PASSING NOTES.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 15350, 13 January 1912, Page 6

PASSING NOTES.

On our illations with Hermany, that most uncomfortable subject, everything liail been said that could be said; nothing remained hut a certain fearful looking for of judgment; when, tension and passion having reached the bursting point, the. guns would go off of themselves. That was how it looked a week ago. Wearied out, wo wanted to hear no more, and in desperat'on were for letting tilings take their course, lint (lie Hermans have contrived to say something now, something undeniably interesting. They say that on three specified dates—.lnly 24. August 19, Scplciiihc-r 18—thu British "intended tt> attack tin l Herman fleet without declaring war." "Intended," observe; then what put them off? Was it that they had lost touch, so that when for thu purposes of destruction they wanted the German fleet (hey were unable to find it? A yarn to this effect put forth by Hie scaremonger on the British side, Captain Faber, obtained no credit. Nobody believed that on one night unspecified the Admiralty couldn't sleep because it didn't know precisely where the Herman fleet was. Hut tli'e Herman belief that thrice we have been on the point of attacking them (which is pure fable) seems definite. I gather the welcome inference that the (I'Tinans are demoralised by fright. Their nerves have gone to fiddle-strings. It is inconceivable that they should want war —the dreaded war on two frontiers— when one member of the Triple. Alliance —Italy, to wit—is out of it, having urgent private business elsewhere. Equally inconceivable is their consent to the absolute blocking of their oversea cnnimereo. The exits arc only two—the Strait of Dover and round the Shetlawk No | Herman ship could reach the ocean and the outer world unless the British fleets holding these strategic points were first destroyed. The Hermans dread the threatened war, and we dread it just as much. Barring acrident—the dropping' of a spark where much loose powder is I lying about—it follows that there will I he no war. I Dear "Cms."—May I ask you whether ! the word " egoist" or " egotist" is Iho ' more correct. If you are not certain, i you might consult Sir Joseph Ward. I In an address to tho electors of New j Zealand, published Ibis week, one may ! eunit the pronoun "1" 13 times, "my" three times, "me'' once, "myself" ! fincc; so that ill various guises Iho I "ego" appears 18 limes. And this in ; 11 sentences! The second personal pronoun, "you," which should pre- | ilomiuaii', one would think, in a ''.'lter adilreveil lo the electors, is conspicuous < by its entire absence, either in the non.innlive, genitive, chlivc, accusative, vocative, or ablative case. How does that strike you for "egoism"? or is it "egotis'ii "'.' Kindly say.—Old I'r.osrKCtoil The " intrusive t" by which " egotism " differs from "egoism'' has come in—say ! the authorities—nobody knows how. lint : it serves to give n consonantal backbone ] to the word, and for myself 1 prefer the i form "egotism."' Since blth forms pcri sist, an attempt is made to differentiate ; them in meaning. "Egoism" has first an out-of-the-way use as the name of a system of ethics; putting this aside, we have '' egoism, systematic selfishness, eelfiinminnateilncss; egotism, ti.o frequent mc of '1' and ' me,' practice of talking about oneself, self-conceit." This is the Oxford Dictionary's defining and refining. Under which word shall we place the l'rimo .Minister's belated manifesto? Discrimination is difficult;—bolter give it to both. Mr Keir llardie may never have heard of Thersites; it is not necessary to suppose that he has. His likeness to that scurrilous malcontent is not imitation but inborn genius and original sin. Tints qualified, he might have eat for the portrait in Pope's Homer : Thersilos 'twas that clamoured in Iho throng, Loquacious, loud, and turbulent of tongue: Awed bv no shame, by no respeel controlled, In scandal busy, in reproaches bold: But chief hu gloried with licentious style To lash the great, and monnrclis to revile. Long had ho lived the scorn of every Groek, Vcxf, when he spoke, yet still they heard him speak. Tlill Odysseus t<wk n hand; when, 10, a swift and summary change. Here wo may leave the balanced couplets of Pope for tho rugged lines in which Cliapntan-ns Keats says of him—"speaks out lotid and clear" : L'cnw, vain fool, to vent thy railing vein On kings thus, though it serve theo well; nor think thou canst restrain. With that thy railing faculty, tlieir wills in least degree. . . . This said, his insolence Ileeolllrd with his sceptre; struck his back ami shoulders so That bloody wales rose. He shrunk round, and from his eyes did (low Moist tears, and, looking filthily, ho sate, feared, smarted, dried His blubbered cheeks, , , . This wimple elementary jnstico is no longer possible. Horsewhipped, or even punched by law, the British Thcrsitcfl would straightway pose as a martyr, and begin lo thrive upon it. The nicst wo ran do with him, and the best, is to put him in the pillory of the press and lift him high-an object of scorn to Iho universal British world.

The (iaekwar of liaroda, who lias endeared himself t» .Mr Keir Hardie by insulting the King (as was supposed), ap|>ears to have ixplaincd "himself away, He intended no insult to the King. Any oddity nf behaviour when doing homage forhisGaekwarship was due to "nervous, ness." Likely enough. The Gackwar is an old man, as age is reckoned in India. Instead of hacking out from the presence according to rule, he turned round and walked away. And if suddenly he had squatted on his haunches, the King would merely have smiled. Breaches of decorum as ludicrous are not unknown at Court functions in London. And at a vice-regal levee in Dnncdin 1 have seen a respected citizen -when his name was read out walk hurriedly past tho dais, staring in front of him, and disregarding the Governor's outstretched hand. {Such tilings will happen. I/ess than other Indian princes can the (iaekwar of liaroda he supposed to have grievances against, the British Government, for it was the British Government that put him on the throne. A series of palace poisonings, including jn their scope the liritish Resident, made it nnossaiy to depose the previous (laekwar; whereupon the present man, heing a relative, was fished out of obscurity and set up in his place. That was in 1875, and ever since the props of his throne have been British authority and subsidiary British trnoi>s. This is what Mr Keir ilardie calls "seeing his countrv in the dust."

Renegade dcinaijouues of the Keir Hardie type, what really would tlicv he at? They would break with the thousand years of ISritish history, dismiss the monarchy, the army, the navy, and set up a Socialist Fools' Paradise to be promptly taken charge, of by flennany. Or if we may suppose Cerniaiiy unable, because herself in Hie throes of a Keir Hardie regeneration, they would develop in their own despite a Cromwell to whip them hack into reason and elementary common sense, flive it time, the wheel'inevitably come* full circle, always has done, always will do. 11l Kitypt. the Keir Hardie scheme of lliinys would put back the fellaheen into the state of privilege they enjoyed before the British occupation, "if the liabil : ty to be indiscriminately robbed and flowed can he called a privilene," says Lord Cromer:—"the Egyptian fellah was Hayed alive by trreedy Pashas and tyrannical Sheikhs." their chief instrument of '„'iivvrn:nent the courhash, a strip of hippopotami]* hide taperiiii; at the end. India, now trodden under "the foot of the oppressor"—Hint: Oeorqe V, crowned Kmperor at Delhi—Mr Keir Hardie would liberate and raise from the dust by restoring' to power the Tipjioo Saihs and Hyder Alis. who. in days cone by. spread everywhere devastation and terror. It is evidence of a marvellous staSility in British affairs that we at\; aMe to let this maiujnaiil crank go at large and talk as tiO eWtcs.

Dear "Cms,"—The enclosed clipping is from the Banner of Israel. Would you please read il; then, 1 think, jou will not write in such u sneering, sceptical manner ;is you did a few weeks ago. Surely Archdeacon Willicrforco 'tnil Dean Stanley are no fools, and know whai they uru talking about. Neither of them is either "silly " or "' farcical," nor thinks the British-Israel theory " abject nonsen6e."-A CONSTANT UtADtlt OK THE TIMKS AND PASSIM! NOTKS. Archdeacon Wilherforcc, of Westminster, Chaplain of the House of Commons, retvntly told a l/mdoii congregation that the s'tono forming the scat of Kdward tho l-'irst's coronation chair iu Westminster Abbey was Iho slono on which Jacob, when running away from home and camping in tho desert, laid his scapegrace head, thereby consecrating it to be (inirabile dictii) the Foundation Stone- of tho British Kmpire. Sought out and recovered in later years by Jacob and his sons, this stone accompanied the family to Egypt; a century "r two later, refusing' to bo left liehind in tho house of bondage, it "followed" the escaping Israelites during tlieir wilderness wandering* toward Canaan, and was the )■ rock " that Moses struck for water. 'The Archdeacon is able to discern "a big cleft in tho back," from which the water gushed out. When in later centuries the dews were carried captive to Babylon, which is due east, ihoy.were obliged, it would seem, to leave behind this inconvenient articlo of luggage; hut the Pro. phet Jeremiah, setting out duo west, conveyed the stone, and with it the "Crown Princess of Judah," lo Ireland, where the " l/fist Ten Tribes" had already arrived, and there he married the lady lo "the King of the Irib? uf Dan in the north of Ireland";—|" Dan" h very much an Irish name to the present day). From Ireland the stone flitted to Scotland, and from Scotland was smuggled smith to Westminster by Kdward I, whom, on this and other grounds, tho Scottish people justly execrate. At Westminster Jacob's stone is the. Coronation "Stone—the veritable hub of tho British Kmpire. The other week, noting this romance, 1 hinted mildly that archdeacons had no patent of infallibility, and further said:— Two nrchrcologists to whom a, London editor submitted thu story, dismissed il lightly. "Farcical " was Iho comment of the one, " Silly " that of tho other. And I may add on my own that Professor E. B. Tylor, nil Oxford authority, summing up Anglo-Israclism from tho point of view of ethnology, anthropology, chronology, and other 'ologios concerned, damns it neatly as "abject nonsense."

Nevertheless my correspondent above, l:c----ing '' a constant reader of Passing Notes," and writing a feminine hand, must in courtesy he allowed Iter say. As a mark of sympathy 1 have corrected her spelling— (idle spells "sneering" with an a, and "eraptical" without a t). And in exchange for "The Banner of Israel," I present her with something hotter worth reading—an article on " Anglo-]sraelism " in Chambers's Cyclopicdia. .She will find a copy in the Public Library. 'Under the heading "Hlue Hlood at St. Clair," n correspondent sends mo an impossible half-colmnn on what bo calls tho "hieh jinks," at that popular result last Sunday morning; in oilier words, on the surf-bathing practised there. The writer grows funny about "shirt tails flapping in the wind"; as for the "blue blood of his title, it is mi allusion to varicose veins exhibited bv some of tho bathers when displaying tiicir bare legs. Willing though I be to foster native humour, I have no uso for it in this form. As it chances, another correspondent has something to say about St. Clair and surfbathing. Dear " Ctvis,"—May 1 be permitted a nurd about tho present surf-lia'tlring craw? My experience of sea-bathing is lengthy and varied. I hnvo bathed from a skip's side- in tho open ocean and on many Ixiaolies. Twice I havefallen overboard from boats and onco was 'knocked off n wharf. Also I can boast of an interesting interview with a shark, and n narrow escape, It was in Australian waters, at an unfonced bathing houso with n batten stage running out at right angles, and I was , bathing nlono in tbo early morning. I had just como out, and was flinging tho towel over my wet shoulders, when, 10, a. Marino torpedo flashed nlonjc, a tag, big shark. To and fro ho turned about, nosing liko a dog. It was high fide, just lapping tho battens. I ran out to look, when llio bruto, swimming undorneath, slapped the wator over mo with his tail. Fact. I assure \ou. AYnll. knowing something about it, I should Ih> sliy of siirf-bathinc at St. Clair. Tho protected bath at tho soulil; orul is of course right enough; though I believe a. shark did onco got, over the wall and had to bo extirpated within tho enclosure. Tint along tho open beach thoro is often a dangerous undertow; I hoar mention also of quicksands. And not so very long ago a man bathing on flho Oamaru beach had his arm taken off by a shark.—Old Hand. I publish this caution for what it may be worth., Certainly there have- been serious accidents, and discretion is the better part. In surf-bathing as a recreation for young and old, tho wise- and the unwise, and {or both sexes, thcro is needed what yon need in taking a wife and in eating a sausage—perfect confidence. It shouldn't be practised where the conditions scorn to postulato an understanding with tho coroner. CIVIS.