PASSING NOTES.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18180, 26 February 1921, Page 4

PASSING NOTES.

The Hon. C. J. Parr as Minister of Education addressing a’country school: — “Go-slow” nations will always perish. New Zealanders and Australians will not hold these new countries long by a goslow six-hours-a-day policy. The hardworking nations will take our place. Nothing surer. Let Mr Parr as Minister of Education preach these pointed truths in every school he visits. Some faint echoes •may penetrate the sealed council chambers of Labour, —may reach even to the watersiders. Not to much profit, maybe. As the watorsidef sees things, the “hard-working nations”—if they exist, which he doubts—are worth only a waterside curse. He cares as little for the hard-working nations as for the ancient Romans whose fate Mr Parr held up for a warning: ‘‘Ancient Rome became lazy, luxurious, effete, and she fell. History may repeat itself in the Pacific Ocean. ’ “All right!” says the labour malignant;— “Let it repeat! Historv may go hang. The immediate thing for me is a six-hour day—mitigated by go-slow, —and a five-day week.” All the wisdom of the ages is as nothing in comparison with the utterances of an oracle such as Mr Walsh, engineer of strikes in New South Wales, who recently declared, “I never read the newspapers, and wouldn’t believe them if I did.” Here’s intelligence for you! Can the blind lead the blind? Shall they not both fall into the ditch?

When the hard-working nations arrive to take our place in these , new and empty lands—Jap, or heathen Chinese, or resuscitated and regenerated German—they will not find in the watersider a mila-eyed melancholy lotus-eater, rotting at ease on Lethe’s wharf. It will not be as in the Tennyson lay:

In the afternoon they came unto a land In which it always acemeth afternoon. That is what they would find if they waited long enough. But they are not going to wait. They will kill our commerce by offering the world better products at lower prices, and we shall be unable to buy because unable to sell. They will come in war ships; they will land with rifles and machine guns; they will find the labour agitator preaching “go-slow” and organising strikes; they will, find the conscientious objector objecting to fight. • Handing over both to the drill sergeant, they will, go up to possess the good laaid of which we have proved ourselves unworthy. It would pay the Government to get an American company to stage this consummation for the piovies, and then get it' shown gratis in every picture theatre. Failing this, which is a counsel of perfection, let the Minister of Education illuminate his school walls with Hogarth’s picture series, “ Industry and Idleness,” —twelve cartoons, in which two London apprentices, starting with equal chances, pursue each his several way, the one achieving the Lord Mayor’s coach and Guildhall, the other the hangman’s cart and Tyburn tree.

Jury squaring,— is it possible that this nefarious art should flourish in a civilisation such as ours? Apparently yea. The Melbourne Argus writes thus: It is lamentable that jury squaring has grown to such proportions in Melbourne that the measures taken against the evil have nfrt been successful. When publication of the names of jurymen was stopped it was thought that some- ’ tiling had been done, but this did not prevent jurors being marked when sitting in the box, and directly approached during intervals in the hearing of a case. The jury system as the “palladium of our liberties ”is a common boast. It is true that juries may be bullied from the bar, or flattered and cajoled; also that they may be misdirected from the bench. And there may be truth in the opinion of Mr Perker (see Bardell v. Pickwick, report by O. Dickens) that the finding of a jury may turn, on what the foreman had for breakfast. “ A contented, well-breakfasted juryman is a good thing to get hold of. Discontented or hungry jurymen always find for the 1- plaintiff.” “Bless my heart,” said Mr Pickwick, looking very blank; “ what do they do that for?”

“ Why, I don’t know.” replied Mr Porker, coolly, “ saves time 1 suppose. If it’s near dinner time, the foreman takes out his watch when the jury have retired, and says, ‘Dear me, gentlemen, ten minutes to five. I declare 1 I dine at five.' ‘So do I,’ says every-. ■' body else, . except two men who ought to have dined at three, and seem half disposed to stand out in consequence. . The foreman smiles and puts up his watch; —‘ Well, gentlemen, who do we say?—plaintiff or defendant, gentlemen ? I rather think, so far as I am concerned, gentlemen,—l say, I rather think.—but don’t let that, influence you—l rather think the plaintiff’s the man.’ Upon this, two or three other men are sure to say that they think so too; and then they get on very unanimously and comfortably. . . .” Spite of tfll, it is the glory of our judicial system that it gets twelve good men and true into a box, swears them, bids them hear and ‘ decide. Even tho number twelve has mystic sanction. Says a seventeenth century eulogist; “Jurymen are twelve, like as the .prophets were twelve to foretell the truth; the apostles twelve to preach the truth; the spies twelve, sent into Canaan to seek and report the truth; and the stones twelve that the heavenly Jerusalem ‘is built on.” Who at this time of day would suppose that in the Australian courts, there are members of the sacred twelve who can be bought by money? If it were Ireland, the happy Ireland of the Lever novels, jury-bribing would seem congenial to the soil. (For defending Tim or Larry, in danger of hia neck, friends club together to fee a big Dublin lawyer. Big lawyer arrives, fee in prospect but unpaid. Nor is it paid. “ No,” say the friends, “we spint it on the jury.” -

Mr H. G. Wells, although .1 man of gepius, is no idol of mine. His novels, like those of Mr Arnold Bennett, have a disagreeable tang, and leave a bad taste in the mouth. A review of one of them by the Spectator was headed “A Poisonous Book.” But this need not stand in the way of my quoting from his book about Russia an estimate of Marx, —Karl Marx, who, according to Sir Robert Stout, is the subject of propaganda (delightful word, own brother in vagueness to proletariat) —the subject of propaganda in the classes of the Workers’ Educational Association. It will be best if I write about Marx without any hypocritical deference. I have always regarded him as a Bore of the extremes! sort. His vast unfinished work, Das Kapital, a cadence of wearisome volumes about such phantom unrealities as the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, a book for ever maundering away into tedious secondary discussions, impresses me as a monument of pretentious pedantry. But before I went to Russia on this last occasion I, had no active hostility to Marx. I avoided his works, and when I encountered Marxists I disposed of them by asking them to tell me exactly what people constituted the proletariat. None of them knew. No Marxist knows. In Gorki’s flat I listened with attention while Bokaiev_ discussed with Shalyapin the fine nuestion of whether in Russia there was a proletariat at all, distinguishable from the peasants. As Bokaiev has been head of the Extraordinary Commission of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat in Petersburg, it was interesting to note the fine difficulties of the. argument. Here let me break off lb quote—apropos of this reference to Russian officials—Mr Wells’s account of an official attempt to hoodwink and befool him when visiting by arrangement a Bolshevist school. The special guide who was with us then began to question these children upon the subject of English literature and the writers thev liked most. One name dominated all others. My own. Such comparatively trivial figures as Milton. Dickens, Shakespeare ran about intermittently between the feet of that literary colossus. Being questioned further, these children produced the title® of perhaps a dozen of my books. I said I was completely satisfied by what I had seen and heard, that I wanted to see nothing more—for indeed what more could I possibly reouire? —and 'I left that school smiling with difficulty.

Now let us get back to Karl Marx—and prolctariat-ond propaganda:

The “proletarian” in the Marxist jargon is like the “ producer ” in the jargon of some political economists, who is supposed to be a creature absolutely distinct and different from the “ consumer.” So the proletarian is a figure put into flat opposition to something called capital. I find in large type outside the current number ot the Plebs, “The working class and the employing class have nothing in common.” ' The stuff is sheer nonsense. In Russia I must confess mv passive objection to Marx has changed to a very active hostility. Wherever we went wo encountered busts, portraits, and statues of Marx. About two-thirds of the face of Marx is beard, a vast solemn woolly uneventful heard that' must have made all normal exercise impossible. It is not the sort of beard that happens to a man, it is a beard cultivated, cherished, and thrust patriarchally upon the world. It is exactly like Das Kapital in its inane abundance, and the human part of the face looks over it owlishly as if it looked to see how the growth impressed < mankind. I found the omnipresent images of that beatd, mors and more irritating. A gnawing desire grow upon me to see Karl Marx shaved.

I commend this for devotional reading in all classes of the Workers’ Educational Association.

Belated, but otherwise laudable, is the movement to erect a Dunedin War Memorial. The committee to that end appointed have resolved on many things, amongst others this: “ A great memorial meeting ih the Drill Hall on the first night of the campaign, massed brass bands, short addresses by men who have seen service in Gallipoli, Palestine, and the other battle fronts. Two thanksgiving addresses by good speakers—one man and one woman.”

And, in particular: The “Hallelujah Chorus” to be sung by the whole audience, led by the bands and the Choral Society. Up to this time the record performance of the Hallelujah Chorus was when Handel, after a successful season in Dublin, brought his “ Messiah ” oratorio to London, March 23, 1749. Let me quote from,Grove: It is related that on this occasion the , audience was exceedingly struck and affected by the musio in general, but when that part of the Hallelujah Chorus began, “For the Lord God omnipotent reigneth’’ they were so transported, that they all, with the king, who was present, started to their feet, and remained standing till _ the chorus ended. The custom of rising during' the performance of the Hallelujah Chorus originated from this" incidentBut the- Dunedin War Memorial Committee is going to break all records. The Hallelujah Chorus is to be sung “ by the whole audience.” Nothing‘seems lacking but a jazz band, which, it is hoped, the audience will supply—tin kettles, glass bottles, castanets, mouth organs, , And may I be there to see.

From Otekaike a correspondent announces the discovery (in a Daily Times 1 advertisement) of a rival to the Learned Pig—namely, a ram that can answer the telephone. Dear Oivis, —Among the conveniences of a bungalow house on a sheep station advertised for sale in the Otago Daily Times of the 19th inst. are “hot and Cold water laid on from ram and connected by telephone.” _ How does it work? Evidently you ring up the ram, and the ram turns on hot or cold. Another country correspondent (Waimate this time) detects in a Daily Times advertisement ghastly suggestions of Burke and Hare: Butchery business for sale. (In highly flourishing condition.) In one of Canterbury’s best towns. Doing six bodies and forty sheep per week. Roger Riderhood, in “Our Mutual-Friend,” earning his bread in the sweat of his brow, as he says, patrols the river Thames for bodies —“dem’d moist unpleasant bodies” in Mr Mantalini’s phrase—that he may appropriate any valuables there may be about tnem. But the resurrectionists Burke and Hare, as every Edinburgh man remembers, operated in the interests of science. They sold their “bodies” to the surgeons. “Waimate” would like to know whether this Canterbury butchery has any business relations with the Dunedin Medical School. One other correspondent may he squeezed into this nonsense paragraph : i Wanted to know—The subject of the following advertisement: .... this drink is a very wholesome and physical drink, having many excellent virtues, closes the orifice of the stomach, fortifies the health, helpeth digestion, quiokeneth_ the spirit, maketh the heart gladsome, is good against eye *Ol-1.3, ooughs or colds, rhumes, consumption, headaches, dropsie, gout, scurvy, king’s evil, and many others. No,—it is not a patent medicine. “This drink” is “the drink called ooCee,” and the advertisement is from the “Public Advertiser” of 1657. Before it became a breakfast beverage coffee was a drug,— no common drug, but a panacea, a universal cure-all.

THE ROYAL GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY.

AN EXPLORER HONOURED. SEAPLANES' FOR POLAR RESEARCH. (Fhou Oub Own Cobeespondent.) LONDON, December 23. It was unfortunate that Dr W. S. Bruce, head of the Scottish Oeanographioal Society, Edinburgh, was unable to be present at the meeting of the Royal Geographical Society, which was held to present to him the gold medal of the American Geographical Society of New York, for his distinguished services in the interests of scientific research. Sir Francis Younghusband was in the chair, and Mr Davis (American Ambassador) paid a warm tribute to Dr 'Bruce’s work as Arctic and Antarctic 1 explorer, naturalist, botanist, and zoologist . The medal was accepted on behalf of Dr Bruce by Dr Rudmore Brown, techier, in geography at Sheffield University. CAPTAIN SCOTT MEMORIAL. Subsequently a paper on the “Future of Polar Exploration” was read by Mr Frank Debenham, who announced that the trustees ot the Captain Scott Memorial Fund had decided, with a portion of the funds, to establish a Polar Research Institute. The institute will be attached to the Department of Geography at Cambridge, and its' aims will include the encouragement and assistance of future Polar expeditions and the provision of facilities for the publication of research work. Mr Debenham justified the continuance of polar exploration in the interests not only of science, including meteorology, but of commerce, pointing to the £20,000,000 realised by the whaling industry in Antarctic waters, which had been made possible by South Polar discoveries.

After showing that in the past polar exploration had more than paid financially by tiho new industries it had revealed or opened up, and that from the scientific side it is of no less practical value —meteorologists cannot learn how to foretell tho weather accurately until they know more about conditions at tho polos,—Mr Dcbenhara turned to future methods of polar travel. Up to now, he said, the dog has proved paramount as a means of locomotion. Mechanical transport had been tried in tho form of wheeled motor cars, an aero engine fitted to a sledge, and a caterpillar tractor; bht mechanical transport would necessarily he confined to comparatively level areas vnte suitable surface. In his view the airship might at one© bo dismissed as being far too expensive and fragile except when working from civilised and inhabited centres. For detailed work the heavier-than-air machine was much more likely to be of value. But the dhances of a safe landing with an aeroplane on such country would be very small. By seaplanes from ships excellent work could be done, and they might add considerably, not only to speed of manoeuvre in packinfested waters, but to tibe chances of survival of a besot ship. Tho seaplane would have a very definite value as a pilot alone, even though it could only ,bc employed in comparatively loose pack-icc. As an auxiliary for plotting coastlines it would be invaluable. Tho enclosing of both engine and crew in a suitably shaped body would overcome many practical difficulties of temperature and air-blast; the evolution of special alternative landing-gear to adapt the seaplane to emergency landing on sea ioe would be another line of experiment likely to produce fruitful results.