PASSING NOTES.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 17158, 10 November 1917, Page 4

PASSING NOTES.

Chief factor in tho Italian catastrophe, we hear, was an " anti-British propaganda." Likely enough. The Italians did not run away from numbers no greater than their own without having a rnind to run away. That they had such a mind is affirmed by General Cadoma himself. " Cowardice" is tho word of Cadorna's just indignation; but tho Italians who ran were not necessarily cowards—they ran bocauso they had the mind to run. The why and the wherefore —an " anti-British propaganda." Germany and the Father of Lies conspiring, tbo samo distrust of Britain now helping to rain Kussia is also to ruin Italy;—that is the Hun idea. Secure in their island, watched about by an almighty fleet, the British plotted this war that whilst, other nations, set by the ears, were devouring each other they might engross the commerce of the world and wrench from their happy illegiance the German colonies.

Tho Gorman propaganda in Italy was the old lie that tho Germans wero rescuing tho country from British tyranny, and representing England as revelling in luxury, and allowing hor victims to freeze, starve, and die. This has been skilfully used in both Italy and Russia. On both frontiers they ha>ve found lying after this pattern more effective thaa Krupp guns.

To stop the Italian rot we are sending troops, .British ae well as French. Tho distances are manageable. From tho frontier common to the two countries, Venice at the head of 'the Adriatic is no further away than Paiis. That our men and guiu will stand up to German men and guns W3 know very well; but the campaign of lie? —that is another affair. We are badly handicapped. We are handicapped by our very greatness. Look at the extent 10 which we have painted the world-map red. When it was and how .that we got the mastery of half the habitable globe—ths desirable half—we hardly know; —it was done " in absence of mind," says Professor Seeley. Anyhow thero it is, —the British Empire, too big a fact to deny or explain away. As the bloated capitalist is to the labour unions, so is the British Empire to the rest of the nations—an object 01 suspicion and distrust, a mark for envy, hatred, and all uncharitableness. Not of Germany alone has jealousy been the noti, but at one time of France, now our clos-; friend; also of Italy, and of Russia. We have got to live it down and fight it down; by favour of heaven we shall do both. But Russia,—alas, poor Prussia!— even as I write the words come tingling from the wire—" Kerensky has been deposed." What else was to look for? Kerenskyi rejected the one way of salvation when he quarrelled with Korniloff, the soldier, the man with the guns and their potential whiff of grape-shot. Lucky now if he escape assassination or the Russian equivalent of the guillotine. After Kerensky what? Well, .there aro still great soldiers in 'Russia.. It is now their turn, and the word is with. them.

We wind up Baby Week with a pleasant sense of virtue, and of cash in hand. Our street collection panned out nobly. In addition, the things we have learned, new and strange for the most part, will be a treasure for ever. The condition of the teeth of the people of New Zealand was a tragedy worse than the tragedy of the war, said Dr Truby King,—which is the most optimistic xjew of ffae war I have yet met with. The war, bad at the best, is not so bad as a trouble of teeth which a sufficiency of dentists might cure. Then we had Father Coffey assuring us that the births in New Zealand ought to be 50 per cent, more than they are. How it comes that Father Coifey should*be an authority on this subject I am unable to say; but clearly the Rev. Father would have all New Zealand man-kind and woman-kind increase and multiply at double the present rate. By way of comment on this, unintended but quite to the point, the -writer of a letter to one of the papers remarks on the number of unmarried women of mature years who were holding boxes in the street collection. Their motto " Save the Babies!" yet they had produced no babies to save. Not improbably there were able-bodied men, equally numerous and equally babyless, who helped to count the collection afterwards. Someone, whether a Reverend Father or not, should run a marriage-pro-moting and baby-producing mission in the light of these facts. ,

Dear " Civis," —The Marquise Dp Orequi in her memoirs, speaking of a service Louis XIV attended, declares: " A choir of young girls sang a sort of national caritiple, 'God save the King, , the words being composed by Madame de Brinon and the music by Lully." A German named Handel, she says, took possession of it when in Paris, and for a sum of money "presented" it to King George of Hanover. Then "tho English finally adopted it, and brotight it out as their national air.' . May I venture to ask you if this is really the origin. of\ our National Anthem?—B.

At the Athenaeum, and also at the Public Library, this inquirer may consult Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, article " God save the King." There he will read: " Lully's (1635-87) claim to the ' God Save,' sometimes put forward, rests on the ' Souvenirs de la Marquise Crequi,' which is now known to be a mere modern fiction." So much for that. Nevertheless there does exist in French a seventeenth century " God save the King " ("Grand Dieu, souvez lo Roy"), a dozen lines from which I gave in Passing Notes of Juno 16, quoting from the London Times. The words strikingly like our own; to what music they were sung no man can say. All that is known about the origin and progressive shaping of the grand melody now in use and established for ever may be read in Grove. A rudimentary form of it is attributed to Dr John Bull, a sixteenth century organist, and there could bo no happier name. It is not the myth it looks. A portrait of Dr John Bull is preserved in the Music School at Oxford, round the frame of which is written this distich:—

The bull by force in field doth raigne, But Bull bv skill good will doth gayne.

From Hawke's Bay: — Dear " Civis," —The enclosed advertisement from the Otago Daily Times of November 1, with "•Cardinal Moran Memorial Art Union" at the top of it and " St. Mary's Cathedral, Sydney," at. the bottom, announces that " by oermission of the Attorney-general of New South Wales the drawing of tho art union has b een postponed"—to a date named; ten days bofore which date " all butts and cash " are to bo sent in. Can you explain it? .Does it mean there is to be a " memorial" in some shape or form erected. to Cardinal Moran by means of an art union? If so, it seems to mo quite the oddest (not to say tho most hnmorous) way of honouring "oar holy dead." The only comment I permit myself is that on questions of taste no man may judge another. Not long since there came into my hands the half-crown ticket of an " In Memoriam Dance " ( In Memorium" they had it) somewhere in Otago in honour of a fallen soldier. The name Moran brings in, apropos, an inquirer nearer home who asks whether it is true, as the Tablet alleges, that the late Bishop Moran and his Otago flock have been referred to in Passing Notes as " Old Moran and his pigs." True?—assuredly not. The shame of this indecency be on the man who invented it! And the man that invented it must bo the Tablet man himself. If after inventing it—at the erpense of his own bishop and his own people—he believes the expression mine, there is only one explanationj-Mn this, as in some other matters, the Tablet man has been given over to strong delusion that he should believe a lio.

Oamaru rhymster again:— Dear "Civis,"—l enclose another piece of poetry, partly to show there is no ill-will over your last verdict, and also to convince you that as far as effecting an entrance to your interesting column, I'm etill " sticking it out," tho British way.' That the British way may never fail I make room for this importunate to the extent of two verses. MaTk Twain in like case admonished a rhyming correspondent that though some ef few lines

contained five feet others were only four foot six; the chances are, too, that he would have hinted dislike to the imperfect assonance of such yoke-fellows as "Times" and 'Mind." However, let. us waive these precedents. From your columns in tho Times An antidote I often find For a pessimistic fit of the blues, Which is apt to bo caused by bad war news. And for tho good your column has done, May you long be spared your pen to piy. And to bo of good cheer till the war is won, Let's try, try, try! Amen. So mote it be. Another correspondent truncated last week thinks it odd that a discussion of Evolution should ba banned this column whilst room is found for the problem of a hen and a-half laying an egg and a-half in a day and ahalf, etc., etc. Well, tho Westminster Gazette, which is ;i serious-minded paper, condescends even in war time to a Saturday Puzzle Page; and the London Times, Weekly Edition, flanks a packed page of casualty "lists with a chess column and chess problems. But if either editor were offered a war time discussion on the Higher Criticism, or the Differential Calculus, or the Mosaic Cosmogony, or tho Nebular Hypothesis, he would answer, as I last week, " Thanks, No."

From a North Icland Housewife t — On the food problem, here is a recipe for cooking frogs' (hind) logs from the " Just for Two" cookery book (frogs in this book aro reckoned as fish!): " Skin, wash, and lay in milk for fifteen minutes. Without wiping them, pepper and salt, and coat with flour. Fry in deep, boil-ing fat to a light brown; or wipe off tho milk., dip in egg and breadcrumbs, and fry." Tho recipe does not say how many frogs' legs aro enough "just for two ; neither does it say, " first catch vour frogs " ! The school book "Nature in New* Zealand " by Drummond and Hutton says that "the only frog of its own New Zealand ever possessed is on the verge of extinction —like the tuatara lizard. It has not been seen in any other country. It never leaves tho Auckland district, where it lives a solitary life close to the banks of streams flowing through the damp bush." Captain Hutton, at one time Professor of Biology in the Otago University, needing frogs for dissection purposes, brought them in from abroad, — so the story goes. Somewhere hereabouts —possibly in Mr Tannock's realm at the Botanical Gardens—l have heard the musical voice of the common frog—brek-ek-ek-ex koax koax 4 —which cannot have varied a syllable or a semitone since Aristophanes.

The book "Wild Foods of Groat Britain," quoted here a week or two back (hence this talk of frogs), has had a sympathetic welcome from the English press, though here and there a nauseated reviewer protests with the Spectator that " stewed frogs' legs and fricassee of snails remind us too forcibly of tho witches' cauldron; and nothing, we feel convinced, would persuade us to eat rat-pie, with or without Bovril gravy." Yet "country rats, fed on corn, are said to be delicious"; and an especial good word is put in for " dormice roasted and served on toast." This dainty, the dormouse, was prized by the ancient Romans, who " are recorded to have stuffed dormice with poppy-seed and eaten them sprinkled with honey." Ugh! As for frogs and their edibility, there are whole populations that delight in them, and Frank Buckland the naturalist declares after trying a dish:—" Most excellent eating they were, tasting more like the delicate flesh of the rabbit than anything else that I can think of." Trivial all this to us in our New Zealand aloofness, but of practical moment to our kinsfolk at' home. Here and there in London people form queues at the food shops— so we read in this week's cables; and we have the modern Pepys in "Truth" lamenting " the mine that falls upon the green-groacers by so much growing of potatoes, cabbages, and all manner of herbes in people's gardens and publique places, even before the King's palace." A sign of the times, and of the submarines. Crvis.