PASSING NOTES.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 13468, 16 December 1905, Page 4

PASSING NOTES.

" Tommy Cornstalk," otherwise- Mr J. H. M. Abbott, son of a former Speaker of the Now South Wales Legislative Assembly, has been explaining to readers of the London (Spectator in a series of Articles How it Strikes an Australian. That Mr Abbott is an Australian may not be denied, but I decline to think him a representative Australian. Things British appear to strike Mr Abbott as they might strike a foreigner. Now the Australian is not a foreigner; if ho pretends to be a foreigner, his pretending takes in nobody. Thus, landing at Plymouth, Mr Abbott bus a momentary impression tlmt all the trees have been "ring-barked."

There wero a few clumps of jlark pine and Hrn hero and there along the ridges, but. for tlie rot the " ring-b-.irker's " axn had been busy cutting tho circular girdlo in the bark which slarves trees 16 death, and which ia everywhere- cut on "improved" lanila to-day in Australia..

With eyes to this degree unintelligent the Australian "discovers" the British Isles, their inhabitants, their institutions ;—he is a foreigner, and even a dull-witted foreigner, unaware of deciduous trees, puzzled by their winter bareness, —thinks they must have been "ring-barked." All of which I find "too thin"; particularly in a "Tommy Cornstalk' , who went as an Australian Contingeiiter to the Boer War, and. even wrote a book about it. 13ut this pretending runs all through. Thus, again, "it is an amazing thing," to the Australian in England, "this attitude of the English to the head of the State." For " in Australia we know no Kings," barring of course "King Billy of the Paroo, King Paddy of the Bogan, or King Micky of the Munumbidgcc" and such like, — vagrant black-fellows haunting "the precincts of mean and sordid back-block taverns." These "kings" we know;—also the Governor-General because he entertains and presides.

But thorp is, let us say, the Minister for I-aiuls. Now ho ;s really si deity whom wo may .offend or pliwiito. He docs things that immediately affect its. Hn is .actual mid visible, and a power in the Stale lie is a force, an entity, a. presence. We know him and his work, good or evil. If Ms portfolio were abolished and the- lands left !o look after themselves, it would concern 119 very much. On the other hand, if the. pcoplo of England altered their system of government, abolished the monarchy, elected ,1 President, and did away wifli the peerage, "it would hardly make any difference to tho Outer Empire." For,'"there would still be Downing Street," and to the Outer Empire, a King more or,less is ns the small dust of the balance.

But consider what n, difference it would make in England and in Eii-ropo. Think iiow many people wMvld t«ko tho change- to heart, how many would, oppose, it with tho 'lnst drop of {heir blood, how the raripris English temper would ruffle- itself into violence over tho mutter. Hero lies the difference.

The drift of which, and of more in tho same vein, is that the British and the Australians are not one people, but two. "Tommy Cornstalk" in England is a foreigner, and the English are foreigners to him. "The country is strange, tho people are strange, the ways of life are' inexplicable and mysterious. We cannot think in the same way as the English, nor can they understand our mental processes." With all deference I pronounce this kind of talk sheer humbug. It is not the Australian attitude of mind,—not in the least. It is merely a pose.

In fact it is the"Bulletin" pose. The Bulletin is a clever paper —caricatures and letter-press alike,—clever with the cleverness of the devil. That is why, in Australia, you find it everywhere. ' Who has so universal right-of-way ae the Prince of the Tower of the Air? But though allpervasive, his Sable Highness is not necessarily representative of the populations he pervades. So with tho " Bulletin." The other week its chief editorial was headed " Wanted—a Gun." It seems that the Imperial Government, mindful of treaty obligations in the Fur East and elsewhere, bad hazarded a remonstrance against certain new enactments in the. "White Australia" interest. Whereupon the " Bulletin" blazes forth " Wanted—a Gun." To level at the Imperial Government's head, forsooth! How make our'"White Australia" doctrine respected without an army and navy to back it? Wanted—a Gun! Mere posing, all this, and taken as such. Taking it as anything eke we should eadly miss the "Bulletin" cleverness ;—there would be nothing of the wile of the serpent about , a serious proposal to go gunning against the rest of mankind in the interest of ..a "White Australia." The Commonwealth holds no fool so foolish as that. But "Wanted—a-Gun" flatters the folly of a handful of Socialists who imagine that it will be permitted them to riiiffence a fourth of'the habitable British Empire, and then, after they have confiscated the capitalist and collared the birthrale, to batten and fatten in such a paradise as Horace may have- dreamed when he wrote himself '"a hog of Epicurn's sty." It is a- pity that a paper so clever as the ''Bulletin" should seem to flatter this folly; a. pity, too, that it should teach the young Australian to talk as though, being an Australian, he were-a. stranger and a foreigner to all other British citizenship. Let us say in charity that any such attitude is merely a. pose.

Comments by tho English press on tho triumph of Soddonism are being ■ telegraphed—comments complimentary for the 'most part, so little are we understood! Amongst other London newspapers the Daily 'Chronicle, putting in its word of wisdom, "states that Mr Seddoh- will doubtless have a. new experiment to ehow us." Not supposes, not suggests, but "states,"—as though the fact were obvious and merely needed reporting. And that no doubt' is the just view. Casting about for his new experiment': Mr Seddon may possibly ask himself: Why. not a Whife New Zealand? And if he should ask me, I could only echo,' Why not?' The argument that is good on oue side of, the/fnsman Sea must be good on the-other/' , ,lf the whiteness of the white rhun is iiot eafe from eoiling in the Commonwealth, much less is it safo in New Zenland, for in New Zealand we have- the. Maori. ~: Then consider the case from the point of view of economics. In tho North Island the lordly and leisurely Maori, acred up to the e.yes, strides about his lands' by/bo better right •' than that of inheritance' from a cannibal ancestor who set up a title by dining on his predecessor. Everywhere along the coast you may see the Maori catching our fish; his kumara competes with our potato in open market.; his young men, lorig-limbed and lusty, take the ; bread out of our young men's mouths in shearing sheds and harvest fields;—yes, the ca6e is -very bad and very sad. It is true that the Maori was hero before we were,—but what matter? Ho is in a minority,—he hasn't got the votes. Unless we hit upon some cheap and.simple plan of painless extinction, I foresee that it will become necessary, in the progress of democracy, to tear yip the Maori by the roots and deport him to the i Cliathams or the.Kermadecs. He who lives will see, and to see this it may not be necessary to live.lone. As the London newspaper'divines, Mr

Seddon is already on the track of something new. Experiment is required of him, and needs must.

The Premier and party have landed in Wellington from the Government steamer Tutanekai after a yachting cruise in Marlborough Sounds, says a Wellington telegram. Ministerial travelling expenses, 30s a day, duly charged up? If not, why not? Amongst the Ministers awaiting the Premier in Wellington were Lands, Customs, Justice, otbenvise the Honourablos Duncan, Mills, M'Gowan. Since the election these gentlemen have been privileged to read their own obituary notices, as it, were; within their hearing has been discussed the devolution of their political goods and'chattels; who should have what, and which should go' to whom. An eerie experience! They may" have exchanged confidences, forecasting' drearily this first Ministerial gathering in Wellington:

AVheii shall wo three mcot again, In thunder, lightning, or in rain?

My notion, perhaps not worth much, is that at the Cabinet meeting of this week there were no atmospheric phenomena worth speaking of. In urging reconstruction of the Ministry Mr Seddon's volunteer advisers are urging a choice between Seylla. and Charybdis,—inviting him to say',«n which rock be would prefer to be wrecked. In my belief lie will prefer to be wrecked on neither and will contrive to avoid both. Willingness to abandon faithful colleagues has never been a vice of Mr Sfddon's; and if it bo alleged, as it may, that this particular trio of colleagues are not strong, the notoriously obvious answer is that Mr Seddon prefers his colleagues weak. Anyhow I don't see how a colleague, strong or weak, can be got rid of against his will. Remembering, moreover, that weakness is not uncommonly associated with a. mulish obstinacy, it seems to me that the weak colleague is master of the situation.

The French newspaper " Eifjaro"—lying on the table of the Dunedin Athenreuni, — frivolous " Figaro," discourses solemnly of All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day on the dates proper to those ecclesiastical festivals, November Ist and 2nd. It is a curious trait, marking vividly the difference between French journalism and English. Apropos hi particular of All Souls' Day, which in Prance is the Day of the Dead, "Figaro" had the happy inspiration of asking ii few leading novelists, dramatists, journalists, what they thought about death and how they liked the prospect of dying. To interrogate the already dead would

require a spirit-rapper (" un spirite intervieWerait les trespasses/'—a sentence I; ooinmeml to the. Ihinedin French Club); ! but it was quito easy to question the living. Quite easy also to get answers,— some of them rather surprising. M. Fran-; cois de Croissct, whose vein is light litern-1 ture; was of opinion that as thinking of; death makes us love life all the more wo j can never think of it too much. M. Edmoml Haraucourt, dramatist, thinks of death several times every day; in this way ho is the better able to perceive that he is alive. Madame Georgette Leblami-.Waeter-linck cannot conceive how one can enjoy lifo without having the constant notion of its end. A contrast to these cheerful pessimists is M. Abel Hermant, who thinks of death as little as possible but unhappily is reminded of it by people that have tho indiscretion to die around him. Nevertheless M. Hermant is able to say with one of the characters in Anatole France that ho is "content lo be eternal" and has of this eternity a sentiment very lively, which ho cultivates. As genuine as any in this quaint series of confessions is one which reads more frivolous than any

Wlia-t do I think of death; men chere confrere? That depends on the time of clay. Jules Lemaitre. Psychologically this is no doubt true. Two-o'-clock-m-thc-morning courage is said to be of the rarest; possibly the heart slows down with the small hours; the nerves, if wo are awake, go to pieces. I am with M. Lemaitre in his notion that what we think of dentil depends on the hour, but I agree also with the previous witness that tho less we think of it the better.

Tho Westminster Gazette desires to be informed why "in certain religious communities it is thought to be a particularly pious or impressive thing to bisect the lines of a hymn, and why no one with a sense of hmnour revises the bisections of such hymns." A sense of humour applied to hymns might revise a, good deal more than the farcical bisecting of lines. Think of the pious orgies transacted at the Fountain, otherwise the Cargill Monument, here in Dunedin, and then listen to a staid and responsible congregation singing, stolid of face, "Will you meet 1110 at the Fountain? Yes, I'll meet you at tho Fountain!" You may hear that in steepled kirks, and wonderful it is. But, to come back to the bisecting «f lines, the Eev. Canon Horsley writes to a London paper:

Last Sunday, when addressing men in a AVoslcyar. clrapel, I found myself in the midst of a highly emotional hymn exhorting tho brethren to " Make tho mess—make the mesamake the messuge- clear and plain."

With this example tho Westminster Gazette would connect "tire possibly mythical instances of 'My poor pol—', ' Come down, sal—', 'Oh, take thy pil—', 'Catch tho lie—', and so forth." I can make out these all, except the last: "My poor polluted soul," "Come down salvation," "Oh, take thy pilgrim home"; but " Catch the fie—" leaves me groping. I wait for light. Ctvis.