PASSING NOTES.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 12403, 12 July 1902, Page 4

PASSING NOTES.

Sir Joseph Ward's latest benefaction, the million and three-quarters of British gold that presently is to he injected into our aiterial system, may be regarded as a stiff guiss of grog, an old-fashioned t liree-fingev nip, administered to the constituencies in view of the general election. To conciliate their affections, partly; partly, it may be, to puzzle their intell«cts, which is not unusually the cffcct of a three-linger nip. My own intellect is, I confess, somewh'ifc pir/./.led already. The desirableness of a million and three-quarters, ready money, in exchange for a. few thousands annnillv, which annual thousands will, for the most part, be a charge upon posterity—that I see clearly. But I am puzzled by some remarks which tho million and threequarters proposal has suggested to Mr J. A. Millar, member for .Dunedin:

I was llot surprised at live Statement, as I have been watching carefully what has been going on during the year, and I felt convinced tilt. Government must be borrowing heavily to carry 0:1 as they were doing, and it now anpears they had borrowed £3,375,202 for the year—a record amount, I think, for this colony.

It- would seem, then, that for a year past we have been "nipping" all the time. jSH; J. A. Millar suspected it, and if there exists a man who ought to know these depths of Satan it is the same J. A. Millar but he only suspected; so silent, secret, and surreptitious is the dram-drink-ing of the Government that- verification was for the moment impossible. But at last everything is out; three millions and a-third have already been absorbed; the million and three-quarters now introduced with ostentation for the fuddling of the constituencies will make a neat and rounded five millions, with a few score thousands over for London agencies and commissions. And all within the year! Sober-minded patriots will see in this the ■Rake's Progress, and complain that Sir •Joseph must have taken for his motto— After me t-uc deluge. Not .so the instructed politician—Government side of the House. that the million and t-hree-quaitevs will make for his success at- the polls, he sees how-to the extent of £300 a year, which is, provisionally, the honorarium limit—it must also filter into his own pocket. ''I cannot give you my reasons in full"—confided Mr George Fisher, M.H.R, for Wellington, to a reporter— ''but I like this Statement. I passed a good night after it, and I rose with a feeling of freshness and vigour." Well, for my own part, I like not this Statement, and one reason why I like it not is that it affords complete satisfaction to Mr George Fisher.

Now that the war is over and the need has passed for keeping Imperial statesmen up to the mark, rebuking their pro-Boer opponents, and protesting against Lord Kitchener's kid gloves, Mr Scddon's place and use in the Empire grow less obvious. To a certain section of the British press our vociferating Premier liar, all-along been anathema. Here is a London dailv, for example,—the ■ Star, May 23—that speaks of him irreverently as " this New Zealand larrikin!" "It is time," says the editor, "to put this gentleman politely into his proper place. It- is not 51r Scddon who is paying for this war. It is the British taxpayer. And we imagine the British taxpayer is tired of Mr fMloivs sordid hooliganism." But the Star is Radical, possibly pro-Boer; British Radicals of the John' Burns typfe have little liking for either autocrat, or plutocrat, and would probably consider Mr Seddon a. combination of both.

I think nothing of all that. The decline and fall of Seddon as an Imperial phenomenon began in the censoring of bis speeches at the Cape. Milner and Kitchener, one nr both, minus kid gloves, clapped <111 the gag; when for the first time in many a year Richard found himself reduced to'his lowest denomination, "Am I still a British subject?" lie gasped; "Is my foot 011 British territory? Am Ito be denied the free.speesli.of an Englishman?" But that was in South Africa. He will not be ccnsored in England; 011 the other hand, it is not certain that he will always be reported. For his special propaganda 011 preferential tariffs and the like Mr Chamberlain, with significant courtesy, has promised "the most sympathetic hearing"— which is equivalent to telling him that he may look for nothing more. At the Colonial Office It. J.S. spells "enfant, terrible." And, by the same token, it is in a terrible tantrum that R J. S. will come back, unless the Colonial Office does something for him. I pin my faith on a South African (governorship—five years' term, to be followed by a pension.

I "have not read the Times' v History of the War, Vol. II; the book has not yet come my way. . But I. have read several press noticcs of it, and with little satisfaction. \TIIO author or editor of the "History," Mr Amcry, sits in judgment 011 the military conduct of the war; Buller, White, Gatacre, Metkuen,' ar° weighed in thn balances and found wanting; it. is not «vid explicitly that the nation has reason to be ashamed of itself, but that is the suggestion. And with this suggestion'the newspaper critics one and all seem to agree. Well, I don't agree jy-Athanasius contra mundum, if you like; but agree I don't and won't. It is not for the reputation of. (icnsrel This or That ihat lam concerned, but for the military honour of mv lace aml country. Take the Transvaal War as a whole, and we have as little reason to be ashamed of it us of the suppression of tho Mutiny or Wellington's Peninsular campaigns. We bungled in the Mutiny once and again—at ileerut notoriously; but what of that,'when we triumphed"in the end? At Vimiero, in the Peninsula, our bungling was of a comic sort, seldom equalled oft' the Gilbert and Sullivan stage. The battle was over and the victory ours by 12 110011: one French general, 15 guns, and some hundreds of prisoners were in our hands, 5000 lay on the field, killed or wounded; tho rest were in flight. At this point Sir Hdi'ry Bilrrard, who that same moment had landed as Commander-in-chief, but , had wisely left Sir Arthur Wellesley to do the fighting, assumed command and arrested the British pursuit. Enough had been done, he tnonght, for one day. Next morning landed Sir Hew Dalryuiple to supersede Burrard,—the third commaiidct' within 24 hours. Dalryuiple signalised his advent by admitting the beaten French to terms—the Convention of Cintra. under which they, along with '.II the plunder they had gathered from churches, palaces, art galleries, wcrs carried safe home to' France in British ships. For 'these exploits the three British generals, Wellesley, Bnrrnrd. Diltymple, were recalled and courtmartialled. Wellesley. acquitted, was sent back to the Pev.insnln, and'the career we know; tho other two were retired from active service. It- iv instructive to note that Napier, keenest of military critics, holds that both were unjustly condemned.

Brirrard and Dalryuiple, he says, were recalled " to abide ihe fury of tho most outrageous and disgraceful public clamour ever excited by the falsehoods ol venal political writers.

Napoleon's view was not very different: "I was going to send Junot before a council of war, -when, fortunately, the English tried their generals, and saved 1112 the pain of punishing an old friend."

We are not a military people: fighting, though off and on wo do a good deal of it, has never been (iur national trade. Yet when in military operations things go wrong—as occasionally they Will, whoever tho commander and whatever the troop?— our instinctive demand is, Whom shall \vc*. Such is our pleasant British way. The tvpica! case is that of Admiral Byng. Poor Byng had failed (o relieve the Island of Minorca—the I/idysmith of tiie hour— blockaded and besieged by the French. In an engagement with tlw' covering fleet he got his ships into a tangle and came off second best. Minorca foil, and the unreasonable British dander rose. Byns was recalled, court-martialled. condemned, and slioi— no less! Not for "cnwardice," nor for "disaffection"; these offences were carefully excepted in the finding: but for " misconduct "; in other words, simply for Having failed, Kcpiallv in point is the case, oc Admiral Calder. 'it was expected of Admiral Calder that, with 16 ships, he should intercept on its way from the West Indies the combined French and Spanish fleet of 20 ships, and capture or dp.strny

them. Unfortunately ho captured only two out 01" the 20; the weather was thick and the rest got away. Penalty for Caldir— a court-martial and a place' on tho retired list-. As if to emphasise the absurdity, Nelson, on the eve of Trafalgar, deprived himself of one of his best ships in which to send Calder home for trial. This is 0111' British nay; so it, wis wit-h us a century back, so it is still; national characteristics do not, easily change. I am content that Duller, White, Gataore, Metluien, and the rest should receive, each man of them, his just recompense of reward; but I nm not at oil persuaded that Mr Amery find his assenting newspaper chorus are the proper persons to sit as judge and juryIn Kitchener we possess, as it would scam, a really great soldier. Seldom io any nation is it given to possess more than ono at n, time. We have Kitchener, and we hive Roberts ; we have somo others not altogether unworthy to be bracketed with these; in,short, we have onr duo proportion and something over. The more reason to be tolerant of faults and errors in lesser men. Kitchener's work in South Africa is not of the kind that appeals to the mob. No Waterloo, no Austorlitz, no Sedan; not even an Omdurman. Stricken fields on the grand scale lie outside the scope' of guerilla campaigning—a kind of campaigning at once the least glorious and the most difficult. To handle a. quarter of a million men in guerilla operations; to keep them all at and always at it-; to accept with equanimity innumerable losses, checks, reverses; and yet to be winning all the time and win in the end—that has been Kitchener's work. He has done this work for us effectually, and he has done it with reasonable swiftness; for the Americans, with a similar job in hand, began before we did and are at it still. Moreover, whilst grinding the Boers to powder, be has not only not put- himself outside the pale of their'respect, but ha» almost won "thfir aifeetion. A paradoxical record; 'but, anyhow, so it is. Small wonder that London in preparing for Kitchener a sort of Kmnan triumph — troops. 15,000 of them to lino the streets from Paddir.gton Station to Atari borough House, and such a ree'eption by tfie metropolitan millions as lliey' have never given to any man 'of this generation. Nothing of ali this is to be grudged to Kitchener; but there aro comradrs and subordinates of his who jnst as faithfully did their best, yet 091110 homo to be chivied up and down the universal newspaper press as imbeciles or bunglers. A regret may bo spared for them.

Dear " Cms,"-At. the carnival tho other night, an elderly woman was heard to say that "if she had tlw King she would crown him with a brick for causing so much disappointment," when a meek-looking little boy,-sitting clo3o by, jumped to his feet, and iudignautly replied,."My father is a soldier; I'll get- hi 3 gun and shoot von 'for saying that."

Good for the meek-looking little hoy! Millions of people, hundreds of millions, were disappointed of pleasures and excitements by the King's illness • but the proportion of them that grumbled, or expressed any oilier feeling than sympathy for the King, was creditably small, "I fancy. The King's, thought, naturally enough, was, 11 Will the people ever forgive me?" He lms always had a name for courtesy and consideration of others; it is not- difficult lo imagine his.distress in the thought of the trouble he was giving, and of the; world-wide disappointment ho was causing. One of his predecessors—albeit, he is usually reckoned a had lot—apologised to his attendants for the unconscionable time, lie took in dying. An this was the King who never said a foolish thing and never did a wfee one, there may have been more wit in his apology than posterity has seen in it. He may have intended a sly hit at his own worthlessnoss and a suggestion that with advantage- to all concerned he might have died earlier. But it is a far cn - from Charier? II to Edward VII. In respect of the ill-timed sickness that spoiled our Coronation junketing there is no need for apologies on . either. side. We accept the disappointment. «und onr only remark thereon is. Long live the King !' Cms.