WARS OF NERVES

New Zealand Listener, Volume 34, Issue 871, 13 April 1956, Page 16

WARS OF NERVES

by

SUNDOWNER

MARCH 8

HOUGH I expect flocking at this time of year and not pairing, I saw a cock sparrow this morning attacking other cock birds that tried to settle in a macrocarpa growing a few yards from the water-trough. To my surprise he won all his encounters. He either had, or pretended to have, rights in that tree which were not shared _by

other birds, and it was sufficient for him to assert his claim to es-

tablish it. Those, I thought, were battles of nerves, his victories of nerves, though I could not think why he should have been belligerent in the moulting season. Perhaps he was deceived by our double summer. , Whatever accounts for these exhibitions of bluff in nature, they must have been going on since the beginning of time. There must have been wars of nerves thousands of years before there were Russians or Americans or Chinese .or British; before there were races or nations or governments; probably before the human animal emerged as a superior being. It is a war of nerves when a dog shows his teeth, when a cat spits and thickens its tail, when a lion roars, or a gorilla beats his breast. My hens are

nerve fighters when’ they charge a dog in defence of their chickens, since they have neither the capacity nor the in‘tention to do anything but make a fuss. Once when I bought a Minorca rooster, and was not ready when he arrived to liberate him, I put him in a_ small nétted coop which was too low for him except in the centre under the ridge. There next morning my bantam rooster found him, and started circling the coop challenging him. At first the Minorca was belligerent, too, but when he attempted to strike he found himself hampered by the sloping netting. In the end this really worried him, and since he had to stay where he was for two days, and the bantam kept running round the coop challenging and threatening him, his nerves at last gave way and panic seized him. Though he recovered when he was moved into a run in which he had freedom of movement, he always gave way afterwards to the bantam ‘if they met in the open. It had completely vanquished him _ without giving or receiving a single blow.

MARCH 12

* T was a shock to me some years ago when a woman I had known for a long time, greatly admired, and had

never seen too often, said to me that no man who so despised women as I had shown I did could be just to them or a trustworthy critic of their work. I mean it was a shock when I realised

that she was speaking seriously and not making fun of the per-

son I myself supposed I was-a sap with women, soft and sentimental. and spineless. I could not think, and I have not been able to think since, what I . had said or done or been to leave that impression, which in itself did not distress me. It would have comforted me to think, if I had been able to think, that I was.not just the sloppy fool with women I felt in my bones I had always been. But she insisted that my courtesy to women was a contemptuous courtesy, that I had no sympathy with them, did not try to understand them, and as a result knew very little about them. The woman who gave me that resounding smack was a lecturer in history. Now another lecturer in history, the brilliant but disturbing A. J. P. Taylor, has gone a good deal further. In a note in The New Statesman on homosexuality, a sad subject for cynicism, he has recorded it as his opinion that one of the reasons why society makes no headway in dealing with homosexuals is because men _ despise women. We say-how can we cure homosexuals? as though it were some sort of disease. . . (continued on next page)

‘What we should ask is-how can we arrange things so that homosexuals are not a nuisance to others? The fault, if it is one, is in our behaviour, not in theirs. Most Englishmen do not like women. They have normal sexual desires; they need women as housekeepers; but they do not enjoy feminine society except at bed and board. Hence all our characteristic institutions — clubs, public houses, boarding schools, colleges-though not homosexual, still encourage homosexuality. When gentlemen no longer linger over their wine after’ dinner, we shall not need special inquiries into the problem of homosexuality. I feel like asking what there is in the study of history that breeds these hostile attitudes. If I can’t take my stand with Burns: They’ve faults and failings-granted clearly They’re frail back-sliding mortals merely, Eve’s bonie squad priests wyte them sheerly For our frand fa’; ¥ But still, but still, I like them dearlyGod bless them a’! If I can’t stay there without insolence and contempt, I will die a

MARCH 13

Tool and a sinner, turn my face to the wall when my hour comes, and wait for Abishag on the other side of Jordan. de aa ~

bad pa! WAS pleased when an issue of Country Life came today through the post and I found, when I opened it, that a kea which was once my fellow resident of Day’s Bay filled the two centre pages. If this does not make him the most famous of all keasgrowing up in the house

of Dr. R. A. Falla at Dav’s Bay.

and then moving posthumously into the pages of Country Life-lI shall be greatly = surprised. Though keas are often photographed, it can

hardly have happened before ‘that a camera has followed one from his nest, 4600 feet up im the Alps, to his fully fledged maturity in an _ ornithologist’s house, where every development was noticed and written down. The notes, arranged and summariséd and assimilated into a most readable story by Mrs. Falla, would make a good story in any setting, but illustrated, as this story is, by five striking.photographs arranged in a time and development sequence, they make a feature so arresting that they can never now be lost. It gives me a kind of uplift to thifik that I once saw this bird alive. But birds die. They die long before their time when they share the haunts .of men, and this bird lived only five months. He died quickly, and without any reason for dying that’ his owners

could afterwards discover. I have no doubt myself that there was a physical reason, though Mrs. Falla wonders now if the cause was psychological-loneli-ness in a world 3000 feet below the world to which all keas belong. That might be a reason for preventing a young kea from growing up} but I don’t think it explains the sudden illness and death of an already mature bird whose days had been passed in freedom and apparent happiness. But whatever caused his death, I can see this record of his life making him the best-known kea in ornithological history, and (I am ‘almost capable of believing) saving the lives of keas still to be hatched. (To be continued)