PASSING NOTES.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 16189, 26 September 1914, Page 4

PASSING NOTES.

Sniping in the North Sea! Yes ;—-we expected it. So obviously was it a thing to be expected, that the Germans, without in the least giving themselves away, talked openjy of filliping as their North Sea policy. "The "High Sea Fleet" on which the "Admiral of the Atlantic," otherwise William the Weed, prided himself, was to cower snug in port while mine and submarine wore down the British blockading fleet by "partial flosses," sending it to the bottom in detail, ship by ship.

"The enemy must he wearied out ;u.d exhausted by the enforcement of the blockade and by fighting against all the expedients which we shall employ for the (lofecce of our coast Our llctt under the protection of these expedients will continua'ly inflict partial losses on him. and thus gradaally wo shall bo able to challenge- him to a pitched bittlo on the high seas." (General Von Bernhardt, quoted in a Daily Times loader of Thursday.)

Not professing to be heroic, this scheme of tactics ought at least to have been successful, especially as the British fleet offered a broad target impossible to mi&s. Yet not till now, in the seventh week of the war, has a German torpedo got home. A British cruiser, the Aboukir, was struck; two others, the Cressy and the Hogue, closing in to eave her people, presented a fair mark; eo all three went to the bottom together. That these throe are the first three saya little for the enterprise of our friend the enemy. His notion, made in Germany, that British nerve will be shaken by risks of this nature is a mistake. No doubt the British navy man w.hen in for a fight prefers to see his antagonist; fair play, he thinks, is shot for ehot. He has no liking for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; for choice, give him the destruction that wasteth at noon day. But it comes to the same thing in the end — risks are hie trade and nerves lie has none, or none that are "nervy." The North Sea blockade has brought him no surprises. .Everything was foreseen and accepted—mines, submarines, Zeppelins— the whole bag of tricks.

Strictly, the blockade we keep up is not a blockade; it is a challenge. This distinction was well taken by Nelson in a letter to the Lord Mayor of London, acknowledging the thanks of the City voted him for keeping up the, blockade of Toulon, which letter is opportunely quoted by the Christchurch Press: —

I bog , to inform your lordship that' the port of Toulon has nev.er been blockaded by me;—quito the reverse —every opportunity has boon offered to the enemy to put to sea, for it is there that we hope to realise the hopes and expectations of our country, and I trust they will not

be disappointed. For two whole years, never once leaving his ship, Nelson with the Mediterranean squadron kept watch off Toulon, besieging Heaven with prayers that the enemy might come out. In the same hope a similar duty was performed off Brest in the Chops of the Channel—a- windy comer —by Cornwallis, otherwise " Billv Blue," because whenever blown away from his station and compelled to shelter in a Channel port the Blue Peter—signal for sailing at the first slant —went up as the anchor went down. Not till the next year, 1805, did the enemy come out, and then there ensued Trafalgar. The North Sea Trafalgar can be had any day that the Germans choose to come out. But, as Mr Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, remarked to a Liverpool audience this week, " our Navy is unable to fight while the enemy remains in port." "Unless our enemies came out and fought they would be dug out like rats in a hole," he said. We don't wish to proceed to those extremities. At present we stop at a polite invitation— " Barnadine, come out and be hanged,"— as we read in the play.

Mr Winston Churchill has a neat turn of speech. But in fertility of epithet and the higher refinements of vituperation his place is second, not first. Room for Mr Lloyd George! Never till now has this artist found a subject worthy of his powers. As theme for rhetoric, what is the infamy of dukes compared with the criminal lunacy of the Kaiser?

There had been nothing like the Kaiser's patronage of God since the days of Mohammed. The Kaiser had declared that he was the Deity's vicegerent, wielding tho sword. When such lunacy was manifested by the head of a State and becamethe policy of a great Empire it 'was timo to put that person away. The Prussian Junkers were the road ho"s of Europe, ordering little States out of the way, but Great Britain would

tear t'he bully out of his scat. Mr Lloyd George, be it remembered, is Chancellor of the Exchequer, and not only a great man among his colleagues, but one of the most conspicuous persons in the Empire. With his words the nation will, agree, and will chuckle over them in agreeing. There is pleasure in listening to a good slang-whanger when he slang-whangs an arrogant and truculent high mightiness whose ears are habituated only to llatbery. The Kaiser reads the English newspapers; just now they are the one form of literature for which he contrives leisure arnd cannot dispense with. It is -a comfort to think that he is not likely to miss the speech of Mr Lloyd George.

Not without a sense of sacrifice do we send away to Europe and the war 10,000 young New Zealarsders. It is the most serious thing we ever did. Compared with the war in Europe the South African war was a picnic; compared with this gift of men the gift of a Dreadnought sinks to nothing;—the Dreadnought meant merely a few pounds out of our pocket. What the Expeditionary Force means cannot be expressed in coin; no one has yet calculated the sum of it. The men left us light-hearted, cheering and singing; but it was a. wet-eyed response on oui- part, and you do not easily say good-bye when there is a lump in your throat. Perhaps they have not pictured possibilities, nor will wo; —let everything continue on the theory that we shall greet them back again and all feel gay when Johnny come 3 marching home. War is war, 'tis true, and few, few shall part where many meet; yes, we know all that, but our cue is hope and a cheerful countenance, with a willingness to thank Heaven that we can still be proud of our country. The March of the Ten Thousand Greeks, which for 20 centuries and more has. filled a page of history, let it not be mentioned in comparison with the March of the New Zealanders. The Ten Thousand Greeks marched and fought in a quarrel not their own, had hired themselves out for the job—mercenaries, rascals all, with not a respectable motive amongst them. Our New Zealanders march at the call of the blond, of the Flag, of the Empire, and we and they both are the richer for the sacrifice we make in common.

The London County Council, having acquired a co;it of arms, has rejected the proposal that it should adopt a tag from Tacitus, "Loci dulccdo nos attinet." as a suitable motto to accompany it.

More than this, the council has ruled out all other Latin tags, and, indeed, Latin itself, holding that, the motto for London should bo in the King's English, hence universally intelligible. But nobody seems able to invent one. A hundred- competitors having failed, Lord Rosebery comes to the rescue. Breaking it geTitly in a letter to The Times, Lord Rosebery says that the form of words which would meet all needs and score every point is—"God Bless London !"—just that. So far as appears, no enthusiasm has greeted this discovery. Speaking from the safe distance of half the globe, I pronounce '' God Bless London !" a pious imbecility. Tt carries no hint of London's special and peculiar place in the nation, its bigness, splendour, wealth, authority. The words would run inst as happilv : "God Bless Little Pedlington !" Moreover, the associations of tho " God Bless" part of it are bad— irreverent in "God bless my ?oul!" satiric in "God bless the Duke of Argyll!" and ironic in— God ble.ii tho King—l mean the Faith's Defender; Gorl biff." —no harm in blrpsirg—the Pref-mW; But -.vjj,') Pretender is, and who ie King, God bless as aX—that's ;quito another thing.

Remembering its distinguished authorship I repent of calling "God Bless London!" an imbecility. Hut it certainly illustrates the truth that good mottoes in English do not grow on every tree.

Mottoes and lapidary inscriptions are thfl only sphere '.eft to Latin, 1 remarked incautiously last week. Latin lives still in quotations, chiefly from the poets—a luxury I sometimes permit myself in this column. When someone in Dr Johnson's hearing censured quotation as pedantry, the sage replied : " No, sir, it is a good thing; there is a community of mind in it. Classical quotation is the parole of literary men all over the world." But why not substitute for the original a translation ? Because the best of it is usually untranslatable—the neatness, the grace, any poetic quality it may possess, sometimes the thought itself. For example—one out of Vergil line into which all the pain of the world is put: Sunt laerimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt . "There are tears for trouble, and human sorrows touch the heart" (Sidgwick) doesn't come within leagues. But in newspaper quoting you need to walk warily. The linotype is an English-speaking machine with strong prejudices. Last week I wanted to stigmatise an elucidation that made the matter darker—which is the case lying back of Byron's line— I wish ho 'would explain hie explanation. Three Latin words do it—" Obscurum per obscirrius"—" (to explain) the obscure by the more obscure." But the linotype, in perverse vein, substituted for "obscurum" an impossible and ridiculous " obscurium" —"obscurium per obscurius," and with • this crumpled rose leaf under me I have been left tossing all the week. The Back of Beyond, September 23, 1914. Dear "Civis,"—Around this district I have constantly heard settlers, well-edu-cated and otherwise, use tho word "obligement." At first it seemed t.j ' jar; then, when I determined to look it up, I could not find the word in tho small dictionaries at my disposal. To |my mind the word is quite justifiable. There is a distinction between '"obligernent', and "obligation." Perhaps you ■will clear it up. I sha-'l then be under an obligation to you for this " obligement."—Yours faithfully, "Rastus." You may coin a word if you want to. It is not an offence at law.

Licuit seniperque heebie Signatum prescnto nota producero nomen.

Which is Horace, and sound doctrine, — its drift that your new word may pass if it meets a present need, " bears the mintmark of the day." But the word " obligement" is not new. The smaller dictionaries—including the Concise Oxford, which is the best of them—omit it as being no longer in use. " Obligement" in the sense of obligation comes down no later than Milton (" pretending a necessity and obligement"), and in the sense of favour no later than Charles Lamb ("it would be a great obligement if you would," etc.). All of which and more you may read in the big Oxford when the big Oxford reaches the Back of Beyond. Meanwhile, this is a free country,—"obligement'' may have its chance again, if anybody wants it.

A " Forty-years Subscriber" to the Witness is suffering from too much of hockey, football, and sporting in the illustration department. "Give us war pictures— generals, admirals, the great men of the hour, instead of these hockey gowks and flannelled fools." Why not a Dreadnought or two, together with "our National Anthem in good print with music" ? In rising anger he commands the " gowks" aforesaid to "put away their rot or go to blazes (in one syllable) out of the country." Let me remind this perfervid patriot that despite the war life has still interests many and varied. There is still some eating and drinking, buying and selling, marrying and giving in marriage. Ther-j are flowers that grow in the gardens, there are lambs—or will be—that romp in the fields. Our King, who is of equal sagacity and good taste, announces that his horses will keep their racing engagements. . That is the King's way of saying: ''Are we down-hearted ? MO!"

The Duke of Wellington, hard pressed in his Peninsular campaigns, used to keep a pack of harriers. Every cross-country run with the hounds (once a week, the exigencies of the ssrvice permitting) wa-s as goad as bidding his troops cheer up—all was going well. Patience, a little! —we shall have war pictures enough in good time. Yes, and sup full of horrors. Civis.