PASSING NOTES.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 11506, 19 August 1899, Page 2

PASSING NOTES.

Unto the signature of "Door Mouse (an evident mistake for Dormouse) a writer Jn' Thursday's Daily Times invites ministers of religion to ''state their views as regards the person (churcii ■officer, member, or noil-professor) who dabbles in goldmining or other shares." It is not expected of a dormouse in winter time that it should be more thun half awake. This talking specimen is evidently talking in its sleep. If ministers of religion take to stating tneir views on persons who dabble, etc, all that they will be able to say is that some of them have been confoundedly lucky and some of them particularly deep. ■t should not expect from this type of sermon any great advantage either to religion or to the gold-mining industry. And why should the buying and selling of " gold mining mid other shares" be implicitly comlemned as foolish or immoral by applying to it this opprobrious word " dab Ming '"! Are thero no godly men, then, who dabble.? Is it forbidden to a Christian to hold company scrip? I should like to take a census of dabblers at the next Council of the Churches; " All who hold dredging stock please stand up." I should get an all but unanimous show. Do you suppose -the clerical members would be out of it? I don't know why they should be. Indeed, my opinion of their good sense forbids me to suppose that they would. In a competitive examination on the mysteries of the Dunedin Stock Exchange Share List there are ministers of religion who, if they could be persuaded to sit, would come out pretty high. All the sarue, I am not prepared to recommend the introduction of the dredging boom into the pulpit. I admit that it might pay. A-preacher who would undertake to say whether Hartley and Rileys are worth buying at 105s, and Mataus at 90s; or who'would set forth reasons why N Tew Alexandras must- go up and Central Electrics refuse to come down —such a preacher would be a draw; in fact, h boom in himself. We shall not come to that, you say. Probably not; but, on the other hand, we are as little likely to shut ourselves within the narrow and purblind notions of religion that belong to a hybernatmg Dormouse.

In the " football scandal " case, so-called, I- am anxious, as every good citizen is, that justice should be done. Let the reputation of our footballers be cleared, or let the guilty perish. But really, as things are going, justice in either form will be difficult of attainment. The witnesses for the prosecution,' who are they? Mr Isitt, Mr Duncan Wright—the City Missioner,— and three theological students. The Fates were certainly in the mood for a joke when they put these gentlemen into the same train with a team of travelling footballers. For, Jet it be granted that the footballers were" really drunk—which, at present, nobody does grant; how will it be possible to convict them on the evidence of a Prohibition lecturer, a City Missioner, and three theological students? In such a cause these witnesses are discredited by their very virtues. They may say the thing that is true, yet who is to believe them? Unless some testimony of a different kind is producible • I shall suspect the Fates aforesaid of a conspiracy to defeat the ends of justice. The "situation at present is as absurd as that reported from Mr Jsitt's meeting at Balclutha, where Mr Thomson, the anti-prohibition mayor, believing himself-to have been slandered by the lecturer, rushed up to the platform anil insisted on shaking hands with him. Presumably Mr Thomson's motive was revenge —;he had some notion ■ possibly, that an anti-prohibition virus might be communicated by contagion, like measles or influenza. There is no telling, really, what his notion was. In a : prohibition district things happen ineonsequently; people square the circle and two and two make, five; you may meet all the dramatis persona: of "Alice in Wonderland"—the Hatter, the March Hare, the Rabbit, and the Cheshire Cat. . Even an anti-prohibi-tionist becomes affected in time, and it is .necessary ■to remember this when-trying to rationalise the proceedings at Mr Isitt's meeting. . Mr Thomson thrust out his eon* tagious'hnTSdj'Mv Isitt- refused to, t ; ake':'it ; the ehaiiSni)j.n i ;.exp6stiilated i.the? 'meeting yelled;"all things went "to chaos; The' re_,porter, by .way of appeasing public curiosity, expresses his belief that "before leavrng" theV.rheetuig-.Mr; Isitt shook hands with Mr Thomson." It may be so, but I ha'e my doots. '

{-'■ The. sage observer .whose- remark.' it is that "'Pear God' lias made many men pious; the proofs of the existence' of a God have made many men atheists" had .probably suffered in his time under a course of 'pulpit dialectics. What would lie have been likely to say if privileged to listen to the, argument for prohibition? For my own part, when I am told that alcohol is poison and a glass, of beer at lunch a sin ; that tho Bible wines couldn't make men drunk, and that the only guarantee of. virtue is compulsion—when I hear this sort of thing I feel the impulse to go "on the bust" "merely by way of intellectual protest. The impulse,. observe ; — pray don't distort my words or make me to mean more than I say. -There is no harm in bad impulses, provided you resist them ; luckily, not having been brought up on the prohibitionist theory of morals, I have learned to resist. But- for that, I should be a ruined man—Mr Isitt's stock arguments would act. upon 'me as an irresistible incitement to drinking. '■ And so would prohibition itself. - Where is the good of being good on compulsion? If I h«d ntifc learned virtue in" a better school than prohibition I am afraid I should make a very bad citizen, in a prohibition district. In every such-district the. sly grog business is indestructible; and why? Chiefly because the attempt to treat men as children or to make them monks in spite of themselves will always seem to some people absurd, and to some even- immoral. By the way, the latest argument for national prohibition is one that was recently addressed to the House of Commons. It goes back historically very far indeed. The night beforo the battle of Hastings,' said the speaker, Harold and all his army were drunk. They failed to pull themselves together in time for the tussle next day; hence the Norman Conquest! I beg to present this "argument," with' my compliments, to Mr Isitt.

A patriotic German writing in a Berlin paper finds an ..lustration of British arrogance in the colouring of British maps. He says: ■

An English map of the world, intended to show the British youth the predominating position of the island kingdom in the world, recently came into my hands. All the English possessions stood out .prominently in bright red,

—by the side of which the dirty browns and sickly yellows of the other countries naturally looked at <i disadvantage. Yes, it is true; a blazing red has somehow come to seem the proper geographical tint for everything British. Our flag is red:

The meteor flag of England Shall yet terrific burnsays Campbell, using a metaphor which any other colour than red would ruin. Our soldiers are red, or used to be. Nowadays they would be sent into action in the neutral tint of kharkee, I ■ suppose ; ■ but not so long ago their stupid and disdainfu! custom was to assist' the enemy's aim by the scarlet of their uniform. The " thin red line" at the Alma, for instance, is historic. Then, as to our over-sea possessions, we may well paint them red, since .for most of them we have paid the purchase price in blood. The German takes no account of these considerations, but interprets British red as the symbol of British bumptiousness. Then, he continues:

I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw that, with true English modesty, Egypt, South Beluehistan had been included among the British colonies. The Mozambique coast was marked with a red frontier line as at least a prospective British possession. This is bad; but worse remains behind: A note under tlio map stated that the rest of the British possessions were marked blue. I examined the map carefully, but found nothing marked blue. Finally 1 was enlightened. As is usual with maps, the whole sea was coloured blue. This, then, was the rest of the British possessions!

Quite true. Rule Britannia! Britannia rules the waves! "We are accustomed to much from Englishmen "—moralises this Berlin Anglophobe—" but such insolence I, with my German simple-heartedness, was not prepared for." German simpleheartedness, quotha ! —siinpleheadcdness were the better word,—German density and incapacity of humour.

By the help of British red the map of Solith Africa shows at a glance how imperative it is that, soon or late, we have it' out with the Boers. Embedded in our vitals like a pair of hydatid cysts are the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. It is true that.on one side, for a short stretch of frontier, the Transvaal touches territory belonging to Portugal. But Portugil as a colonial Power is very much like Spain ; both are near to the case of a joint stock company in liquidation. Portugal is squeezeable; if need were, we could buy her out. Everything Portuguese in South Africa must fall to us ; we are the; reversionary heirs. In effect, therefore, the two Dutch Republics are completely ringed by British red. That is ' the situation ; to picture anything like it we should have to imagine a French province in the heart of tho English midlands, or a Chinese sovereignty over the dredging areas of Central Otago. How would your Hartley and Riley look then! Mr Chamberlain, the London Times, and other virtuous Imperialists protest that we have no designs against the independence of the Transvaal. All we want is justice for the Outlanders. Credat Judaeus ! Personally, I wane a good deal more than that, and so does the British nationality tho wide world over. I shall believe in Mr Chamberlain's tenderness for Boer independence on, tho day when I learn to think him a fool, and that day, I fancy, is yet a long way off. Meanwhile I assume his disingcuuousncss in the interest of his sagacity. There may be some diplomatic use in the pretence that we wish the Transvaal Republic to continue, but- I confess I don't see what it is. Nobody is deceived by it; President Kruger least of all.

I have made some remarks above on the Puritanism —or, rather, the wretched travesty of Puritanism—which -would put all traffic in mining shares under a ban as "gambling." I remind myself of a story, told of a rather well-known military officer, the late General Bunbury, who at one time commanded a crack rifle corps. The inspection time came round and passed oft' satisfactorily. There were no complaints; the regiment was evidently in good order. " But," said the inspecting general, " I am bound to tell you, Colonel Bunbury, that rumours have reached me of gambling being carried on extensively among your officers."

"That may have been the case, sir," said the Colonel, " some months, ago; but I can assure you there is nothing of the kind in vogue now, because I've won all the ready money in the regiment, and I would not allow any Rambling on credit."

I am prepared to ba.ck the Bunbury principles. It is not " gambling" in shares that will harm us, but " gambling" in /Shares on credit—incurring obligations for calls that we shall never be able to pay. Personally I have no scruples about. winning the ready money of other people by buying with judgment before a rise, and, with equal judgment, selling before a fall. That is all right, and according to Cocker. But I record my strongest reprehension of those fatuous people who first buy more than they can hold or pay for, and then start a slump by having to sell at a discount. Civis.