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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 13, Issue 7 (October 1, 1938)
News With Whiskers
News With Whiskers.
History is not concerned with the future. An event has to be practically forgotten before it can be history; a happening so fresh that it can be authenticated by living witnesses doesn't give an historian a dog's chance. Living witnesses are notoriously drab. Truth may be stranger than fiction, but it's a darn sight duller.
History is News with moss on it. Not until an event is at least a hundred years old is it handed over to the historians to be treated hostirically.
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Take Guy Fawkes' case. If the printer's proofs of this hi-story were handed to Guy for correction no doubt he'd remark: “Not a bad thriller; who wrote it?” And yet Guy Fawkes was supposed to have set out to lift Parliament to dizzy heights, to explode the parliamentary principles of his day and relieve the tedium of legislation by a real good blow out. But, if the truth were known, Guy was merely enjoying a quiet pipe of Raleigh Twist down in the basement among the coronation fireworks when discovered by the Keeper of the Wassail who had popped down for “a quick one.”
“Guy was merely enjoying a quiet pipe of Raleigh Twist among the Coronation fireworks.”
Some historian, a hundred years later, dramatised Guy's smoke on the theory that “where there's smoke there's fire.” Had he lived to-day he would be employed revising Shakespeare page 53 for Hollywood. He was one of the brighter lads whose history had not progressed past the first standard.