PASSING NOTES.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 16165, 29 August 1914, Page 4

PASSING NOTES.

The armcliair strategist, busy in most Tiewsiiapers, 'were easily satirised. But there is no motive.. We are all miserably anxious, and can little afford to at each other. Any attempt to read order into chaos, to straighten out the welter of the cables, should be welcome. Strategy apart, the one fact this week that leaps out clear—the chief fact with me —is that British troops have been in the thick of it, and that on the word of Lord Kitchener— a critic who would not flatter Neptune for hiu trident or Jove for his power to thunder—we may b: , proud of them. We never thought otherwise: not on that point wore we anxious, or coukl be. The British, army, officers and men, tempered to war on many a varied field, had nothing to learn from the machine-made Germans. Nor again does the nuestion of filial result greatly tremble us. The temper of the nation is rising; daily grows aud hardens the grim purpose to see this Wring through. With it grows the conviction that our allies and we together are equal to the task. Anxiety is for the hazards of war, the ups and downs, the momentary caprices of inconstant fortune, the sacrifices that await us, the pain and the loss. In all which, not Jess than our troops in the field, will wo show ourselves men. Pessimists avaunt!

One need be no strategist, amateur or professional, to recognise the obvious. It is obvious that for the Germans this war is precisely the " war on two nanks"— east and west—which they have alwaye dreaded, it is obvious that the Russians are in Germany; there is no certainty, so far, that the Germans are in France. On the chances, Berlin looks in more danger than Paris. In 1870' the Germans had only the French in front of them and nobody to trouble their rear. Obviously otherwise is it now. Still on the frontiers after a month of fighting, nothing decided but the crushing of gallant little Belgium; though, in 1870 the first month saw the French Emperor a prisoner of war and virtually decided everything. Obviously the Triple Alliance os a fighting machine is in crazy condition; Austria has Servia gnawing at her vitals; Italy hangs fire. But the' Triple Entente makes recruits; Japan has joined, and also Portugal— anxious to, get into sood company. Other things obvious are that neither the German war fleet nor the German mercantile marine can keep the sea, that the German porte are sealed—Hamburg, third in rank after .London and New York, become a Lethe's wharf on which the idle weed may rot at ease; finally that the German colonies may be had for the taking. This is better than strategy; this is a review of the obvious. " Su.rsum corda!" then, as Matthew Arnold eays, "Lift up your hearts!"

It is a new fact in warfare that from day to day, from hour to hour, the movements of a field army may be directed by a ruling intelligence not in the field at all, clean beyond sight and hearing. Operations along the hundred-mile front of the Allies in Belgium may be tlirected from Paris, may be directed from London. Lord Kitchener at the British War Office is Jupiter Tonans on Olympus—with one or two points of difference. He is better informed, for one thing; for another, his -behests are quicker known and more surelydone. It used to be Mercury, toiling up and down the sky on " oarage of wings," posting with messages from place to place and haply stopping to gossip on the road. Now it is Marconi. It is the wire and the wireless both. The war-god sits serene, cool of head, remote from the tumult and the shouting. At a flash, his word spoken in London is a word spoken in Belgium. Thus may he fight a battle that he does not see—a dozen battles at once. That is how I like to think of it. Field tactics for the officer in the field, strategy for the eye and mind that can survey the whole theatre of war. Not that we need pin our faith on kitchener alone. Along with Kitchener is Lord Boberts, not to mention other chief captains trained in modern war and modern weapons. Matched with peacetrained Germans, onr men will come short in no soldierly quality ; they will not be ■ worse led; nor will they be less intelligently directed. The other way about, I fancy.

The military censor is nowhere a popular person. Aware of that, he keeps himself judiciously out of sight. Doubtless there is a censorship in New Zealand, or we should be telling each other all about our first Expeditionary Force, its destination, its doing, and its faring. And possibly in telling we should be telling also our friends the enemy. The wires are bad, wireless is worse; speak a thing in the eax and it shall be shrieked from the housetops. How much we owe to the censor may be guessed, from an example of what happens where the censor is not. Somewhere on the high seas, jogging discreetly towards a neutral port, is a German ship that ought to be at the Bluff and prize of war—the Wismar, from Hamburg, a big tramp with a big cargo of things "made in Germany," but owned in New Zealand and already in part paid for with New Zealand money. She has not come in to be captured, as her duty was—the reason being that a British ship, the Port Lincoln, meeting her at sea, obligingly communicated the intelligence that Britain and Germany were at war. In vain is the net spread in the sight of any bird! By remote possibility, might not the German ship turn up yet? She might, but she won't. We have no reason to think the German captain a consummate idiot.

At the railway station the other morning, when General Godley and a detachment of the ambulance corps were leaving Dunedin for the front, how and why it came about that no person of civic a-utho-rity appeared to say a parting word and raise the farewell cheer, Mayor Shaddock has explained. Mayor Shacklock himselt was present in spirit; indeed, he was present also in the flesh, but on the skirts of the crowd and unable to push his way to the centre. Then a little more push next time, please, Mr Mayor. If you find it inconvenient to be 3arly on the spot and waiting, I suggest lhat you march in with the band. A mayor conspicuous by his absence, eloquent in words unspoken, is a mayor for times less stirring than these, less prolific in heart-shaking emergencies. Not that I would have had his worship present at ebher the centre or the circumference of the bigger crowd that assembled later in the day to welcome Harry Latider. There is record of a civic reception given to a pa-'r of professional sprinters ; but nowadays we should probably draw the line at a strolling Scotch comedian, however worthy. Yet no person eminent in Church or State could collect a Dunedin mob of such indecent bigness. The Governor would have had fewer to meet him, LoH Kitchener net nx.re Say.--the reporter: -'It is doubtful whether a crowd of s'.ich magnitude had occupied the stiition for ;i long time; they were all on tiptoe; some of them actuaJly saw the hero, and nearly everyone caught a glimpse of his dark brown hat. , ' Alas my country! At such a time as this! There are. excuses, o? course. Harry Lander is Harry Lawlar. Yes; a mime is a mime;—and a fool is a fcol, even though he be a Dunedin citizen

We have more than one good band \r> Dunedin, tot forgetting the drums ana iifes Just now, each and every band is a military band. I'ut of military music inspiriting ?nl good, there is a lack, The other morning our Tahuna Park infantry, 700 strong, swung into town in column of fours, the bund at their head blurting and blaring a " march " of the kind that you might hear for an eternity and forget the next minute. Likewise the drums and fifes, though alw.ays welcome, discourse nuiinlv variations on the theme of twiddle-twiddle-thump, twiddte-twitldle-thump. 0 for a strain of " Oarryowen," or the "Tow-row-row" of "The British Grenadiers !" Since ever sweet the drum shall beat That march unto our oars, Whose martial roll awakes the soul Of the British Grenadiers. Then 'The girl 1 left behind me" is not to be forgotten, surely. I'm lonesome .since I crossed the hill, And o'er the moor and valley, Such horrvy thoughts my heart do fill Since parting witVi my Sallcy, I seek no more the fine or gay, For each does but remind me How sweet the hours did oass away With t&o girl I left behind me.

Gay and bad; with thoughts and memories bitter-sweet, this is tho soldier in wartime marching away. There is another traditional .-erviee song equally pat: When Johnny comes marching- home again, Hurrah ! Hurrah ! We'll all feel tfay, When Johnny comes marching home! With it go tears and laughter; you can march to it, you can dance to it; at any Garrison Hall gathering it is a song and chorus to raise the roof. Let the Dunedin I-•indmasters, to whom we owe much and shall owe yet more, consider thcee things The bagpipes are another affair, and I venture no criticism. Pibroch o' Donal' Dhu, Tullochgorum, Lochaber no more—it is all one to tho Sassenach and equally terrifying to the enemy. The pipes can't go wrong This note is addressed elsewhere. Doar " Civis," —I wish to make, a suggestion in regard to the Expeditionary Force. There are a number of men at Rotoroa who are wasting the best years of their livoe. They aro up there for no very great enmc-^- not being able to satisfy an over-raging thirst. Many good men in Dunedin find it difficult to overcome a similar complaint. Well, I would suggest that those on the island should bo given a chance to join the Expeditionary Force; tho experience they would get and the mode of life might make men of them. There must be a lot of them, apart from their ono failing, who have tho making of good men. I would go further, and givo all young short-sentenco prisoners tho same opportunity to turn the corner. What do you think? Humanity. What do I think? That you are proposing to make the Expeditionary Force a Cave of Adullam—of which you may read, if you look in the right place, that it was a refuge for "everyone that-was in distress, and every one that was in debt, and every one that was discontented." Worse, you would add drunkards and jail-birds. Carry this doctrine to Tahuna camp, and see what greeting it would get. I believe that Wellington did once say of tho men who served under him that most of them had enlisted "through drink." Certain it is that in the wine countries, Spain and Portugal, they seldom let pass an opportunity of getting drunk. If they made good soldiers, it was under discipline or the lash; and to the end of his 'days Wellington protested that the British Army could never get along without the ninetailed cat. The New Zealand Expeditionary Force is not a Reformatory; no cat will travel with it except as a maaooT,. Our social wreckage must be provided for eJsewhere. In what esteem the khaki is held, another correspondent of mine illustrates by what he calls "a gem." Two stewards of a certain club have volunteered for the front. At a dance the president proposed the toast of the King coupled with the names of the stewards Joe and Arthur, and the toast was honoured. Just so. Become members of the Expeditionary Force, Joe and Arthur were promoted "to honour, —soldiers of the King,— entitled to respond for his Majesty. Civis.