PASSING NOTES.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 17426, 21 September 1918, Page 4

PASSING NOTES.

Those twin oracles General Maurice and Colonel Ropington do not always agree;— how should they? There would bo no need for two if both said the same thing. But on tho subject of man-power, it® insufficiency and the duty of increasing it, they speak with one voice. We want moro men. Airships and tanks are no substitute for men. Neither in the heavens above nor in the earth beneath will the war be won for us by machinery. Two instances are given in which Sir Douglas Haig's success lacked completeness because hi 6 infantry attack lacked weight. More men. and whore to get them—that is the problem. Where else than in Ireland, that " petted, over-indulged, lightly taxed, and over-represented country"? say some London editors. Ireland under conscription would give us 300,C00 first-class fighting men, and at no greater cost of trouble than a little "scuffling at street corners."

The samo editors know quite well, however, that the Government has not the nerve. Scuffling at street corners is nothing!— General Lord French con Id look after that. What the Government fears is the hullabaloo—l can think of no truer word—the hullabaloo that would be raised by fanatical priests. No Government that can. help it will face the drum ecclesiastic. In this country the Hon. Mr Myers —in weakness or in strength, one doesn't know which—has suppressed an antiRomanist book said to be a Presbyterian classic. Hoarse rumblings are in the air, to be echoed presently from the other side; Mr Myers meanwhile anxiously straining his ears to know which drum will beat the loudest.

If Ireland close at hand will not give the men, still lees will Australia at half the earth's circumference. Praise without stint has been given to the Australians at the front; along with their cousins the New Zealanders they have deserved it. But the Australians at the front are the cream of Australian manhood. Only skim-milk is left. The Australian scalawag, though of military age and fitness, is just skim-milk. His manliness is that of Manly Beach; his valour is good only for sports, and strikes, and for hoisting the red flag—symbol of envy, hate, malice, and all uncharitableness—over his Trades Hall. Pass for the Australian Slacker! Casting about for the more men needed to shorten the war—men in bulk' and mass—l see only the Americans. And surely here is treasure trove. I copy a paragraph in the Spectator of July 6:

The great news of tho week is tho announcement by the American Secretary of .War that moro than a million American soldiers have sailed for France. Tho letter, dated on Monday, in_ which Mr Baker gave the President this most gratifying assurance, revealed also tho figures of the embarkations in each month from May, 1917, to the end of last June. These truly astonishing figures show that while America sent about 48,000 men a month from Decem-

ber to February, she sent 83,000 men in March, 117,0 CX) in April, 244,000 in May, and 276,000 in June.

After four years during which the French and British have borne the heat and burden of the war they may without qualm of conscience surrender the finishing of it to the Americans. French and British will be in at the death, —never fear! But let it be for America to give the coup de grace.

And it is the Americans who are prepared to undertake the job. Flushed with their success in pinching off the St. Mihiel salient—an. achievement performed with American thoroughness and highly creditable albeit rather exaggerated in the telling—they are ready for any fresh job that may be assigned to them. And eager into the bargain. They have no mind to he robbed by pacifists of the chance of putting the finishing touch on the work already performed by the British and French. No laugh more contemptuous than theirs has there been over the egregious Peace whine of Austria.- The advance at St. Mihiel, say they, led to Austria's action. Hardly likely. Austria will have been in the painful throes of composition .of her Note long before the St. Mihiel operation. Germany must have been in collaboration with her over it too, although her official liars say she wasn't. And all this colloguing and all the meticulous weighing of phrases necessary in State documents take time. It was just the blundering diplomacy of Germany and Austria that produced the Note at the hour when President Wilson was cabling to General Pershing that "our boys have done what we have expected of them." From what they have done the more reason is there to believe they will yet do what we expect of them.

The prohibition of alcoholic drinks in the interest of morality cannot be reconciled with the Bible, writes a correspondent. To prove it, he sends me a string of Bible texts. Thanks; I knew them already. But not easily would he find texts against prohibition in the interest of economy. Prohibition as a war measure is one thing ; prohibition as the normal rule of life is another. I vote for the -first; I utterly reject the second. Dull-witted compulsionists of the old school fail to make this distinction. Sticking to the economy argument, insisting on abstinence as a war measure, they might carry with them ninetenths of the citizenship. But no; like the dog to his vomit and the sow to her wallowing in the mire, back they go to their immoral fallacy that morality may be based on compulsion. Which is to say that men. in gaol, who don't get drunk because they can't, are a model of true temperance. Whence it follows that in relation to drink and drunkenness, New Zealand must he clapped in irons; not in the interest of economy, but in the interest of morality; not for the duration of the war, but for ever and a day. As a matter of tactics this is sheer idiocy. The recommendation of the Efficiency Board served every purpose. To go beyond it is to antagonise the harmless moderate man and to lese votes.

The Bible, if the Bible must be brought in, is from end to end the charter of the moderate drinker. St. Paul, nsuallv accepted as an authority, gives the rule for moderate drinking : Be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess." He might have said : " Touch not, teste not, handle not," but he didn't. Then there is his advice to Timothy, a locus classicus :

Pan! the Apostle to Timothy: " Talce A little wine for thy stomach's sake." Inferenoo clear, from this admonition;

Paul the Apostlo votes—sft) prohibition. In Jolm Moyley's " Life of Gladstone" occurs a sentence worth quoting in this context—a sentence from a letter bv Mr Gladstone to a friend : How can I, who drink good wine and bitter beer every day of my life, in a comfortable room and among friends, coolly stand up and advise hard-working fellow-creatures to " take tho pledge"? Much less would he have set a whole nation under ban. Mr Gladstone lived to a great age; for good or ill he filled a great place; no man of his timo got more hard work into four-and-twenty nours. And it does not appear that he was any the worse for his good wine and bitter beer. There must be many a moderate of his type in New Zealand.

The typical German has no humour. For that very reason he is unconsciously humorous. In all the antecedent suppositions of the war he was mistaken to the point of absurdity. But to laugh at him for that would be like laughing at the sayings and doings of Jack the Ripper. There is no amusement to be got out of the Kaiser as Pecksniff; he merely disgusts. Nor out of the Crown Prince as Chadband, though it be Chadband delineating (in a spirit of love) the attractions of peace. "My friends, why do I wish for peace? What is peace? Is it war? No. Is it strife? No. Is it lovely, and gentle, and beautiful, and pleasant, and serene, and joyful ? 0 yes! Wherefore my friends I wish for peace upon you and upon yours." This is the Crown Prince in some recent moments of effusion. Nobody laughs; but all the world is nauseated. The antic Hun, grimace as he mav. leaves us cold.

In this context may come a Jittle story which I find in Lady Jophson's goasippy book, "The Life of a Nomad." At a German spa tiho leading doctor, with, litany pafcLania among tko English, uassw t&

make their " cure." was of a characteristic German bumptiousness. A little English church was opened in the place, and he was invited to the first servico. The subject of discourse was the Water, of Life. The doctor was asked what lie thought of it.

" Aeh !" said he, " I felt very shy ! You see tho bishop preached about t.ho healing wasser of Niuiheim, and he said, ' But we must none of us forgot t.ho Gheat Physician!' Naturally, I folt bashful."

To this 1 may tail on a French pleasantry at the expense of the " Ersatz" part of the German army. The exact meaning of the word is neither here nor there; —it is sufficient to know that " Ersatz" troops are what militia are to the regulars.

A Berliu citizen, tired of life umicr war conditions, determined to commit suicide. He purchased a. vial of prusaic itcid at tho chemist's, made his will, and drank tho potion off. But he failed to die, and an interview with tho chemist revealed the fact that tho acid was " Ersatz material." Nothing daunted, the would-be suicido bought a rope and suspended himself. But the rope broke— it was "Ersatz material." Cured now of his morbid desire, tho citizen resolved to celebrate his return to life by a good dinner, which ho ordered, ate, and forthwith died. Tho food wa6 " Ersatz material."

It is a reasonable hope that by this time Hindcnburg, Ludendorff, and Co.'s best includes a good proportion of " Ersatz material." From Oamarn.: Dear " Cms," —When clocs spring comraenoe? In my school days I was taught that it ooramenccd od September 22, summer on December '22, and so on. Howcvor, just about this timo every year people tell mo that spring commences on August 1, eamnscr November 1, -and so on. Pleasa enlighten me.

To understand the seasons you moist understand the inclination of the ecliptic to the equator, together with the eccentricity of tht earth's orbit, and a few other astronomical trifles. When you have understood these tilings, you will also understand that there is no fixed day on which spring begins. The equinoxes are on or about March 20, and on or about September 25; nearer than " on or about" there is no getting. With the March equinox should, begin our autumn and the northern spring; with the September equinox our spring and the northern autumn. But, "popularly, autumn in Great Britain comprises August, September, and October; in North America, September, Octobet, and November." And the northern autumn is our spring. Despairing of the astronomers, you may naturally turn to the poets;— to Chaucer, perhaps: " Wlianne that April with his shoures sote," etc.; but certainly to Tennyson, who talks a more intelligible English:

In the spring a livelier iris changes on the burnished dove; In the spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love. Do you keep a burnished dove? Are you a young man with fancies lightly turning? To know when spring begins observe the phenomena; interrogate your own heart. • Cms.