PASSING NOTES.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 16348, 3 April 1915, Page 6

PASSING NOTES.

The pause on the western front is n pause preliminary. " Nothing doing " has been the word for days past,—nothing doing pxcept the daily wear and tear to •110 purpose, a pitiful waste of young lives, .tor example: "'London, March 30; Army casualties : Officers—killed 3, wounded 7 ; men—killed 108, wounded 305, missing 11, prisoners 7." Contributing nothing towards finality, this inglorious routine of slaughter is war at its wonst. But spring has come, and with, it the imminence of change. Bulls in mortal tussle cannot stand eternally with, locked horns. For Germany it is now—Do or die! The First of April they have selected as the day on which they will begin to do; —not because it is the First of April, but because it is Bismarck's birthday. " The Germans have a mania for fixing a day for achieving some important purpose," says the Spectator. Tho greatest day of all—" Der Tag " —was a kind of idealistic conception projected upon the screen of the future, like Messianic prophetic poetry. Naturally no actual day—a Monday, a Tuesday, or a Wednesday—could be 'fixed for Germany to overcome England and impose her will upon the world.. But the "days" of another typo have been most precisely fixed. Thero was a day for reaching' Paris (we fancy that 11 days from tho start was the original estimate of tho German General Start), there was another day for reaching Calais, another for the capture of T'pros, and yet another for the taking of Warsaw. And yet another—February the 18th—for ring-fencing the British Isles with a submarine blockade. Hitherto the German time-table has been a disappointment and a reproach. There remains this First of April; something must happen; we wait with bated breath. So far the war has been—in General French's phrase—" a hard war;" it will be harder yet. For the moment, ere the thunder break, there is pause and silence. The situation recalls a passage in Shelley's "Revolt of Islam " : There was such silence through the host ■as when An earthquake, trampling on some populous town, Has crushed ten thousand with one tread, and men Expect the second.

Meanwhile we are cautioned from an influential quarter " not to humiliate Germany." Severe defeat would humiliate Germany ; let us beware of it. Expulsion from Belgium would humiliate Germany; let Germany remain, and keep her ill-gotten gains. Final military collapse would lie ignominy unspeakable, a humiliation pro found; then' let us-do our spiriting gently, lest honest Germany's self-respect receive a fatal wound. These preposterous admonitions come to us from the Head Master of Eton. How many Eton boys have_gorie to the war? The numbers were published the other day,—between one and two thousand I think was the total. How many will come back?—rather, How few ? The blood of the unreturning brave is on the head of Germany, for Germany it was that made the war. If it were no.v sible to cite at the bar of this world's justice a whole nation, the writ of impeachment would be served on Geri.-i.viy. And if Germany's criminality in this war could be concentrated in some one representative person, an individual, what should we do with him? ' He wo'ud le hanged as high as Haman. " Humi'iavJ 1 is not the word; he should be elevate.!,— it is merely a question of terms. In the words of Bismarck, whose birthday it :s, and whose canonised bones are stirred Ky the madness of his successors :—" ' :t politeness to the very foot of the gallons, but hang all the same." '

How much of energy the Germans, plus the Austrians, plus the Turks, will be able to put into a last convulsive kick or series of Kicks, we must wait to see. At this moment, eight months of war ended, they are still manning trenches, a thousand miles of trenches, as the Westminster Gazette computes,—on the western front are still dug in to get any forrarder. A profound moral discouragement goes with that fact. Their casualties run into . millions; the millions that remain are not the best. War supplies grow short and shorter.; copper, rubber, mineral, oil, are hard to get. All this conceded, it remains nevertheless that the Germans will put up the toughest of tough fights; it is neck or nothing, with them do or die. Only the dull-witted on'-our side will think lightly of the struggle before us, —the dullwitted and the' shallow-hearted. There is comfort in reading English press notices of Rudyard Kipling's book (not here yet, apparently)—" The New Army, in Training," Kitchener's Army. " Such an Army as this was never seen before. For physique, goodwill,. and intelligence, it has riever been equalled unless it was, on a small scale, in Cromwell's Ironsides." Saying this, the reviewer is careful to add: "We must not even seem, however, to say anything in dispraise of the old Army. We believe that the Expeditionary Force which retreated from Mons aiid turned like a tiger on its enemy at the Marne ,is the most highly trained and skilful Army the world has ever seen." It is much to say, but not too much, that the New Army is worthy to stand by its side. The German lias well-springs of comfort and spiritual refreshment, he too. They are (I) devotion (" God punish England!" etc.); (2)' meditation (on kultur, and the moral mission of Germany as illustrated in Belgium); (3) imagination—which, not to put too fine a point 1 upon it, means lies, —the British fleet in hiding, British coast towns deserted, London panic stricken, etc. —lies for home consumption and known to be lies yet not the less comforting. Also there are lies for intelligent neutrals, such as America, and other lies—of an oriental richness, a special brand—for the unintelligent Turk. In Turkey the Kaiser is Hadji Guillioun, his Islamic Majesty, a descendant of the Prophet. It was announced in Constantinople on December the 6th that his Islamic Majesty had been enthroned in the ex-Chamber of the French Parliament; " Surrounded by the vanquished, he offered his Imperial hand to bo kissed by all the ex-Deputies of the French Chamber,! whose hearts were touched by the magnanimity of his Islamic Majesty."

Army corps are moved about by balloon : On December 1 twenty-five German balloons arrived at Adrianople, and conveyed to their destination the First Ottoman Army Con>s. We believe that the Osmanlis will inflict a crushing defeat on the Infidels. The German Bureau at Constantinople gave out on December 10 the following information : A wireless telegram from Amsterdam states that the "British Government has offered his Islamic Majesty 2000 asses laden with gold on condition that ho will not attack London with his mighty fleet. To the.same source may be referred an item of domestic interest: •The harem of his Islamic Majesty William II and. the harems of his staff will arrive at Constantinople in the beginning of spring. Ton of the most powerful British Dreadnoughts, captured by the Germans, will escort tho Imperial harem. Citing these phenomena, the Pall Mali Gazette remarks: " The fiction factory at Constantinople stands at the head of ali agencies (of lying) run under the auspices of the German Government." But thert are Berlin agencies that come a good second. "Why not hunt submarines as we hunt whales?" asks an inventive genius in one of the London papers. A submarine closclv resembles a whale in many ways, and betrays its presence "frequently: in the one case by a line of foam from tho periscope, in the other by spouts of water; and at times, in either case, bv tho exposure of its back. Whale hunting has been reduced to an exact science, the means whereby the whale is chased and lulled beiing quite simple and most effectual. For the hunting of the whale, new fashion, there needs only " a s.toufc fishing boat with a .gun firing explosive shells, a searchlight in the bows, and a powerful motor engine to drive the screw in the stern." Which same equipment—" with perhaps the addition of a ram at tho bows ' —would be ample for dealing with

submarines. There should be a thousand such boats scorning the British seas; — " as an exciting, profitable, and glorious sport, submarine hunting would surpass anything yet seen." If the fishing were good,—yes. But if there were only a ecorc or two, of whales, or of German submarines, in the whole circuit of the British Isles, and a thousand boats iu cli-ase, the fishing would not be. good. There wouldn't "be enough to go round. Of German submarines operating at any one time a score or two must be the limit. The notion that a submarine might be fatally rammed by a stout fisliing boat fails to commend itself. A dinghy ramming a battleship—it isn't quite that; but it is within, cooey of it.

This is not to say that tho submarine nuisance • admits of only one ride—Grin and bear it. From time to time U2O something or U3O something is sent below for good, its dying Tecord a few air bubbles and a film of oil. Even the skipper of a threatened tramp may, in his own happy phrase, " get the blighter " by a swift turn of tne helm and ramming. Our destroyers, everywhere " on the job," are lively, craft and fatal to submarines— give them but a chance. We can destroy faster than the enemy can build. All things considered, British waters are not healthy for the German sea snake, and to that fact we owe it that so little mischL is done—little in comparison with the enormous exposure we present. The narrow seas are never clear of steamer smoke; the great British ports are always busy; every week more than a thousand unprotected merchantmen enter and depart ; yet the German bag is at. the most one or two each day. As a contribution to the war, this submarine blockade is merely ridiculous—a farce and a fiasco. In another aspect, on which as yet the last word has not been said, it is tragic and criminal.

Piracy and murder, it is said, are the proper terms for such a deed as the sinking of tho Falaba and the drowning of her passengers. Murder, —yes, wholesale murder; but piracy was never so frankly demoniacal. The old-time pirate, though with black flag at the peak in token of his allegiance to the powers of darkness, never .sank a ship except in the way of business,- —plunder his motive, sinking merely incidental. If, humorously, he constrained his prisoners to " walk the plank," there was a reason. His long, low, rakish schooner —the traditional pirate-craft—had- no accommodation for passengers and necessity had no law. • roil s. Greek pirate, Lambro,

Was the mildest-mannered man That ever scuttled ship or out a throat. There were pirates who cut no throats; their victims merely " walked the plank." Yet for such deeds as he did the old-time pirate when caught was hanged at the yard-arm. The German who in devilry and to gratify hate sinks a passenger ship and laughs while her people drown—if that detail is credible—should bo hanged, drawn, and. quartered. There was never pirate so black. Civis.