OBITER DICTA.

Press, Volume LVIII, Issue 17459, 20 May 1922, Page 10

OBITER DICTA.

(By K.)

The good folk who have made a boginning with community singing had been wiser, perhaps, if they had not announced that their object was io scare away Bolshevism ''and all tho other isms." There are so many "ismey' is'rn there? Let the Bolsheviks get it into their he-ads that tho noise inrfde is hated Capital going through his incantations, and they will stny away—scowling, and perhaps howling, outside. This will be a pity, for it is notorious that Bolsheviks have good voiitvs which tihoy throw away on "llic I'ed 1' lag ' and like dismal tune-3. No doubt tho weekiy sing-songs will continue for a while, but what I am waiting for is the election campaign. How will the Lil>crals convince their 255 voters that Mossey has ruined the country, if the community is singing lustily every week!- The Prohibitionists will hardly like it, either. Perhaps, however, tho choruses will be none the worse for the absence and the dis.xpprovnl of the enemies of wine, tho Literals, and the embittered Bolshevists. \\ e shall see. Iri the meantime, the idea seems to me to bo a product of Coue-ism, which occupied some space—largo or small—in 61 English journals which I looked over in Wednesday's mail. Coue-ism —auto-suggestion —you keep on repeating that you are well, or that you will do better, or that you will do it, and 10, you are, or you do. Perhaps M. Coue lias been saying over and over to himself, "They will start community singing in Christchurch." I think -M. Coue is at tho bottom of m.uiy happenings whidh. puzzle and annoy me. He ia at tho bottom, perhaps, of one's habit of saying over and over to oneself, like a certain man charged with vagrancy, "I am absolutely fed up with everything; -I- am absolutely fed up with everything; ..." But M. Coue probably has nothing to do with Mr Wilford's passionate reiteration of his faith: "There must be a darned candidate somewhere; there must bo a darned candidate somewhere."

To talk of Prohibition, as I said last week, is the same ;is to start a fight in Cork: everyone hastens to join in. Not often do they join in with the welcome spirit and appositeness of a correspondent from whom I have received a letter. She says:— I was so much amused and pleased that you should quote that temperance verse. Had hardly thought it belonged now to any memory but mine. We had it in an old Blackwood article on "Popular Hymns"—date probably earlv seventies. I remember only scraps, but some rather swdet; for instance, •when Eve beholding her first stream, "Knelt oil tho grass That fringed its Bide; And made its tide Hear looking-glass." Your verse refers to that. - And then comes the awful climax: "If thus, by Eden's wave, To man was water given; If even beyond the grave It is tho drink of Heaven; Are not clear springs, And crystal wella, The very things For our hotels?" Another temperance rhyme for youth made various inimals ask for the natural drink. "Water "Waterl" roars the ox, As it rushes at his side Diwn among the mossy rocks, Flowing: with its crystal tide. "Water! Water clear and truel Moo! Moo I" This verse always worried me—as to why he roared for it, if the water ran close by. But,_ of course, the ox" was a true prohibitionist, unable to be virtuous without making a noise about it. Now that is a cheering letter; it