PASSING NOTES.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 15826, 26 July 1913, Page 6

PASSING NOTES.

In face of the Balkan scandal, tragedy, and farce, the Powers, as they style themselves, make a sorry show as the Imbecilities.' There are six of them, in two groups

—Great Britain, France, Russia, the Triple Entente: Germany, Austria, Italy, the Triple Alliance; eminently respectable, each one, taken separately, but acting collectively—good lack! Barring perhaps Britain and France, there are no two of them that could trust each other; every single one of them raiiges guns against its neighbour, and counts its dearest friend a potential enemy. Small wonder that their attempts to impose order upon lesser States, the European small-fry, are resolved into bluff and bounce. Si/Edward Grey, with the applause of Europe, brought to sudden end the parleying and protocoling of the Balkan delegates. Let them make peace, said he, or quit London the shortest way. Brave words! Quit London they did'—to go home and begin cutting each other's throats; while the Turk, to the amaze of meii and angels, steals out again and repossesses Adrianople.' The East of Europe

—the other end of the street, as one may say—is in flames,, with accompaniment of murder and massacre on a scale to stagger humanity; yet Mr Asquith announces in so many words that nothing can be done. The Powers are the Powerless. There are signs that Russia will attempt something, playing a. lone hand. Heaven send that she be allowed!

Vaticinating last week on the Grey election,'a "politician of the old school" augured for Mr Michel "not merely a win, but a triumph." Pleasant dreaming, and I approved his optimism; it didn't need saying, however, that from a West Coast electorate nothing good was really to be expected. Politically, Mr Seddon's native heath, the West Coast has been for many a year a Seddon preserve, sown with man-traps and spriiig-guiiß for discomfiture of the trespasser. In Wellington, to celebrate the foreseen event of Thursday, had been spread a Seddon supper, at which might forgather surviving Seddonites, and exhort each the other to "keep his pecker up." Which duly befell, as we know. Then the West Coast has a big colliery vote, solid, savage, sworn .to the Red Feds., whese official organ, I note, heads an account of Ripa Island with the word

"HELL" in half-inch letters, and catalogues as "MASSETS VICTIMS" the shy and shrinking " heroes" detained there by magistrate's order under a law passed by Sir Joseph Ward. The Seddon interest, and the Red Fed. interest make

up the environment—the natural amenities of the Coast, so to speak. Add to this

the attitude of Mr Hannan, vicious in defeat, discarding politics for private vengeance—"Since 1 can't win, you "You kept me out, I'll keep you out." And so we reach the edifying .result—Mr Ilamian and his following in sheer spite, the . Opposition and the Opposition press for mere party cussedness, hoisting. into Parliament a Bed Fed. or Revolutionary Syndicalist, who hates them all alike. This is the natural history of the Grey election.

A correspondent of the Daily Times who sets forth the purifying influences of smallpox and how much smallpox is preferable to vaccination, appears this week to have been at a great feast of languages and stolen the scraps, as we read in Bacon-Shakespeare. Using some of these scraps to explain his theory, though I don't in the least suggest that

I understand it, I should put it approximately thus: Suppose an aggravation of molecules, including toxins, toxoids, toxophones, and antitoxins, with . perhaps a few cytotoxins and anticytotoxins; it is obvious that for the production of toxopherous, together with haptopherous and other addiments of the zymotic group, there must be the specific action of hemolysin, if not of bacteriolysis although already may be suspected the presence of alexin* with possible cytaces of agglutin and precipitin. But at this juncture, by the introduction of a receptor, assisted by an amboceptor, the invading cells, sidetracked and immunised, will yield not only complements, but anticomplements and even complementoia.—Q.E.D. and Quantum suff. What this statement lacks in lucidity it makes _up in learning. Anyhow, as an exposition of smallpox from the ' inside, .otherwise Satan's invisible world displayed, it is the best I can do ;— its object to show that smallpox it is, not vaccination,' that comes as a boon and a blessing to men. All the same I am going to get vaccinated.

To the Labour agitator at £12 a week (see Grey election intelligence) the Socialist lubberland can seem desirable only because unattainable. The same explanation explains Mr George Bernard Shaw and the Countess of Warwick, eminent Socialists both and each a bit of a crank, An _income of thousands a year is a. reality, rank and title are realities; the Socialist lubberland is a thing of dreams. In the time of our grandfathers (no further back)' plutocrat and aristocrat amused themselves bv breaming revolution, and unhappily the dream canie true. It was in France; but France even in the time of our grandfathers was a civilised country, with churches and theatres, aii army and police, all the customary appliances of law and established order. Yet the things 'that happened there! The lubberland of Jean, Jacques Rousseau came into actual existence, its password "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity' 1 ; its visible sign and portent the guillotine. Many of the French nobility assisted at its birth, along-with a host of middle-class folk, professional men, lawyers, journalists, authors, dramatists; and most of them may be said to have been in at the death, for the guillotine gat them nearly -all. To no_ profit did Philip, Duke of Orleans, a prince of the blood, disrate himself into Citizen Philip and "Philippe Egalite," That didn't save him. Equality Philip went the way of the rest. We may yet see the tumbrils going down Piccadilly, says a recent novelist. If Socialism comes in, ves. ' And adorning one of them Mr George Bernard Shaw.

Once upon a time there was a king who took up with Socialism, says one of my correspondents, referring me to the volume on Persia in " The Story of the Nations ' series: A Magian high priest had proclaimed himself a reformer. •

The essential point of his doctrine was the cqualitv of all men, including the king and the nobles. As a logical deduction from this principle, ho asserted that none had a right to possess mor" than others, and hence a community of all property was essential. Women were to be, in his system, wives of all, and the social view, which necessarily result from the 'existence of marriage laws, were abolished by the very . fact of the abolition of marriage which he proposed. To these remarkable views he added abstinence from animal food, with the exception of milk and eggs, and great simplicity of drew. Nothing new so far. Precisely the same combination — Socialism, Vegetarianism, and the alwlition of marriage—has been made familiar to us by-G. B. S. But in the Persian story tho king himself becomes an adherent. A Persian king would naturally bo bored to extinctionfatalist and pessimist, in the mood of Omar Khayyam:

'Tis all a chequer-board of nights and Where destiny with men for pieces plays: Hither' and thither moves, and mates, and slays, . And ojio by one back in the closet lays. It would be for disthraction, as an Irishman says, that the king became, a Socialist. For a time. Purely as a point of principle the head reformer demanded

■i wife from the Itoyal harem. This was just the lcotle too much. Brought tonether under pretext of a general assembly, the prophet and his disciples were surrounded by troops and put to the sword. From that day to this Socialism in Persia has been a lost cause. The precedent cannot vory well be followed in the West; nor is there need. Left to themselves, revolutionaries invariably devour each other Dear "Civfe," —Could you explnjn why ex-Coiiftable Smytli wore a £5 10s suit of clothes to whitewash; a bakehouse? When I do whitewashing I use a suit' of overalls, sale price 7s. Again, talking of £5 10s suits, could yon also Atßlain, how docs it take £5 10s to got

a 6uit? It lakes the farmer 12 months to grow the wool for which ho receives seven to eight shillings per suit length. How is the other £5 2s made up?— Back-block Farmer.

In his mental, habile the settler of the lonely back-blocks has much in common with the soliloquising sentry in Gilbert and Sullivan's opera:

When all night long a chap remains On sentry-go, to chase monotony He exercises of his brains,

That is, assuming that he's got any Tho' never nurtured in the lap

Of luxury, yet I a<lmon:6h you, I am an intellectual chap, And . think of things that would astonish j'ou.

Such things, for example, as Pleeceman X's suit of bine, why it costs more than it ought to cost, and why be doesn't take better care of it. Transferred, to New Zealand and Constable Smyth, these conundrums are good for chasing monotony in the back-blocks, but admit of no exact answer. Perhaps it would be for moral effect that the constable wore his uniform when whitewashing a bakehouse, and on the principle dinued into boys at sea,- " Obey orders if you break owners." As for the huge discrepancy in price between raw material and finished product, that is a problem with wide ramifications. How much, or rather how little, of what I pay in town for mutton, and bacon, and cheeso, and butter, reaches the pocket of the farmer? The cost of living is a subject on which even the wisdom of Parliament is foolishness, as may be seen in this week's reports.

Dear "Civis,"—Tho choirmaster of our little chapel choir, a man of culture and much musical knowledge, invites us to sing:—

"Will pave such as bo of an 'umblo spirit."

Recognised as the last word on questions of the kind, it is your duty to extinguish him or "squelch" those of us who wish to mutiny against 6uch a perpetration.-I am, etc., CaOTCHCT. The h in "humblo" is sounded. Dickens and Uriah Heep between them should have settled that. ."My mother is_a very 'umble person. My father's calling was 'nmble. We live in a n'umble abode, <\[asf>eT Copperfield, but have much to be thankful for." Even when "an" precedes, as in seventeenth and eighteenth century English it may, the li in " humble " is still sounded. So also in other aspirated words; "But Solomon built him an house." You don't say "Solomon built him a nouse." Let it be however, that although speaking from the laurel and tripod of Apollo I have-no vocation either to "extinguish" any constituted authority, or fo "squelch" mutineers. Least of all would I meddle in a church choir, Mr Spurgeon, expounding the words " whero Satan's seat is," is said to have remarked that "in modern congregations Satan's seat is usually in the choir." And Mr Spurgeon had a wide experience. Civis.