PASSING NOTES.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19964, 4 December 1926, Page 6

PASSING NOTES.

If by ill-chance wc come to serious war with the Chinese, we shall have to concentrate our attention on place-names — Canton, Shanghai, Hankow, Peking, and the like. Chinese personal names —the Changs and Wangs and Fengs—arc mere bewilderment. Where precisely a place may be matters little; Hankow, for instance, just now very much in the cables, is a port, not on the coast, but hundreds of miles up a river. Place-names are distinctive, and we don’t mix them up. The Changs and Wangs and Fengs of China are loss hideous, it is true, than Russian names, —for example, as recited by Byron at the siege of Ismail: There wns Strongunoff and Ptrokonoff, Meknop, Sergo Lon', Aranicw of modern Greece, And Tschitsshakoff, and Eoguonoff, and Chokcnoff, And others of twelve consonants apiece. The Soviet supplies similar jaw-breakers to-day. The Chinese, who have adopted the boycott from the West, might make themselves more credible as human beings by taking over Western names—Brown, Jones, and Robinson, say, or even Tom, Dick, and Harry. We should better know what wc were about, and with whom wc had to do. British astronomers are preparing anxiously for a total eclipse of the sun. “Next year, for the first time for 200 years, a total eclipse of the sun will be visible in Great Britain, and for 24 seconds” ;—so we read. The use of an eclipse of the sun is to certificate the astronomers that have predicted it. The eclipse keeps time—the day, the hour, the minute, set for it years before. And this is the answer of the heavens to unbelievers like Mr George Bernard Shaw, a dramatist of name and fame, but in science matters, as in theology and economics, a heretic. Listen to him: — I hope wo shall soon hear the last of the millions of light years, and the Betolgucses as big as half a dozen universes, and all the rest of the monstrous exaggerations and fairy tales founded on obviously ridiculous methods of measuring interstellar distances and stellar sizes. A man’s sense of humour should bo sufficient to prevent him from believing that our neighbour, the sun, so close to us that a cloud between us can make the diffei'eneo between a hot day and a cold one, is 93,000,000 miles off, or even 93.000. I have no patience with such follies. “Shaw—whose name is. sometimes written ‘Pshaw !’ ” snapped “Passing Notes” in retort at the time. Mr Shaw’s astronomy is probably that of the early Greek philosopher who thought that the sun might perhaps be 40 miles away, and in bigness equal Peloponnesus—the peninsula of Greece. The astronomy, such as it is, lying behind the Shakespeare couplet— Sit, Jessica. Look how the floor of heaven Is thick inlaid with pntines of bright gold—might not suit him at all. Shakespeare is an object of derision. Mr Shaw could write a better Shakespeare himself. Astronomy has made possible the Nautical Almanack and ocean navigation. For that rcasoh I believe the astronomers when I cannot understand them, even when I doubt whether they themselves believe. The latest strain they have put upon faith is the announcement of a second universe, distinct from ours, 700,000 light years away. They see it as the faintest nebula, fainter than the Magellan Clouds. The term “light year”—like Shakespeare an object of derision with Mr Shaw—expresses tne number of miles that light, travelling 180.000 miles a second, travels in a year. Multiply the number of seconds in' a year by 180,000, and multiply the result by 700,000; —when you have half a day to spare to figure it out. You will then know, though you will be unable to imagine, how many miles the light that left the new universe 700,000 years ago has travelled when it reaches your vision. And if you arc to be at peace with the astronomers, pray for more faith. My state of mind is that of the schoolboy who said that he could understand how they found out the distances of the stars, but couldn’t understand how they found out their names. “ 1 Mollycoddler ’ would be a better name than ‘ Mussolini ’ for the Italian dictator in some of his phases,” writes a correspondent. “ When not a Russian Czar, he is a nursery-governess, and it remains to be seen how long a European nation of forty millions will enjoy being mollycoddled for its own good. I believe they call him II Duce, for short, — The Deuce, as we -right say; yes, Mussolini is the Very Deuce.” That won’t do. “ Duce,” —from the Latin “ dux,” a leader, guide, commander —is of two syllables, and the “e” is soft, as in “ chief.” Mussolini may be the very deuce, but you won’t get it out of “ duce.” Sir W. Arbuthnot Lane, “ one of the most distinguished of modern surgeons,” gives the latest instance of Mussolini mollycoddling (Daily Times, Thursday) — All that is required in Great Britain is someone with the lion heart of Mussolini who, profiting by the teaching of the New Health Society, recently issued an edict that nothing but wholemeal bread shall be sold or eaten in Italy. There is much to be said for a benevolent autocracy! Granted; there is also much to be said for leaving people to their own likes and dislikes in the matter of bread. Conceivably the Italian people might prefer maccaroni. In a land where there are no strikes —the Mussolini-mollycoddler forbidding —how docs the workman fare? Mr F. Yeats-Brown, a trustworthy witness, writes in the Spectator: — A man’s wages in Turin arc approximately 7s a day. His food costs Is, and accommodation, if a married man, perhaps 6d. Allowing for his family he can put by 15s u week in the “ Dopolavoro ” thrift society and still have enough for reasonable recreation. At the Fiat works, where I had the privilege of spending a most interesting day, the workmen have the following, facilities provided for them without cost: (a) gymnasium, (b) a boating club of thirty boats and ten skiffs, (c) a bicycling club, (d) a football club, (c) an Alpine club, (f) a bowling dub; also a library of fifteen thousand volumes, reading rooms, rest centres, a dramatic society, a musical society, a thrift and insurance association, and a free cinema. Again:— • The midday meal of the employees at the Snia Viscosa works would astonish our Manchester operatives: soup, veal with two delicious vegetables, a salad, a brown bread roll and a pint of wine—red or white — all for sixpence. Black coffee and grapes cost another twopence. What a life, even if one does work eight hours a day for half a crown! And he concludes: —“It is a great beginning if I read the present temper of Italy aright, the glimmer of new horizons of service to man and a happier social life, which, given an educated people and adapted to other conditions and climates, may permeate the world. Fascism seems to me, indeed, a new kind of Socialism, without the twaddle.”

A new kind of Socialism without the twaddle. Good. If lucky chance should bring any of us to a nearer acquaintance o with it, what about Italian hotels? Do the blessings of Government mollycoddle extend to the wayfaring foreigner ? Listen to another writer in the London press: — Visitors to Rome in search ol a modest hotel where English is well spoken and where the cooking is plain but really first class are recommended to try the Hotel Britannia, which is central, convenient and clean. Full board and lodging for fifty francs a day—say. 7s 6d—is really wonder-

fully good value. I noticed that Italians go there themselves when staying in Rome: a certain sign of worth. I spent some very pleasant days at Bertolini’s Hotel in Naples recently' (surely there is no more gorgeous view in all the earth than the Bay of Naples under a full moon!) and my tips amounted to thirty-five francs—say, .‘ls (id. Thus, for a sum which an American boll boy would expect for bringing one iced water, the whole staff of this excellent hotel gave me smiling and cheerful service. But there is an offset;—“How often must the English traveller be reminded that he should take his own soap and writing paper with him on the Continent? Even the best hotels do not provide them, or at any rate do not provide writing paper or even ink in the quantity, quality, and accessibility to which we are accustomed in England and America. It is very inconvenient to have to write on transparent paper with a pen like a rusty pin and an inkwell like the Sargasso Sea.’ Possibly Mussolini, after regulating the bread cupboard, will bethink him of bedroom conveniences —pen, ink and paper, for one thing, not forgetting even the soap dish. Oddities in ad are sometimes found under Deaths, and Marriages.” V. heard of the dropping of f r ” from the word “friends al announcement, w’th the suit, “ Fiends will take noth the birth of twins announcM a for mercy: “To err is hr other day a Borough Counc: re down south passed a motion , .apathy with the widows of one of its employees deceased; “and the Town Clerk was instructed_ to send a letter expressing the Council’s sorrow with her in her bereavement, and hopes for her happiness in the future.” The case was not so oad that it couldn’t be mended. Saturday morning advertisements of Church services next day are a rich field; not seldom the sermon themes announced run to the comic. I quote no local examples; one from America will better serve; we haven’t reached its degree of merit, but we are on the road. HOLINESS TABERNACLE. 408, West Main Street. Mrs William Price. Pastor. The Rev. Pat Palmer, who eats no breakfast and prays longer than he eats any meal, who has been in jail several times and had a rope around his neck a time or two and is now on his way to Australia, is with us. Come and take a peep at this peculiar man. This is from Johnson City, Tennessee, where the courts punish believers in evolution. It was a Tennessee editor that wrote —“If Darwin attempts to visit America he should not be allowed to land on our enlightened shores.” The ex-Kaiser’s surprising discovery that the Scottish people have a sense of humour, and that the English people have none, has provoked much animated comment, Scottish and English. ’ Scottish humour, if it exists, is “pawky,” say the English. “Not so,” answer the Scots, “pawky means sly; our humour is subtle, not sly.” Because it is subtle the English don’t understand it. Thus, one contributor to the debate: Scotch humour differs from English in its subtlety. That was well illustrated recently bv an occurrence which came under my notice on board an ocean liner. At the usual Sunday evening entertainment a Scotsman undertook to toll a few stories to amuse the audience. As he entered the forward saloon where the entertainment was being held, a brother Scot met him. and said, “I have had a good look at the audience and, Donald, don t be too subtle; they are almost all Enlish.” Another supplies an example; The latent the writer has heard is of the Aberdonian endeavouring to recall the memory of a former meeting to an Englishman: “Ay an’ 1 sat next ye at dinner, and ye gi’ed me a cigar ut was a varra guid ano; ay, I have it yet, an’ whiles o’ a Sawbath afternoon I tak’ a puff at it still.” A poor specimen; clearly the joke is against the Aberdeen man. However, ’wo arc asked to 'believe that Scottish criminations arc too subtle for the English. And there’s the humour of it. Civis.