; too long by at least a third for an author

who is neither a Melville nor a Conrad. But I would make everybody read it if I could ever make anybody read anything. We should be made to know, and never allowed to forget, what war at sea means; the cold, the terror, the hourly discomfort and anxiety, and when the worst happens, the sickening torture.

Without such reminders as books like this give us, the cruelty of the sea is a phrase We understand it as I understand a storm on the Alps when I watch it from a safe chair in my window. But no one has to live on the Alps. Tens of thousands of men and women have to live "on the sea, and when war comes, to die on the sea. If I forget again what that necessity means it will be because I am too old and too dull to remember anything. .

JULY 31

"rr HE trouble with women," he said in his haste, "is that they have no respect for property. They are destroyers by nature and by habit." "All because she dropped your precious watch." "It’s not all because of that. It’s be-

cause of the things they do every day; the irresponsible and

stupid things."

"Don’t they do a little creating, too?" "They do it blindly, accidentally, involuntarily, then pretend that there was purpose and a plan." "Was it good planning to give her your watch?" "I said I'm not talking about watches." ‘I know — you °* said that." > "You know it’s the truth. You know that a man would not have dropped a watch that belonged to somebody else. He would have been more careful." "So it is the watch." "It’s not the watch. It’s the woman who dropped it-the women who are dropping things every day, and who don’t care; who never learn; who don’t want to learn; who save things with one hand and throw them away with the other; who skimp to get fine houses, then bang doors, break

windows, burn out stoves and jugs, overfill drawers, burst travelling bags, break the backs of books..." "And drop watches; precious watches; watches that cost a pound 40 years ago, and have been useless survivals since radio began giving us the true time every few minutes. The trouble with men, if I must tell you, is that they worship junk, cling like kids to their toys, and never grow up."

AUGUST 2

Y sermon on my well was misunderstood. I thought I had made it plain that it was Jeremiah talking, not a costs clerk; that I was not attacking individuals; that the other fellow was everybody between the hole in the hill where the pump metal came from and the hole in my paddock. where the water

comes from; everybody who has lived

and worked through the last 25 years. Apparently I did not make it plain enough, But it occurs to me, now that I am back at the well, that I should convert the general into the particular. So far as I am concerned the job is done and paid for and will soon be forgotten. It may, however, interest the grandchildren of some of my readets, or their great great-grandchildren, to know precisely what an undertaking of this kind cost

in the good old days of 1953. Here are the ficures:--

AUGUST 4

T is pleasant to have it on the authority _0f the Minister of Agriculture that cows this year will bring New Zealand a hundred million pounds; not so pleasant to be reminded that we are killing too many calves. I suspect, too, that what we are doing is killing good calvescalves whose mothers and grandmothers

were better than anything their owners

had bred before them. To, the extent to which that is true we are watering the milk-increasing the ratio of second-, third- dhd fourth-rate

producers. And unfortunately no one knows, or can know, how true it is. Farmers don’t often in New Zealand underestimate their carrying capacity. For every cow that gets more than she can eat there must be ten that get less for at least a third of the year; if hipbones are evidence. Keeping more calves means therefore producing or buying more feed, and it is not easy, and often quite impossible, to take one step or the other at short notice. It interests me to see my neighbours turning to silage to increase their carrying capacity. Ef they don’t turn too violently-concentrate on silage and forget their hay-they must achieve something. But silage will not make two blades grow where the crop is at present one blade. It may, however, save three blades where only two are saved in hay. In the meantime one good -neighbour has warned me that if ensilage pits became a feature of this valley ensilage odour will become a feature, too, and will not add to the joys of living here. It is a risk I am prepared to take in the common cause, and I don’t underestimate it. But the day is coming, I am sure, when ensilage will be no more offensive to our noses than common soap now is, even when it is home-made, (To be continued)

Sinking the well-i.e. driving a 2-inch pipe 76 feet ante age ground Clearing the pipe po abthchind it Fass "the pump above ground ~ ng 30 sont of l-inch pipe we feet: 34-inch, with a @ joint, and 10 feet of steel rod . Wiring ra pump motor to switchboard in se 75 yards away (Note: Poles and ae igo not included ) = i Pump ey 420 gallons ph, lift 50 feet) Motor (1/3 Sind. Deep well fitting . « » Box for pump (3ft. x 3ft. x Sft.) Total £155 11 & 6 44 18 i3. 11 11 19 4 44 10 10 12 410 7° 9 ° ricooacod w&