PASSING NOTES.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 17657, 21 June 1919, Page 4

PASSING NOTES.

Major-general Sir F. Maurice, K.C.M.G., C.8., though in trouble last year for publicly contradicting his political overlords on a question of military fact, is none tko leas a great soldier, and his book now published—'' Forty Days in 1914 " —is by common consent of the critics a great book. "This is the best book that we have yet seen concerning the war," says the Spectator;—"it is the work of a scholar, a soldier, and a gentleman—not a very common combination." The Forty Days of 1914 are the days from Mons to the Manic; days which, as wo now see, determined the subsequent conrso and final issue of the whole war. Those were tho days of the martyrdom and the triumph of our original army, beyond denial tho finest body of trained men at that time in existence—the Regulars, or, if you will, tho " Coutcmptibles," whoso intrusion had set the truculent Hohenzollem dancing mad. Wilhelm to von Kluck: It is my royal and Imperial command that you concentrate your energies for tho immediate present upon ono singlo purposo, and that is that you address all your skill, and all tho valour of my soldiers, to exterminate first the treacherous English and to walk over General French's contemptiblo littlo army.—(Ordir given at Aix-la-ChapcJle, August 19, 1914.) Bombastes was then at the top of his form. And now

But not for that am I talking of General Maurice's book, but for tho part the British army had in the victory of the Murne. , Hilaire Belloc, who has given a whole volume to the Battle of tho Mame, ascribes the event of it to Foch, plus miracle. It was Foch who, late on September tho 9th, the fourth day of tho titanic conflict, detected the gap the Germans had left in their centre; it was Foch who charged headlong, crumpled them up right and left, and compelled the retreat to the Aisne. But the miracle? Well, listen to Mr Belloc: It is the_ Battle of tho Marno more than anything- else in this war wliich presents that strange atmosphere of fato never absent from tho grave decisions of history—an atmosphere which has persuaded mankind to its belief in Providence, or confirmed it therein. Reading tho story of tho Ma-mo the mind is insansibly haunted by the conception of a superior Will, within whoso actions those of the opposed combatants were but parts of a whole. General Maurice would probably assent. But the miracle that anticipated Foch and made Foch possible was no other than Sir John French and his Contomptibles. Yes, they were the miracle. History will decide that it was tho crossing of tho Marno in the early hours of tho 9th by tho ■ British Army which turned the scale against von Kluck and saved Manoury at a time of crisis. (Then tenon's an analysis). ... It 'is not possible to arrive at any other conclusion than that it was tho British advance to his flank and roar which precipitated von Kluck's decision, and caused the Germans to begin their retreat. The retreat from Mons is already a glorious page in the history of the British array, but the advance after tho retreat is certainly no less remarkable. That an army, 'which on August 23 liad been all but surrounded by an enemy who outnumbered it by two to one, should have fought its way out, retreated 10 miles, and then immsdiately turned about and taken a decisive part in the battle which changed thp whole ' course of the campaign of 1914, is as wonderful an achievement as is to be found in tho history of war. More and more as the years pass will the " Old Contemptibles" como into their own. The psychology of strikes, the mentality of the striker, are subjects that engage the philosophers. More-to the pnqjose is the question of monetary resource. Not unusually the striker is in the happy condition known as "flush." " Drunk and disorderly " was the police charge against an English striker whoso pockets, upon search, yielded the following inventory: — Seven one pound notes, fifteen ten : shilling notes, £1 13s 6d in silver, Is in bronze, two foreign coins, two pocket knives, a. pipe-lighter, a I purse, a spring weighing machine, a pouoh of tobacco, two boxes of matches, seven keys, eleven herrings, and one pound of sausages. This victim of capitalism, it seems, was well prepared to hold out. And his fellowsufferers on our side of the world are doubtless in as good a case. Add tho pleasures of idleness, the excitements of the stump, the joy of notoriety as a public nuisance, —put these things together, and the psychology of the strike explains itself. Nurses in every description of uniform recently crowded the public galleries of the House of Commons to watch the fate of a Nurses Registration Bill, designed, presumably, to protect the public against Mrs Gamp in a twentieth-century incarnation. Ono honourable member assured the House that the risk was real: Mr Lylo gavo a general approval of the measure, and, speaking of inefficient nurses, told of a woman in tho Bast End who was attending a, patient. The doctor told her that he did not like the look of- tho man,- and instructed her to use the thormometer .freely and send for him if necessary. On the following day the doctor called again, and found to his amazement that.the patient had disappeared. "What has happened?" the doctor asked. "Oh," replied tho' nurse, "ho has $jone to work." "Gone to work !"■ exclaimed tho medical man. The nurse then calmly explained that when she put tho' barometer on his chest it registered "Very dry," so she gave him two pints of beer and he went off to work.—(Laughter.) Barometer or- thermometer—which, is which? Sairey Gamp and Betsy Prig never heard of either. In his preface to " Martin Chuzzlewit," 1843, Dickens writes: "Mrs Sarah Gamp was, four-and-twenty years ago, a fair representative of the hired attendant on the poor in sickness. The hospitals of London were ha many respects noble institutions; in others very defective. I think it not the least among the instances of their .mismanagement that Mrs Betsy Prig was a fair specimen of a Hospital Nurse." We usually place nursing reform to the credit of the Dickens caricature. But ten years later, 1853-4, the Crimean War revealed hospital horrors at which Sairey and Betsy, would have lifted up their hands in sheer amaze. When Miss Florence Nightingale with her bevy of nurses from England, 38 of them, came to the British military hospitals at Scutari, which is a suburb of Constantinople, this is wliat she f oimd: Want, neglect, confusion, misery filled the endless corridors and. vast apartments of the gigantic barrack-house set apart as tho ohicf shelter for the victims of the war. Hugo sewers underlay tho building, and cesspools laden with filth wafted their poison into tho upper rooms. Tho floors were so rotten that many of them could not be scrubbed; tho walls -were thick with dirt; vermin, swarmed everywhere. There were four miles of beds, crushed together so close that there was but just room to pass between them. Ventilation there was none. Tho stench was indescribable, Tho commonest objects of hospital use were wanting. There were not enough bedsteads; the sheets were of canvas, and _ so coarse that the wounded men recoiled from them; there was no bedroom! furniture of any kind, and empty beer bottles were used for candlesticks." There were no basins, no towels, no soap, no brooms, no mops, no trays, no plates, no knives or forks or spoons. Fuel was constantly deficient; the cooking arrangements were preposterously inadequate; the laundry was a farce. As for purely medical materials, the tale was no better. Stretchers, splints, bandages—sll were lacking; and so were the most ordinary drugs. Yet, before she left London, Miss Nightingale was assured by tho head of the Army Medical Board, Dr Andrew Smith, that at 'Scutari " nothing was needed"; and Dr Hall, the head man on the spot' "was struck speechless with astonishment" at the presumption of her coming. Moreover, Lord Stratford do Roddiffe,. British

Ambassador at Constantinople, could suggest no better use for a sick and wounded fund raised by Tho Times newspaper than tho building' of an English Protestant Church at Pora. In popular imagination Florence Nightingale was an angel of mercy, pkcid, serene, moving gently to and fro amid tho sick and sulVering—the Lady of tho Lamp. Bho Avns nothing of this. Hhe. was tho precise opposite of this. As known to medical stalls and official departments she was a tornado in petticoats; things and persons that got in 'the way of her daimoiiic energy were shattered and crushed. Slit was a woman of education ; rich; her people were of the Upper Ten; she might call dukes and earls by their pet names; —and in fighting for her wounded soldiers sho feared neither man nor devil. Cabinet Ministers quailed beforo her; she said and ddd as sho chose; sho got what sho wanted; in six months she brought down the hospital death rate of cases treated from 42 per hundred to 22 per thousand; she wrote with her own hand a treatise of 800 closely-printed pages which remains to this clay the leading authority on the medical administration of armies. She had a yery bitter wit. Dr Hall's K.C.8., when it came, she could only suppose to mean " Knight of tho Crimean Burialgrounds." Mrs Bridgeman, a Reverend Mother who tried to keep her out of tho Crimea, was the "Reverend Brickbat," The ureat Panjandrum of tho War Office, Sir Benjamin "Hawes, Permanent Under Secretary, was " Ben jtLawes." All.this in official documents. Let everybody read in Lytton Strachey's " Eminent Victorians " the story of what she did and suffered— throughout 40 years dying daily, yet every day an active volcano, and contriving to go on till she reached the age of 91. (I suggest a special reprint for Hospital Boards; —it should be a means of graceto them.) Whoever does read this story will conclude that Florence Nightingale, take her for all in all, was the most amazing Englishwoman of her century. Dear " Civis,"—As wo read with great interest your Passing Notes every week, I would like to ask you to explain tho following 0/uotation: — " Asr.-.ime a virtue if you have it not." It is iii ono of Shakespeare-'s playß; but I cannot remember tho context or understand the truo meaning of it. Also, in reading tho Bible over, I find that Adam and Eve had two sons, Cain and Abel. Ono of these sons wont into tho wilderness and took unto himself a wife. I am puzzled to know where tho woman caino from, and several clergymen I havo asked have boen unablo to give mo a satisfactory answer. Anxious" Inqitibkb. Nothing to be anxious about. Hamlet's advice—less cynical than it looks, if the context bo regarded, which context may not be discussed here—is simply, Try to look better than you are. Put on the cloak of hypocrisy. If you are a coward, bluff it out as a fire-eater. If you are a self-seeking politician, put yourself forward as a patriot. It was the prevalence of this latter kind of assuming that led Dr Johnson to define patriotism as "the last refuge of a scoundrel." As to Cain's w.ife and where he got her, apply to the new professor of Anthropology, Otago University, ur biology would help you; e.g.— Scene, a biology lecture room. Professor: "The first man, call him Adam if you like, was not made at a stroke. Ho grew up, liko tho rest of us." Student: "Who took care of him when ho was a baby?" Professor: "His father and his mother." Puzzle out that conundrum, and you will have found the answer to your own. An ill-conditioned correspondent (writing in pencil, itself a mark of depravity) rails at my suggestion that an antitobacco campaign may follow the anti-drink campaign. What I said was this: There is no argument in use against alcohol which may not bo used against ' tobacco. With confidence we may infer that the amiable reformers who are now agitating to rob tho poor man of his beer will, if they succeed, proceed to put his pipe out.' My.contention is that they should be allowed to do neithar. A p.lain proof, thinks this dullard, that I am "a slave to both." Most prohibitionist proofs axe of the same cogency. For which reasons I have ceased to argue. iSut once in a while it is good to snap the whipcoTd about the prohibitionist withers. It is good to repeat that the soldiers' vote for continuance is a vote by men who have seen the world and enlarged their ideas: that Mr Gompers, chief, among labour leaders, has announced that American workers must and shall have their beer; and that even the idealist Wilson has declared for beers and light wines. Then there is the Canadian humorist, Professor Stephen Leacock, on "'tho comfort and pleasure to be found in beer, wine, and spirits by ninetynine out of every hundred people who use them." This cannot bo measured in any scientifw fashion, or submitted to the proof of_ a formula. It is a matter of experience. Those who have never had it are not qualified to spook. But there are countless thousands of peoplo whose private opinion, if thsy would only spook out, is that of all tho minor comforts of lifo, from tho cradle to tho gravo, boer and tobacco are easily first. So that even if I were " a slave to both " I should still be in respectable company.. Dear "Civis," —You will have to look to your laurels, as the enclosad cuttii>g ■ ■ from Wednesday's Daily Times shows: " Teetotallers live, on an average, six and a-half years longer than moderate drinkers, and U years longer than heavy drinkers. "WOLFE SCHNAPPS does nothing but lasting good. Buy whole bottlea" If tho first par. is true [which it isn't] tho second looks incongruous. Can it be that soma medical practitioner, or mayhap some undertaker, is touting for trade? Teetotalism and Wolfe's Schnapps—bane and antidote. No one will suffer from the first who makes due use of the second. Mere chance it was that juxtaposed them in the columns of the Daily Times; but mere chance is sometimes wiser than, the wisdom of the ages. _____________ Cms.