PASSING NOTES.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18766, 20 January 1923, Page 4

PASSING NOTES.

Reporting the French advance in full panoply of war, a North Otago paper has it thus: It is understood that thanks will precede the troops, and that cavalry, artillery, and aeroplanes will bo extensively used.

Thanks will go before, and gratitude will follow after. At the moment, gratitude shows itself in stormy demonstrations, anti-French, and by an occasional shower of road metal or other missiles. Companj directorships and the like have fled to Hamburg; any hard cash in their possession the banks have transferred to places outside the French radius of action, retaining only Merman paper money (78,000 marks to the £). Elsewhere Germany is observing half-hour strikes and two-minute meditations, and is singing “Deutschland über allcs,” a dolorous ditty when the facts are a flat contradiction. Meanwhile it does not appear that the French are getting much coal or anything else of value out of the Ruhr. They have advanced to Dortmund, which advance .is another turn of the screw. But if Germany is really a fraudulent debtor, able to pay but refusing, an advance upon Berlin itself is indicated— Marshal Foch at the head of a couple of smart cavalry regiments, tanks (or “thanks") in front as before. The moral effect would be immense, the material effect no less. For the fraudulent debtor would pay up. Anything to get the bailiffs out of the house!

How is this reason (which is their reason) to judge a scholar’s worth, By casting a ball at three straight sticks and defending the same with a

fourth? But this they do (which is doubtless a

spell) and other matters more strange, Until, by the operation of years, the hearts of their scholars change. But in the matter of cricket the hearts of their scholars never change. “Operation of years,’’ forsooth! At Carisbrook this week there were rounded shoulders, beards touched by time, eyes that had conic to spectacles. Kipling is telling of cricket as it strikes the Eastern mind, in particular public school cricket, and the rank, high or low, that proficiency in cricket gives the scholar. How is this reason? asks the Baboo. How is it reason that cricket averages should count in assigning a Rhodes scholarship? To the Eastern mind it is mere unreason; hence the easy conclusion ; For Allah created the English mad—the maddest of mankind.

If devotion to competitive sport is madness, the English are irretrievably mad. All sport is competitive, from the Derby down to hopscotch. Competition is of the essence. Children hopping on the pavement hop competitively. There is a touch of sport in commerce even. For commerce is competitive. The business man is interested not only in making money, but in outstripping his business rivals'. Competition —hence efficiency, and the public is the better served. Socialism, in proposing to get rid of competition, betrays its fatal ignorance of human nature

Cricket would still be cricket though reduced to the elementary form of “casting a ball at three straight sticks and defending the same with a fourth. It would be a competition between bowler and batsman, and conceivably that might bo the game—-no runs at all. We had an approach to this at Carisbrook—-stone-walling—and the public didn't like‘it. The cricket preferred is that of All-Mug-gletnn against Dingier Dell, as reported in the classics, and Dnmklns and Fodder at the wickets, Liififey bowling:

Tho umpires were stationed behind the wickets: the scorers were prepared to notch the runs; a breathless silence ensued. Mr LufToy retired a few paces behind the wicket of the passive Fodder, and applied tho ball to bis right eye for several seconds. Duinkins confidently awaited its coming, with his eyes fixed on tho motions of Lnffey. “Play.’’ suddenly cried the bowder. The bail flew from his hand straight and swift towards the centre stump of the wicket. The wary Dumkins was on tho alert; it fell upon the tip of the hat. and bounded far away over the heads of tho scouts, who had just stooped low enough to let it fly over them. “Run—run —another. —Now, then, throw her up—stop there—another — no —yes —no—throw her up. ’ -t'ueh were the shouts which followed the stroke, and at the conclusion of which All-Mugpleton had scored two.

That js cricket as the general public likes it, and to the general public I say ditto.

Dear “Civis,”—Will anyone dare to say that Scotchmen are not lovers of sport? A lover of cricket who hails from Scotland walked from Palmerston S. (33 miles) to see Otago play the Englishmen at cricket. The fates were against him, for when ho arrived at the destination he obtained a very imperfect view of the game. After bis exertion he was 100 tired to climb tho fence, and had perforce to join tho “deadheads" who lino tho fence on the hill above tho railway linn on tho Groat South road when there is any important function on at Carisbrook.

This variant on the “Bang went saxpcnce!" story may pass; it enables me to remark that Scottish thrift is a virtue. More than a virtue, thrift is a revenue. Which truth—if so far away an authority as Cicero may bo cited—men are slow to grasp : “Non intellegnnt homines quam magnum vectignl sit parsimonia. Scottish thrift is nearly related to Scottish generosity. In public charities deriving from private benefactions no town in the Empire beats Edinburgh.

Whv was Rndyard Kipling not made Poet Laureate? " Because Mr Asquith, Prime Minister, preferred Robert Bridges, a preference not intelligible and since repented, 1 should think. Dr Bridges had published poetry, much poetry and goad— I don’t deny its quality; hut it was poetry that challenged no attention, and never reached the public ear. Since the laurel came to him what has Dr Bridges published?- during the bitter war time, how much? —and to what effect? Does anybody remember? I do not, for one. Alexander Pope in the. Dunciad gibbets the typical poetaster of his time, haply a poet laureate:

He gnawed bis pen, then dashed it on the ground, Sinking from thought to thought, a vast profound ; Plunged for Ilia sense, hut found no hot tom there, Yet wrote and floundered on, in more, despair. . . . etc., etc. 'l'llere is no need to think of Dr Bridges thus: but small blame to ns if we did I A poet laureate whoso habit is to hide in silence behind his hays can expect no lavish courtesies.

It is objected against the Kipling verse that it is too little serious, lacks dignity, turns too much on the humorous ; hence cornea short of being poetry. Eubbish I The same objection would rule out Horace. The Spectator, always of the true, faith in this matter, suggests that there are single pieces on which the whole question of Kipling’s poetic quality might be staked, and instances “When Timer smote ‘is bloomin' lyre. ’ Or take 'The Song of the Banjo.” You couldn't pack a Broadwood half a mile— You mustn’t leave a fiddle in the dnmp— Yon couldn’t raft an organ up the Nile And play it in an Equatorial swamp. I travel with the cooking pots and pails, I’m sandwiched ’twixt the cotYee and the pork— And’when the dusty column checks and tails, You should hear mo spur tho rearguard to a walk! With my “Pilly-willy-winky-winky P°PP. ! ” , . , (Oh, it s any tunc that comes into my head!) So I keep them moving forward till they drop; So I play them up to water and to bod.

In the silence of the camp before the light,' When it’s good to make your will and say your prayer, You can hear my “stmmpfy-tuinpty” overnight Explaining ten to. one was always fair. I’m the Prophet of tho Utterly Absurd, Of tho Patently Impossible and Vain — And when tho Thing that Couldn't has occurred, Give me leave to change my leg and go again. With my “Tumpa-tumpa-tuniovtum-pa-tnmp !" In the desert, where tho dung-fed camp smoko curled There was never voice before us till I led our lonely chorus, I—tho war-drum of the White Man round the world! Tliere arc eight verses of this, each belter than the other. Kipling is said to 'no among the “best sellers.” 1 lay little stress on that. But no one in our time has como nearer to the ideal of a national singer. “The Hundred Best Books” —there is no such thing, says Professor Quillcr-Couch, addressing hia Cambridge undergraduates. And he is right seven times over. There is no absolute “best”; the term is relative to the mind that judges, and if the mind that judges is the mind of a noodle, what then? My best may be your worst, and vice versa—one man's meat is another man’s poison. “The Twelve Best Tunes’’ are being debated in some of the London papers (it must he the Silly Season). One list begins with “Humoresque ’ (Dvorak), and ends with “Gavotte, Mignon” (Ambroiso Thomas). Does any reader of this column know either? What about “Yankee-doodle” and the latest fox trot? “Yillikins and His Dinah.” I am afraid, is forgotten. Another set of numskulls is arguing about “Tho Six Greatest Men”—greatest of all the world in all the ages. Comparisons are odious (or odorous, a® Shakespeare makes Dogberry say; either form will serve). How arc you going to compare a soldier with a poet, to say whicli is the greater; or a modern statesman with a mediaeval saint? Your numskull sees no difficulty. He will pitch upon Alexander, who died of a debauch, ns one of the world s greatest men ; or upon Napoleon, who brought the affairs of himself and his people to a ghastly smash. Or —and this is a fact he will fill in his list with Lincoln, Darwin, and (charming bathos!) Emerson, a New England Unitarian lecturer. Apropos, hero is an American story; In Now York a. group of men wero discussing who was the greatest man that had ever lived. Caesar, Homer. Alexander, Napoleon, Lincoln —all the great world heroes were mentioned and canvassed. Then someone suggested the name of Jesus, and in tho silence that fell unanimity seemed certain, when a Jew broke in with the remark: “Yes, but the follow who invented interest was no fool.” Scots who derive from the ’kingdom of Fife” may have in memory the Bov. Dr Boyd, of St. Andrew’s, who, in days gone' by, entertained the readers of 'Traser with “The Recreations of a Country Parson.” Why a parson of the “royal burg” should style himself a country parson, passed without note; but his recreations had a vogue. He discoursed on “Tfie Art of Putting Things,” an art of great nicety. There was a university don who in a letter of condolence to the father of an undergraduate accidentally drowned in a swimming bath wrote: “As your sou had unfortunately failed to satisfy the examiners in Rcsponsioiis, he would have had to go down in any case. The art of putting things ! There was a theological college student who, “wagging

his pow in a poopit,” took the text, ‘As the hart panteth.” He would speak, lie said; “On the pants of the_ Psalmist, (2) on pants in general, and (3) on some Free Church pants.” Might have been a tailor. Again, there was an eminent Scottish minister who in a popular lecture descanted on the “hardships of undergrads at Aberdeen in his young days, their spartan oatmeal diet and their dreary bare lodgings.” Against this austere background he painted a. vivid word-picture of the sybaritic luxuriousness of the Oxford undergraduate. “Look at him,” ho said, “ns ho sprawls in his sumptuously upholstered study chair, with his legs stretched across to another chair — a cushion under his head, another cushion under his feet, and a third cushion under his —(then he remembered his mixed audience) —under his —his superincumbent mass.” Everyone gasped; then they cheered at the clever recovery out of the rough.

And at the happy way of putting it. These examples are preliminary to a .Dunedin man’s way of putting it, when, in a letter to a friend, he wrote: “My wife® mother was away for a time. We were glad to see her back.” Painfully ambiguous! Or, as Punch would say, might have been otherwise expressed. Givis.