# A question for Sherlock Holmes aficionados - "Adventure of the Naval Treaty" **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [March 13, 2019, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-question-for-sherlock-holmes-aficionados-adventure-of-the-naval-treaty/831082 "2019-03-13T17:29:44Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2019, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-question-for-sherlock-holmes-aficionados-adventure-of-the-naval-treaty/831082/21 "2019-03-14T18:07:13Z")
> [@Penfeather](#): > > All of this from the sight of an old lady chilling on her doorstep. But what if he had been right? :dubious: ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2019, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-question-for-sherlock-holmes-aficionados-adventure-of-the-naval-treaty/831082/22 "2019-03-14T19:06:05Z")
> [@Jackmannii](#): > > It strikes me as Holmes inadvertently :dubious: channeling Conan Doyle, who had an embarrassing mystic side. So the moss rose shows us the nature of the Creator, eh? 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2019, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-question-for-sherlock-holmes-aficionados-adventure-of-the-naval-treaty/831082/23 "2019-03-14T19:17:15Z")
> [@Penfeather](#): > > Doyle was a smart guy, but he had huge blind spots, and he was not a rigorous thinker. Somewhere on my shelves there’s a collection of Edwardian essays including one by Doyle in which he visits New Zealand, where he’s struct by the sight of an old Maori woman smoking a pipe, decides that the similarity between her and old Irish women is too much to be a coincidence, notes that Maori sounds similar to Japanese, and concocts a theory whereby Maori are a lost tribe of Irish who walked though Asia and picked up a smattering of Japanese on the way. All of this from the sight of an old lady chilling on her doorstep. Actually, that kind of wild extrapolation based on minimal data is typical of Holmes. Doyle could just have Holmes’ deductions turn out to be correct, no matter how preposterous they were. ---
**Author:** ![Penfeather](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/penfeather/32/384_2.png) [@Penfeather](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Penfeather)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2019, 2:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-question-for-sherlock-holmes-aficionados-adventure-of-the-naval-treaty/831082/24 "2019-03-15T02:07:16Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > But what if he had been right? :dubious: To be fair to Doyle, there were a bunch of weird theories about where Maori came from that were floating about at the time. A lot of Europeans couldn’t accept that an indigenous culture could be smart, accomplished, industrious and brown, so there were all sorts of ideas about how Maori weren’t _really_ Polynesian, but were in fact a lost tribe of Aryans/Phoenicians/Irish/insert acceptable ethnicity. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Peyote\_Coyote](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/5f8ce5/32.png) [@The\_Peyote\_Coyote](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Peyote_Coyote)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2019, 5:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-question-for-sherlock-holmes-aficionados-adventure-of-the-naval-treaty/831082/25 "2019-03-15T05:14:28Z")
> [@Penfeather](#): > > To be fair to Doyle, there were a bunch of weird theories about where Maori came from that were floating about at the time. A lot of Europeans couldn’t accept that an indigenous culture could be smart, accomplished, industrious and brown, so there were all sorts of ideas about how Maori weren’t _really_ Polynesian, but were in fact a lost tribe of Aryans/Phoenicians/Irish/insert acceptable ethnicity. Kind of like the furor over Zimbabwe. Black Africans couldn’t have possibly built it, could they? ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2019, 9:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-question-for-sherlock-holmes-aficionados-adventure-of-the-naval-treaty/831082/26 "2019-03-15T21:40:00Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > Actually, that kind of wild extrapolation based on minimal data is typical of Holmes. Doyle could just have Holmes’ deductions turn out to be correct, no matter how preposterous they were. Holmes figured someone might try the window again, so he hung out in the bushes until the villain showed up. Heck, Barney Fife could have done that. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-question-for-sherlock-holmes-aficionados-adventure-of-the-naval-treaty/831082.md?page=1)