C. STANLEY EKE HERBERT NOYES
BERNARD MARTIN
There is a theme underlying and connecting these three talks this evening : a theme of ways of living. The Maori, the Chinese-and the White Ant.
Among the Afaoris
C. Stanley Eke, who won fame in the Rolling Stone series, is to disillusion those listeners who think of the Maoris as uncivilised. He lived among them in the village of Whangape in Northern Hokianga, New Zealand-a village of huts on the bank of a river. He watched them diving for ' sea-eggs ' and ate them with them. He went
' stingaree ' hunting with them at night. He was a witness of one of their most attractive characteristics. If one of them has grown more vegetables than the rest, he shares them round, or at any rate has no objection to the others taking them. They kiss with their noses and do other curious things-not that their customs are in the least curious to themselves.
Armies of Ants
Then Major Herbert Noyes is to talk of the way of living of the Termite, or white ant of Africa. It may be the enemy of man, but it is marvellously civilised. So clever that when it discovered that man destroyed its cathedral-like ant-heaps, it ceased to build them, and carried on underground. Railway sleepers, fencing posts, and wooden buildings are its food. A tiny, unprotected little creature, it works in vast armies. It is blind, organised, disciplined, and labours unceasingly for the good of the community. The Guardian Spirit of the Termites plays an absorbing part in Major Noyes's talk. Houses of the Dead
Lastly, Bernard Martin is to tell listeners of a people who are not depressed but attracted by death. The dead in their coffins are kept by the Chinese for as long as three years before burial. Quarters in the House of the Dead are rented at so much a month, and the deceased's furniture goes with him. And finally he is buried where he lived and worked-out in the fields if he was a farmer, his tomb surrounded by a wall to keep off the wind from the departed.