PASSING NOTES.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19529, 11 July 1925, Page 6

PASSING NOTES.

And Unger shivering on the brink, Afraid to launch away. Thus the fusionists of both sides. They will and they won’t, they should and they shouldn’t, it might do and it mightn’t;—so for weeks, dawdling, dubitating, letting “ ‘I dare not’ wait upon ‘ I would,’ ” at one moment on the verge of the plunge, the next shirking it again, and all the time knowing that they must take it in the end —a pretty figure our chosen patriots are cutting. Call you this the Collective Wisdom of the Nation? said Carlyle of the Parliament of hia day, —“the Collective Folly rather.” In the main all Parliaments are alike. That Mr Coates knows better than I do his business as Prime Minister I cheerfully concede; but if I were in his shoes I should straightway offer to divide portfolios with the other side. Other things might then be left to sort themselves and fall into position as best they could. Sheer madness, perhaps, or perhaps the heroic remedy.

Meanwhile it is “Mark time! Wait and see! Amuse yourselves by discussing the Addross-in-Reply.” To the wondering constituencies this A d dress- i n-Reply prologue seems a childish business. Is it for this that we pay them those hundreds a year? But fusion is still in the air—a circumambient influence, —Reformer and Liberal aro diplomatically careful about treading on each other’s toes ; and so the customary foolish talking on the Address-in-Reply has been abandoned to the Labour comer. Air Howard brought up the leaking of a steam pipe on the ferry boat Mararoa, delaying that venerable argosy hours and hours between Lyttelton and Wellington. What was the Government going to do about it ? The same Air Howard, who holds one of the Christchurch seats, told a pathetic story of Christchurch poverty. “ Within a few minutes of Cathedral square there were houses in which blankets were unknown, and where newspapers and coal sacks alone graced the bods on these cold winter evenings.” Apparently there are no charitable agencies in Christchurch. Who was to blame for these harrowing miseries? It is the old story—•

Who makes the quartern loaf and Luddites rise? Who (Ills the butchers’ shops with large blue, (lies ? The Government, of course; who else?

Archbishop Mannix, of Melbourne, is visiting Ireland, —as a dove of peace, may we think? A charitable thought, but needing a large faith. The Mannix politics as we have had reason to know them suggest rather a stormy petrel or other bird of ill omen. The persons to meet and greet the Archbishop in Dublin were Mr de Valera and Count Plunkett, rebels both. Barring the satire of a Nationalist newspaper, ether notice he seems to have had none until ho got down to Cork and listened to an address of welcome five years old, prepared for him in 1920 but never presented. Like the ham-and-eggs revolutionist now under discipline in Wellington, Archbishop Mannix was adjudged an undesirable immigrant—an uncomfortable form of martyrdom for a dignitary of the Church. Anyhow, so it iwas. and the Archbishop returned to Melbourne re infecta, bis Irish visit balked. By this time perhaps he will have learned wisdom. '

De Valera cropping up again! Most of us thought he had gone under finally. But, no, —he is accessible to the faithful at the Republican Offices on the first and second floor of an Insurance building :n Suffolk street, Dublin. _ An “Overseas Irishman’’ has been writing articles in the Spectator under the heading “Ireland After Six Years.” This visitor tried his luck at the Republican Offices.

I asked Mr Stack, the secretary, if I might see Air de Valera, and ho at once sent a young lady to find if “the President,” were disengaged. For Republicans there is only one President, and ho is Eamon do Valera* Shortly afterwards I found myself in the presence of the Republican leader. Mr do Valera is exactly like his cartoons and pictures. Tall, thin, angular, with tousled hair, wearing gold-run glasses, a soft collar, black tie and blue sorgo suit, ho impresses you as an able man, who is entirely master of his subject. He is in deadly earnest. You feel that he is applying his mathematical mind to polities. There is little compromise about him, and ho believes in Irish SovereigntVj complete and without limitation, just as much as he did on Easter Monday, 1916. Mr do Valera gives you his whole attention as you ply him with questions and is perfectly ready to explain his point of view. He talks rather rapidly with a not very pronounced Irish brogue mixed with a slight foreign accent.

And a foreigner he is, bom in New York, his father a Spanish Dago. “Air President” if you please, and of the “Irish Republic.” A hollow business this. The Free State is gradually making good; the other day Air Tim Healy, GovernorGeneral (at £IO,OOO a year) was dining in London with the Duke and Duchess of York; the correspondent of a London paper writes: At the Gaiety Theatre, Dublin, May 14 last, during the last scene of “The Pirates of Penzance,” the British flag was displayed amid prolonged and hearty applause from a large audience. Again, on the evening of May 21 last, when “lolanthe” was performed to a very large audience, the song, “When Britain really ruled the waves,” was twice enthusiastically encored. Yesterday (Empire Day) the National Anthem was sung in all the Protestant churches.

Even with the spiritual support of Dr Mann Lx—if he gets it, and the chances are that he won’t—de Valera is a negligible quantity.

My friend the enemy. Pussyfoot to wit, —our aim is the same though our methods are poles asunder, —my 'misguided colleague is getting a headache this week over the American cables. He believes them cooked,” but it puzzles him that the cooking takes a humorous turn. They depict a veritable tragi-comedy. Fleeing from Washington politics and the snubbings of Congress, “ respite; respite, and Nepenthe ! ” sighs President Coolidge as he sinks luxuriously into a long chair on the verandah of his summer retreat, the cottage by the sea; when, 10, the shock of his life. Away in the offing is Rum Row, flaunting itself defiantly before his eyes. “Is there no escape?”—he exclaims, grabbing for the telephone to mobilise the Atlantic Fleet. And if he steadies his nerves with a whisky and soda I don’t blame him. I have no pity for Rum Row. I abandon Rum Row to the tender mercies of the Atlantic licet, Air sympathies are all for the President with a tyrannous sumptuary law on his hands which it is impossible to enforce.

Not even in the Army can it ho enforced. Someone sends me the British Medical Journal for Alay 16, in which a page is given to the “ Annual Report of the Surgeon-General U.S. Army, 1924; W ashing ton ; Government Printing Office, 1924.” I pick out one item of fact:

The hospital admissions for alcoholism. although lower than in 1922, were higher than in any other year of the deca.de. The report states that this was probablv due to the injurious character of the illicit liquor consumed in recent

years. I supplement this by a newspaper estimate of the state of things throughout the country: Chicago Illustrated Journal, May 13, 1925:

Secretary Hoover estimates that 40,0C0,000d0l worth of liquor was smuggled into the United States last year', and that this price represents about 1.333,000 cases of “hard stuff.” Practically all students of conditions consider this estimate far too low. California is raising more wine grapes than ever before, and selling them at higher prices. Other wine-making substances —black figs, for example—find a

ready market, and yield a vast amount of intoxicating beverages. Alillions and millions of gallons of home-brewed malt

liquors are made and consumed. Moonshine is being distilled nut of everything, from potatoes <o furniture polish, in such quantities that it has taken about 100 lives in Cook Countv alone since the first of the year. Adding all these items, one. gets soma idea of the

“ dryness ” of tho nation. It is a little drier than Lake Michigan, and a good deal wetter than tho Skokie marsh. Meanwhile tho whole body of law is brought into contempt by the resentment Against and wholesale violations of this law. Tho underworld has found a now source of profit and immunity in providing drinks for the upper. The increase of crime noted everywhere in the country is a natural consequence of this condition. I have here at hand and could quote similar editorial comments from almost every State in the Union. But ono is enough. Ex uno disee omnes. Dear “Civis,” —As you are aware, “ style ” in a printing office amounts almost to a fetish with all conscientious operators (and comps.). Occasionally hltlo matters crop up upon which no authority is available. Hero are a few. Will you please enlighten? (1) Is it a fact that diphthongs are now obsolete? (2) In referring to a clergyman whoso initials are not given, is there rule authorising the use of “Mr ’? (Rev. Mr Jones.) (3) la there anv authority for pronouncing such Maori words as Otahuhu and us though there wore no final “u”? (4) Should the word “Varsity” be preceded by an apostrophe? (5) Is it grammaticallv correct to say. “Us New Zealanders are a democratic people ”? In connection with (1) I once had occasion to set up a Latin examination paper in which none of tho “ ce’s or “ jr,’s “ was marked. In mv ignorance T used dinbtbongs in such words ns Caesar. Phoebe, and Italae, but the author’s proof, when returned, contained an intimation to the effect that the dinbtho”g was now out of, onto. Concerning (4), some of us contend that .as “ Varsity ” is reallv a coined word or a nickname, an anostroobe is wrong, and that if it is to be marked at all it should bo within inverted commas. Spackbanp. I answer categorically, ferule in hand. (1) Diphthongs obsolete, —absurd! We might as well talk of the alphabet as •obsolete. A diphthong is a diphthong whether its two vowels are conjoined or separate. That is an affair of tho printer. The oxftminGr preterit-cl separate vowels, and directed the printer accordingly. Usage tends to justify him (2) “ The" Rev. Mr Jones,”— -why not ! “ The Rev. Fattier Jones ” is a form m good standing. You can’t say “ the Rev. Jones,” still less “ the Rev. Blank Blank Jones.” (3) Maori place-names, if adopted, should be kept in their Maori form. “ Wakatip ” is neither Maori nor English. (4) The word Varsity preceded hv an apostrorhe. would imply tho form Univarsity, which is ridiculous; turned commas would mean that you were quoting. The word may be left unqualified. It the undergraduate mind, and has a wide range of usefulness. _ ” I. he Varsity Boat Race” is good English, and so is the convivial refrain — It’s a way wo have in the Army, It’s a way wo have in the Navy, It’s a way w r e have in tho Varsity, And eo say all of us (5) “Us New Zealanders are . . oh dear! The pronoun is object, not subject, and needs a preposition or transitive verb at the back of it. Say, if you please, “Wo New Zealanders are . . But time is up;—class dismissed. There is no accounting for taste, hence there is no accounting for the fact that the Waikouaiti people have been amusing themselves by a mock marriage. In tho Anglican Hall, the Anglican minister presiding. Had it been in the Railway Bloods Shed, if there is one, the parish constable presiding, a countp.rfeit secular marriage by the Registrar would have had less of scandal and less of laughter. Tlio mock marriage described in the Daily Times mocked a religious ceremony. Therein lay tho fun of it A bell was tolled, there was an “officiating minister” (by happy chance a layman), and then “after a humorous yet instructive ceremony had been performed’ the guests partook of a well-spread breakfast” —etc, etc. Tho natural sequence will be a mock baptism. Was there not at New Brighton lately a mock funeral, followed by proceedings in the Magistrate’s Court? I notice that the Returned Soldiers will not allow Anzac Day to bo desecrated by so much as a League of Nations Peace Lecture. But religious services lie open to parody without a defender. Waikouaiti sets the fashion. Cms.