PASSING NOTES.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 17038, 23 June 1917, Page 6

PASSING NOTES.

Apparently we must resign the hopo of ] cisive victory this summer. Not withb a pang. Lord Kitchener's prophetic >hcee years" liad seemed the uttermost lit to which the world-agony could etch itself or naturo enduTe. The tchener term is fulfilled; and, 10, other avenue of years opens befpre us. nerica—for • whose help we thank siven morning, noon, and night—is Iking of the two-million American army be on the Western front in 1919! rw as always we have a heart for any te; now as always we are confident of lining,—more confident than ever since nerica has come in to "mak siccar." remains nevertheless that we had a asonablo hope of ending victoriously is same summer, and that we have been eated out of it. There is exasperation the fatuous rejoicing current here and ere over Russian "freedom"; a-freedom :e to cost us another three years of war. assian freedom is • the freedom of a natic asylum in insurrection. For lich reason all the cranks on the planet e rushing to Petrograd, or would ru3k allowed. Mrs Pankhnrst seems someiw to have got there. Messrs Eamsay acdonald and Jowett, headed off by the ktriotic spirit of the Seamen's Union in fusing to carry them—a welcome gleam comedy amid thing 3 tragic,—and rected by a Russian warship, talk of umeying by aeroplane. Let us hope :ey will attempt it. Tho loss would not ) insupportable were they spilt into the a. And anyhow the chances are that a iendly U-boat would be at hand to pick lem up. Messines, the first Belgian town won i-ck from the Hun, has given New Zeand a Gazette to herself. With blank ces we read the casualty list, with saris that hardly know whether to beat ister or to stand still. What force of ew Zealanders Sir Douglas Haig flung i Messines and the Vimy Ridge we are st told; it may have been 20 thousand, ) thousand, 50 thousand; —the bigger ie' total the smaller the proportion of iss. But in any case our dead at Mesnes outnumber the Spartans who died » Thermopylae and whose record five-and-venty centuries have not availed to dim. he Three Hundred Spartans died " for ie liberties of the world," say the hissrians, and their elegy, or eulogy, is ■ritten by a contemporary poet: — Of thoso who at Thermopylae wore slain Glorions the doom, and beautiful the lot; » Their tomb an altar; men from tears refrain, To honour them, and praise but mourn them not. Such sepulchre _ nor drear decay Nor all-destroying time shall waste; — this right have thev. fet the cause in which they fought and ell was no -\yhit better than ours. Sb )ouglas Haig's word of praise is this: Tlit great success sained has brought I® a ion.q step nearer to the final and victorious end of the war. The Empire can justly be proud of the troops who added such fresh lustre to its arms.

Ye may put it higher than that. The sTew Zealanders at Messines died for the iberties of the world; and the world will >ot forget them, least of all we. Nor shall we forget our right. to retribution vhen we come to reckon with the criminals who laid on us this sacrifice. An American banker fresh from Engand, and writing in the congenial jolumns of the New York Wall Street Journal, says some things good for the Americans to hear and worth transcribing m this side of the world. His study of ;he European situation in Europe has for liirn settled one thin^—" the question is lot who will win the war, but solely ivithin what time the Allies will win." But until America can put her weight • into tho struggle "it is realised by the English military authorities that the brunt of the offensive must be with the English. France has paid the biggest price in human sacrifice that any nation ever paid for its defence and freedom." 1 [t is for America now to move; and " the English understand full well that at least a year must elapse before we, the Americans, can give the Allies any direct military support in Europe." Food and supplies in the meantime. " But for our standing in the world we must step lively." Thus the American; and so say all of us. , . This witness continues:—"l can confirm all that you have previously reported as to the size of the British war .machine. Mo two nations in the world have to-day the gun and shell power that England possesses." Note that. No two nations in the world! He then lapses into particularities : — . If I could toll you the number of shells England can throw on the Western front in comparison with Germany the figures would look ridiculous. Towards the end of 1914- tho French were throwing shells at the rate of 80,000 a day; the Germans were answering with 120,000. At the battlo of Arras the English threw 800,000 shells in two hours. England is now ready to throw several million shells a day and keep it up to the end. Germany has nosucli power. Thus is ■ Krupp out-Krupped Driven before our hurricane of shells the Kaiser and his Hindenburg with their whole devil's-delight of war apparatus have been going back and back for months past. Behind them lay roads and railways many and good, new trench systems and gun positions prepared and ready. Nothing o! this in the ground laid open to the Allied advance, —only a chaos of hill and hole, wreck and ruin, the desolated track of the sullenly departing Hun, all means of communication destroyed. Confessedly it is a long way to Tipperary. by this route. And, as we have just heard, the

brunt of forcing a path is to fall on the British. It behoves our new and lusty al!y, his resources yet untapped, to hurry up and step lively. Observe how persistently this American says "England" and "English" where he ought to say" Britain " and " British." A sad habit in all foreigners. They will do it, and there is no redress. To my own practice no exception can be taken; yet my Scottish friends still pepper me with letters on the subject; I have here as many as would fill a column. " Old Man-of-war's Man " writes that he has often carried letters ashore addressed to " His Britannic Majesty's Consul"—at such or such a place ; not to the " English Consul." Quite so; that is the' official style. But there has never been anything to prevent the non-official public from talking of "the English Consul" if . they chose to do so. " Waimate," in an | intelligent and good-tempered letter— worthy of space were this not war time, — says much in praise oT Caledonia stern and wild; e.g.— _ That England is superior to Scotland in any way, can, I think, easily be denied. In war, Scotland has produced leaders of renown, while her private soldiers, the Highlanders especially, are among the finest troops tho Empire has at its command; in divinity, her pulpits have contained men of the greatest distinction; in medicine, her medical schools have ever stood hiffh; in law, her sons have occupied the Woolsack; in commerce, go where you will, the world over, her sons are to be found at tho head of the best commercial houses; in engineering, both civil and marine, I dare assert Scotland stands eeoond to none. This said, and well said, he lapses into a most unhappy suggestion: — Why should the ancient name of England not be combined with tL-at of ' Scotia, the name of Scotland beloved of poets, and a combination of the namce—e.g., "Britaootia " —be adopted as the name of tho Island of Great Britain. We speak of the Novascotians, why not the "Britscotians" ? Pass for that. Nest comes " Palmerston North " with four pages of laboured vituperation, —" Civis " with all' his ways and works the object,—" Civis," Andrew Lang, Sir Joseph Ward, modern ethnologists, and the Scottish Lion in one general mix-up;—the kind of letter which only the paper famine conld stop me from ' printing. riowover, he signs himself " yours Pickwickianly," *so irony may be suspected somewhere.

Pass for that also, and let me expend a word or two on " Clutha Celt" in the Daily Times. Ethnologists who assert the Lowland -Scots to be one in race and blood with the English are clearly- wrong, he says, for this reason amongst others, that the two peoples, do not make love in the same way. Serious indeed if true. There is record of a wido-wed Scot who conducted his intended number three to the kirk yard, showed her the plot in which lay numbers one and two, and said in solemn tone, " Lisbeth, wad ye like to lie there too?" And on that basis they fixed it up. Granted that in no such fashion do the English make love. Bnt if Burns may be cited as authority on the "ars amandi," then Burns is their chaplet and their rosary. There's nought but care on every han', Iu every hour that passes, O; What signifies the life o' man Ail' 'twere na for the lasses, O? Gie mo a cannie hoar at e'en, • My arms about my dearie, O; An' war'ly cares an' war'ly men May a' gae tapsalteerio, O! In verses such as these Burns justifies the ethnologists and philologists who assert him English. The vocabulary is more English than Shakespeare's, the sentiment English through and through. There is something ludicrous l in the British wail over the scarcity of potatoes. That potatoes should be scarce at all is absurd. Submarining has nothing to say to the potato crop, and there might have been an ample crop had' there been the forethought to sow it. As it is, every newspaper descants on the calamity of a potato famine. Miss Marie Corelli—wnom it is a pleasure to find not only extant but still lively—wants to know " how Britain got on without potatoes in her historic past?" Henry Yin was a goodly King; ho ate greedily, drank heavily, and married profusely, but never a potato ■ adorned his groaning banquet board. He "fared sumptuously every day," and his subjects were not starved. Strong armies, victorious navies, existed without potatoes. Crecv, Poitiers, Agincourfc were fought on other food. Doubtless. The Romans who conquered the world had no potatoes. Caesar's legionaries did their marching and fighting without potatoes, without tea, without tobacco. A thirf sour wine was their beverage (no rum ration): and thev knew little more of sugar than could be learned from the grape and the honey bee. With a possible, three years' war still in front of us, short commons may yet be our portion. Let us learn not to cry out before we are hurt. Dear "CSvis," —It is a hard ease I to submit to you. Some time ago I married. That, however, is not, ipso facto, the whole trouble. I married when I was young, and—well, it was a considerable time ago. The officiating clergyman on the occasion mado a mistake, and recited to me the wife's undertakings instead of tbe hu&- ; band's. Whether it wa3 abscntmindedness op the part of the parson or a deep-laid plot I have never discovered. Anyway, I, being at the timo non compos. mentis, followed like a lamb led to slaughter, and I vowed' io lovo, cherish, and obey my wife! Until lately 'no serious trouble has resulted from the mistake (as I am naturally of a docile disposition). But since the start of this horrible war my wife has shown strong pro-German proclivities. She tries to make me agree with her obnoxious sentiments, and, moreover,, she has forbidden me to sing the second verso of tho National Anthem, which, eho says, is un-Christian. What is my duty? Should I inform against her? Or, under the circumstances, could I get a special dispensation absolving me from mv vow? I could then deal with my wife hi the same manner as, it is said, a walnut tree should be treated for its betterment. What do you think? Can you adviso? A Turning Woril Yes— ' The smallest worm will torn, being trodden on. fVhich is Shakespeare. But what good loes the worm get by turning ? Vows or no vows, it is your duty as a husband to love, honour, and obey. So on the other side, —the wife must love, honour, and Dbey. _ Reciprocity, on a basis of equality. This is the paradox of matrimony and Lh3 secret of how to be happy though married, —each commands, each obeys, and there is a judicious make-believe on both sides. In the circumstances of the present hour a touch of pro-Germanism in Either—though a mere pose—may add a ze.t to life and tend to sweeten conversation over the. cables at breakfast, usually a short-tempered time. And if feminine caprice adopts a pose of scrupulosity about the National Anthem, the Turning Worm may turn to a very .fair alternative: Here's a health to the King, and a lasting peace,— The Kaiser interned with his brother of Greece. And he that will this health deny, Down among the dead men let him lie! ' Cms.