PASSING NOTES.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 14857, 11 June 1910, Page 4

PASSING NOTES.

Some humiliating discoveries are reportod from Germany. It haa been discovered that the German -working-man is better off in all the commodities of life than the British working-man,—is better housed and better fed, better clothed and bettor shod, better supplied with tobacco arid beer; is cleaner, . healthier, wliolesomer; has a handsomer wife and lustier children. How are these distressing facts made out, and by whom ? They are made out virtually, though not intentionally, by Mr Lloyd George. Sonic months ago Mr Lloyd George was holding up to derision the German working-man as a miserablo product of black bread and horse-meat sausage, To the same case and state would the British working-man be brought, he said, if British Free-trade were exchanged for German High-tariff. 1 Whereupon the Tariff Reform League organised and despatched to Germany a deputation of British working-men,, who should see for themselves. Their report, summarised above, may remind Mr Lloyd George that curses como home to roost.

The details are not pleasant reading. They rebuke rather our national pride. For that samo reason it is a duty to read them. Here is a. glimpse of Essen, centre of vast iron industries and of a railway labyrinth to bo shunned by tourists:

At Essen wo. saw the workmen's homes.- tuid a host of children, whom our photographer snapped. Never have I seen such a well-dressed crowd of

children : in a workmen's district—oertainly none to be found in industrial England to approach it in comfort, 'cleanliness, and apparel.

So also at Dusseldorf, hard by. "The cleanliness of the buildings and streets,is nothing short of marvellous, though Dusseldorf is a, great industrial centre. You might think you were in Buxton, Bournemouth, or Harrogate. ... I watched seven plasterers at work upon the entranco to a, new, theatre, and although the ' boss' was amongst them, every man-Jack was smoking a cigar!—the boss included." The cigar detail fails to' impress me. Wo 'din beat'that in Dew Zealand. On relief works for the "unemployed" you may tee every other man with a cigarette in his month. Says another delegate:— I can safely assert that ft "slum"' canoi'ot be found in the German towns 1 have visited. I have teen unable ■to find a. single dirty, ragged, or underfed man, woman, or child. • ' Tho poorest houses wero scrupulously c'.eau and lioat; the poorest people were warmly clothed and well shod; the poorest cliildien wero well fed and well.' cared for. There is comparative poverty in' Germany, but there is absolutely no destitution. There aro neither beggars nor workhouses. And yet another:— In the course'of our travels we never struck a drunken person, or ft child ■ without a decent pair of boots to its feet. The appearance of the womenfolk was an.eye-opener. They are smarter in appearance and bigger in physique than our townswomen. . . . They are full- • chested, attractivejooking, and seem particularly careful about their hair. We never came across a female with a . toweled head. . . . The lad who ac- ; coinpanied us was 16 years of age, and lie stood oft 7Sin in his shoes, and was well-proportioned.

" Coming back to London, and so on to Manchester,"-lie continues, "we could not help contrasting these .cities with those we had left behind—and we lose tremendously by the comparison. Tako ■Nuremberg, for example, with its general air of luxury and prosperitythere may be such' places in England, but I, have never seen or heard of them."

To marshal theso- testimonies in proof of the blessedness that goes with, fiscal Protection—which is what the Tariff Reformers want with them—l'look upon as absurd. . Do not hunger and rags coexist with fiscal Protection in America? Aro there any slums that are slummier than, the shuns of New York? What the German facts prove is the. blessedness that goes with universal military training. The young German learns to subordinate himself ;to authority for the general good, which is the exact opposite of the LabourSocialist ideal,. Drill arid discipline. set him up physically; ho is. taught'cleanliness, order, co-operation,' and a- wholesome way of life. Next to religion,"the army is in every country that is blessed with universal service the. one great moralising- and purifying influence," says a modern authority, with whom. I agree. Unhappily there are English -religious circles in which to "go for a soldier" sounds the same as to go to the Devil. Tiiey are circles dominated by the hotgospeller and the revivalist. For want of vniversal military service the British name and nation, not to say the British Empire, is in jeopardy every hour. There are two reasons foi' which universal military ser-vice-cannot be had:—First,'pictistic narrowness ; next, the spirit (secular and antireligious) o£ "go as you please" which consents to organise only for selfish ends and for the brutalities of a football match.

Says Mr Alex 1 . S. Adams, writing to the Daily Times;— :'.

" -Beer and Bible" has far too long been the reproach of a section of tho Christian Church. •

I agree. There is something ill the blessedness of being reproached for righteousness' sake; but Mr .Adams is rightj —tho reproaching has' been kept up " far too long." Which section of the Church ,'he has move .particularly in his mind's' -eye wo are lett to guess; there must be several sections caring enough for the Bibie to associate it with beer, lor unquestionably there is a great deal of beer in the Bible. Or of wine,. which is the same, thing. The same thing,- and a little more so. All the beeriness of beer is in wine, together with something beyond. In making' glad the ■ heart of man a pint of wine will go further than a pint of beer. We know of one case in which six water-pots of stone, containing two or three in'km> apiece iwliatever a rirkin may be), became wine-pots, and were filled to the brim. How many hogsheads of beer would be the equivalent of thosft twelve or eighteen firkins of wino we need not compute;but it was a large supply for a- private house. And it is ail in the Bibie. Whoever takes the Biblo must take the beer with it. People who want a Bible without beer have to make a Bible of their. own- (by <Act of Parliament !) Tho true and original Biblo is ''all for liberty,and .self-restraint, liberty and moral control. ' "Be not drunk with mne, wherein is excess," says the Bible; and whoever wrote that precept must have been «a moderate <1t inker. It-is a» though he wrote, "Be not gorged with beef and pudding, 'wherein is excess " ; and wo should oe sure that he himself wa6 a moderate cater. In-the ohe/caso he couldn't mean—Don't drink at all; in the other case he couldn't mean—Don't eat at all; sanity forbids. For which reason the good old Bible itself is ruled oosoiete, and those who stand by it have to bear reproach, as Mr Adams justly remarks. But it will be a,weary, dreary.world, as well as a- totally un-Biblical world, when for liberty we have substituted legal compulsion, and for moral control the policeman.

King George the Fifth is, as we know, a sailor King. Ho was brought up to the sea. It is typical of the typical sailor that there is no nonsense about him." Much intercourse with winds and watei-3 under starless nights in 1 desolate places of the earth brings him to care chiefly for the realities of things, indifferent to forms and shows. King George will be every whit as kingly, I fancy, as his highstepping cousin the Kaiser, whose dominions might be stowed away in 0110 of the British colonies with room to spare. But he won't be so easily touched by lefe majesty. Nobody will be sent to prison for failing to click his heels and

"make front" with due promptitude as his Majesty passes by. Stories of King George's simple-mannered easiness in the earlier time are many. • Lord Charles Roresford, unable to accept a dinner invitation, or unwilling, begged off by telegram : " Sorry can't come. Lie follows by post." This curt and facetious apology ivas sent to Georgo, Prince of Wales, the giver of the'feast. Lord Charles answered saiW to a. sailor, as a senior to a

junior. And it was all right— As with George, so with hie forbears.—a liking for straight and simple speech, especially if edged with humour, runs in the family. Mark Twain stories are in vogue just now ; I could fill a column with them. Here is one. When on a visit to England, 30 years ago, he was subjected to a tax, 3nd wrote to Queen Victoria a " friendly letter of protest." He wroie: "I don't know you, but I've met your son. He was at the head of a procession ir the Strand, and I was on a bus." The Queen, as her Letters and Diary show, knew a joke when she heard it, and there is evidence that this joke went the palace rounds. For here is the humorous sequel: — Some years afterwards Clemens met the King, then Prince of Wales, at Honiburg. They had a. long talk and walk together. When bidding him good-bye, the Princo said "I am glad to have met you again." The remark rather upset Clemens, who feared that all the while tho Prince must liavo taken him for some ono ols&. He politely communicated this suspicion, only to be told, "Why, Mr Clemens, don't you remember that you onoe said you met mo in tho Strand on an occasion when you wero riding on the top of a bus?" WHIPPINO THE CAT. "They have been whipping tha cat ever sinco I got into office."—Speech by the Hon. T. Mackenzie. Dear " Cms,"—ln le your question about tho saying "whipping the cat," liray I offer the following us ft possible solution? A few years ago, when flogging, in the navy was a. matter of almost daily occurrence in some ships, it was a common practice to give men whose names figured-often on the defaulter's book tho fusk -of whipping ft cat, bs a warning' that they wero drifting towards the gratings at the gangway (hatchway gratings to which men to be flogged were mado fast). The cat was'an instrument of torture, with a handle, .to which'was attached nine pieces of cord, each of which, for' the prevention of fraying, was bound tightly at the end with twine; this was called a whipping: all running gear is either treated in this way or by a process known as pointing. If a man was taken before tho commanding officer a few times, that official would'sometimes give the warning, "If you aro not careful you will soon be whipping the cat." I believe • the saying is usually. •: applied to persons who are supposed to be lamonting a fault. I offer the suggestion for what it is worth. E. N. So an offender set to "whip the cat" would be perfecting the instrument for his own punishment. The explanation is at least well invented,' and about as good as any found in the books. One and all they are explanations that explain nothing. As for definitions, here is Murray, the latest, biggest, most authoritative of English dictionaries:—"To whip the cat, (1) to vomit, especially after drink l ; (2) to live with extreme parsimony." In which of these two senses the Hon, T. Mackenzie's friends or colleagues' whipped the cat I am unwilling even to conjecture. Then how are we to lit in a sentence such as this from Pepys's Diary, 1665: " The King shall not be able to .whip a cat but I will be at the taylo of it"? Clear it is that nobody knows what. " whipping the cat" means, or 'how. the locution arose. Which is an excellent reason for avoiding it. ' 9 Cms.