PASSING NOTES.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18601, 8 July 1922, Page 4

PASSING NOTES.

Will there over be another -war? There may,: but you mustn’t say so. For saying so Mr Massey has been solemnly put to rebuke bv a North Island Presbytery. In Dunedin, the tone of our annual meeting of the Navy League approached the apologetic. Why talk any more of warships, and guns, and villainous saltpetre? From the League of Nations point of view, I suppose, the Navy and the Navy League alike are anachronisms needing apology. In Sydney, Labour announces that it will make next Armistice Day a Day of Protest. Against what?—against things in general; in particular against admitting the possibility of war. We heard the other day of some devoted region about to be devastated by locust swarms. The invaders were advancing in a column three hundred miles long. If a human locust column three hundred miles long impinged upon North Australia from China and Japan, it would put some grains of sense into Australian Labour’s vacant brain-pan. But there is really nothing new under the sun. This disposition to relax our limbs and bemuse our wits in a Fool’s Paradise, getting rid of risk by refusing to see it, after the manner of the ostrich that sticks its head into the sand,—-this absurdity was the absurdity of our fathers before us, and from them we inherit. Our fathers of a century back had their Great War, a war, hardly less great than ours; and when it was over, in 1815, there was a strong movement to abolish the army altogether, on the ground that another war was almost unthinkable. For years after 1815 and Waterloo the army 1 consisted in actual strength of about 100,000 men, of whom 19,000 were in India and 20,000 in Ireland. ' The Duke of Wellington was only able to keep up this small force by hiding it away in distant parts of the empire; the total number of troops in Great Britain was only 26,000, Offices were ordered to efface themselves by ! never wearing uniform except on ! parade. A Royal Duke could not be given a military funeral, because “there were not troops enough to bury a Field Marshal.” (Rede Lecture for 1922, “The Victorian 1 Age,” by Dean Inge.) Veritably a Fool’s Paradise. For the French, beaten by us at Waterloo, and before Waterloo in the marvellous campaigns of the Peninsula, were lifting' up their heads again, had fortified Cherbourg, and were openly talking of' invasion. o “Lord Wolseley thinks that in 1837 50,000 Frenchmen could easily have taken London.” A few years later the Crimean War revealed in glaring colours our weakness“lf we had been fighting against any European power except Russia, with whom utter mismanagement is a tradition, there can be no doubt that our army would have been destroyed, as i’t ought to have been, at Inkerman.” No more war? What then of Ireland? I admit that the so-called “war” that is laying half Dublin in ruins may be merely a form of “divarsion.” Look at the “butcher’s bill.” Nobody wishes if bigger; but it is permissible to remark that the “butcher’s bill” is light. Father Dominic, who assisted at the suicidal hunger strike of Mayor M'Swiney, and has been acting as spiritual adviser to the rebel garrison of ,Four Courts, once wrote in a letter that got into print; “Sunday, November 21st (1920), was a wonderful day in Dublin.” Wonderful because on the morning of that day fourteen British officers were murdered—some in the presence of their wives—and five others wounded. On one day of the present “war’,’—with machine guns at work, explosive shells, rifles, bombs, hand grenades, armoured cars—have the casualties exceeded the total of Dominic’s “wonderful day” of murder. Both sides may be credited with a liberal expenditure of blank cartridge. An interesting later phase is the rebel occupation of hotels—Moran’s Hotel, Shelboume .Hotel, Gresham Hotel, the Swan public house, and so on—evacuated seriatim, probably when the whisky supply ran out. And then — The surrender the Irregulars was not marked by any of the sternness of war. As the captured men emerged the Free Staters shook hands with them, and there was a general atmosphere of smiles, laughter and good-will. We all wish luck to the merciful Free Staters. But if this be really war, what is the war-controlling League of Nations about? It is recorded in Rabelais, and may there be read, that Gargantua at ; the moment of his birth and with his first breath called for liquor, raising a shout ; that readied to all the villages round — “A boire, a boire, k boire I” (Come and have a drink!”). Pussyfoot of course will question the accuracy of this story. A Pike spirit of unbelief is evoked by a prophecy-monger —or, more politely, an interpreter of prophecies—who tells the Dunedin people that he began the study of Hebrew at the age of four. But these prodigies of precocity are only in line with the early doings of Mr W. Munro when bom into the world parliamentary in Wellington. After being sworn in at the table of the House as the new member .for Dunedin North, Mr Munro had barely reached the seat awaiting him in the Labour Comer when he presented a petition for redress- of grievances. Presently, at no great interval, he delivered an' anti-Governraent speech in support of Mr Holland’s attempt , to intercept Supply. Mr Munro’s embarrassments do not include modesty; there is no reason to think him shy. The recent contest in Dunedin North was fought on the salaries issue entirely. He was there as a result of the voice of the people, who were totally opposed to a reduction of civil service wages. He did not mention that the “the voice of the people” at Dunedin North meant that two out of every three electors on the roll either voted against him or did not vote at all. But that , is a detail. Mr Munro has got all right the election cry for December next —“No reduction in wages!” It is the one card that the heterogeneous Labs and Libs have to play—a false card, and they know it, and know the electors know it, but they will play it all the same. Election chances 'dominate everything with lion, members just now: “Shall we get back again to this place of privilege and pay?” They talk alxmt it with the open and ingenuous simplicity of children. The Saturnian festival that brought an annual topsy-turvey, for one brief day making Jack as good as his master, was welcomed by the Roman. populace, plebs and patres alike. Never a time perhaps when, as our play-book tells us, “the sheeted dead did squeak and gibber in the streets of Rome;” but a time there certainly was when the Roman streets echoed “io Saturnalia!” and slaves, sitting at the banquet, were served by their masters in memory of the Golden Age, the reign of Old Satumus, when differences of social rank were not as yet. After the same manner our University undergraduate establishes a day on which he may poke fun at his professor, reminding him that once on a time he too was a neophyte—haply a dunderhead—looked down on from the professorial chair with lofty condescension. That on the same day the madcap undergraduate should take charge of the town, compelling even the sober-sided police to complicity in his pranks, comes of the eruptive lawlessness betokening his age and stage. For a most exuberant university “rag” at St. Andrews see the daily papers; for Oxford Town and Gown see “Mr Verdant Greenfor lawlessness carried to the length’ of cruelty see “Stalky and Co.’' Or see the Eton reminiscences of the late Lord Salisbury:— Koally now Eton has become insupportable. I am bullied from morning to night without! ceasing. Just multiply . ton times the bullying I got under C —— and you will have some faint idea of what T get at present. . . . I have been kicked most unmercifully since I wrote to you last for refusing to do a fellow’s theme and got the sense for it. . . . He kicked mo and pulled my hair And pinched me. and hit me as hard as over for twenty minutes, and now I am aching in every joint and hardly able to write this. But there is no cruelty in the Otago undergntd,—oh dear no! —only humour; 'Olid in his prankiness we are all art and

part. Nobody has anything to complain of; nobody complains,—not the professor that is gibed at, nor the girl that is kissed. Talking of cruelties at Eton,—the Eton masters could sometimes be cruel. An •old Etonian tells this story; — . “There was a biff, rather stupid boy in our Division, on whom the master, ‘had a down’; and the master had just made this boy stand up and had chalked ASS on his book.” Now the Headmaster was Dr Edmond: Warre. “In came Warre and up stood l we. ‘Sit down, boys, sit down’; then, : fixing hia eyes on the victim, ‘Sit , down, —Some silly fellow has been writing his name on your back.’ The boy sat down, and stupid as ho, was, saw the joke all right. »iThe master turned scarlet to the roots of his hair; the Division all but exploded with glee. But Warre went on with the lesson, whatever it was, with a face of absolute guilolessness. It was an admirable bit of comedy, which, I expect, the master {who, inter alia, was an awfully good fellow) never forgot.” p The master was hard on the boy, Warre was liard on the master; and the story, all points considered, is rather hard on Dr Edmond Warre, his humanity, urbanity, sweet reasonableness. A hard case all round. From the Times literary Supplement—a specimen, two specimens, of the new poetry. Browning’s ruggedness and fitful obscurity may appeal to the new poet; Tennyson he avoids as a pestilence. The new poet, some one has said, “prefers to write verses that will not even scan.” First specimen—the opening of a piece .called “Evocation to Intellectuals,” by Robert M'Almon, (Egoist Press): Cerebral excitants cease at lost , To emanate from or dominate the coreliellunj* (Paracletes summoned to evoke 'Art emotion ■■ ' Make cutaneous incisions But the subjective cancer remains. The next, by the same minstrel, ‘‘description of a decadent type”: . . , Hie impregnated desires Tailored to a febrile birth In the eternal abdomen of abysmal futility And cling to existence Hovering despondently in the vicinity Where those of divine malady are incarcerated* If antithesis to Tennyson is to he sought in ugliness, here we have, it; in point of obscurity Browning’s “Sordello” comes in a doubtful second. Here seems a' - fit place for a negro revival hymn that interests me, —reported from Ole Yirginny or somewhere in that neighbourhood:— Graveyard,’’ you ought to Iknow me. — t Graveyard,. O Graveyard. Graveyard, you ought to know me.— Kang Jc-ru-sa-lem. I call'for Zion’s mourners.—Graveyard, O Graveyard. My poor feverish body.—Graveyard, 0 Graveyard. My body bound in grave-clothes.—Grave-yard, 0 Graveyard, We are going to Zion’s Court House. — Graveyard, 0 Graveyard. King Je-ru-sarlem. I put the three pieces together as being pretty much on about the same intellectual level. A last word on the fencing | problem:— 3rd July, 1922. Dear "Civis,”—“One© let an arithmetical puzzle into Passing Notes, there is no getting it out ogam.” Just to prove the trutty 1 of your remark, j may I return ’ to the fencing problem? “Stony Creek” and myself arrived at the same result, (174,240 rails, 174,240 acres). • Your third correspondent says 10,890, exactly one-sixteenth of our figures. The discrepancy is _ great, but. is easily accounted for if this solver of ,the problem was working on the as- ■ sumption that the fence was to be one-railed, whilst we calculated for a ' four-railed. , That this js the explanation of the difference is very probable, for your country correspondent of a few weeks back mis-stated the problem, saying the fence Was to bo 4ft high, whereas, according to the original statement, it was to be a four-railed fence, and no mention was made of height. I take it that the 10,890 man saw only the mis-stated problem, and worked .accordingly. It is satisfactory to think, that there is no necessity for “averag-i ing” results, and that we all agree, — which is more than can be said just now of our friends in Ireland. I have received from correspondents two other “problems;” but for the present 1 have sworn off.. Some of these arithmetical ingenuities—traps for the unwary, tests for the simpleton—conform when all is done to a well-known type: “Given the tonnage, the port of departure, and the captain’s name, to find the position of the ship.” Civis.