PASSING NOTES.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19970, 11 December 1926, Page 6

PASSING NOTES.

The British coal miners having returned to sanity and the production of coal, Mr Cook, their evil genius, has flitted to Moscow, his spiritual home. The Soviet may yet find a use for him, failure though he is, and the chances arc that we have not heard the last of Mr Cook. Out of a job, but not for long—Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do; which is to say that Mr Cook’s hands will not be left idle. Indeed, the cables of this day, Friday, tell us that he is preparing in Moscow “for the next British coal strike.” They do not happen to tell as of his disgust at a sudden spr-t in British industry that followed his exit from the scene. A big engineering contract in the Argentine secured by a British firm, the contract price running to millions. Next, the Admiralty setting the shipyards to work —six submarines to be built at the cost of three millions. Next again, Japan ordering from a British aeroplane firm 25 air liners at £IO,OOO each (25! — perhaps there is a saving in taking the larger quantities). Facts are fac.s and irreversible. At the distance of Moscow Mr Cook’s neurotic frenzies, if he repeats them, needn’t trouble us much. Presenting me with a passage from the Book of Job, , Should a wise man utter vain knowledge and- fill his belly with'the cast wind? Should he reason with unprofitable talk? or with speeches wherewith he can do no good? —a correspondent suggests that it shouh, stand at the head of such socialist manifestoes as fill a column in Friday s Daily Times —two letters to the editor. Have I read them? he asks. Yes, I read socialist letters to the editor; have to—for my sins. It is all in the day’s work. The first of the two writers in question loses himself in a fog of words: “The tendency gives the appearance that we view too lightly”—something or other; that is his style. The note of the other is a sapient foolishness: “Can we draw a dividing line between auy of the two halves which is necessary to make a whole in all things?” he asks. _ Somehow this dark inquiry has to do with the scarcity of houses. A previous writer in the Daily Times, a sane writer, had stated the facts as known in England: Why was there a scarcity of houses? Because the unions wish to keep their trades a close corporation. They object to apprentices, and when the Home Government wanted the trade unions to teach returned soldiers they refused. Houses could not be built in the numbers required because the tradesmen were not there. Those who were there adopted the go-slow tactics, demanded more than the award wages, and houses could no* be built at a price that people could afford to nay. These are the naked facts, which nobody can deny. The Otago Socialist waves them aside; “Has everyone adequate housing? Are all man’s reasonable desires satisfied? Tf not. there can only be two causes: First, Nature has failed to supply tha means by which man can be kept in work; or, secondly, man lias abused bis rights in the appropriation,of natural resources.” Here is a Delphic oracle for yon. I have a warm feeling for these moonstruck dreamers. They arc in earnest, and they mean well. Pity that they should be content to fill their bellies with the cast wind.

From West Taieri:— Dear “ Civis,” —As the name of the chief township in the West Taieri district is invariably mispronounced, it may be of interest to the erring public, and particularly the rising generation, to remember that the place was named after the brave British soldier. General Sir 'James Outram, G.C.8., who, with Brigadier General Havelock, C. 8., by a forced march relieved the besieged garrison of Lucknow in September, 1857. I have in my possession a letter written a few years ago by a niece of the late General Outram in which she states that probably “ Outram,” Otago, was named after her late uncle: and she underlined a sentence, " Always remember to pronounce the name 60-tram, not Out-ram.” In the face of this, and in memory of a brave soldier, surely the name of the' township should be pronounced as the one after whom it was called would have wished, were he alive to-day. The towns of Lawrence and Havelock were named about the same time, but this is another story. Many thanks for this reminder. “ The Bayard of India,” as the inscription on his tomb in Westminster Abbey describes him, pronounced the first syllable of his name to rhyme with “ who,” not with “how.” If we honour a New Zealand township with this distinguished name, we ourselves are bound in honour to the true pronunciation. Henceforth let the Taieri Outram be “Ootrafn,” and let the Taieri people in particular take note. Apropos of the name “ Lucknow,” does it rhyme with “ now ” or with “ know ” ? ’ I quote a stanza fromTennyson:— Banner of England, not for a season, O banner of Britain, hast thou Floated in conquering battle or flapt to the battle-cry! Never with mightier glory than when we had reared thee on high Flying at top of the roots in the ghastly siege of Lucknow — Shot through the staif or the halyard, but ever we raised thee anew, And ever upon the topmost roof our banner of England blow. Here “ Lucknow ” rhymes with “ thou.” That should settle it.

The blessedness of Pussyfoot rule is in New Zealand a dream; elsewhere it is a nightmare. The Scandinavian Peninsula, in part, has struggled out of it, and ce - now breathe freely; also Canada in part. But on the chest of U.S.A. the incubus still sits heavy. We know li „i of Pussyfoot blessedness as it existed in Canada; let me copy a testimony by a member of the Morning Post staff: —“ I have personally experienced Pussyfoot law in Ontario, the dryest of Canadian provinces,” he says. “ In every bedroom of a Toronto hotel I found alarming notices, usually under the plate-glass top of tables and chests of drawers, informing the visitor that he would be fined a hundred dollars if on those premises he as much as smelled the cork of a bottle which held a liquid containing more than one-half of one per cent, of alcohol.” Yet the first visitor who came to call brought under his arm .1 package wrapped in newspaper. His first act was to call for White Rock mineral water, crushed ice, glasses, and a corkscrew. He so far respected the law as to wait till the waiter had left the room before he removed from the newspaper the inevitable whisky bottle of hospitality. So there were mitigations —friendly hosts and “ the inevitable whisky bottle of hospitality.” But with all this went deceit and hypocrisy, a demoralising assent to Mr Bumble’s belief that the law is an ass, and a widespread conspiracy of the best people to set the asinine law at naght. From a “ W.E.A. Student ” seeking light;— Dear “ Civis,” —Scotland has remained a sparsely populated country, while England, through industrial development and enterprise, has more than 40,000,000 people. In other words, the Scot has failed to develop his own country though he has led in the march of progress in countless other lands. If he possesses the qualities that make for success in the realm of commerce, industry, and statesmanship, why has Scotland languished? This is to beg the question, i do not admit that Scotland is languishing. A land of brown heath and shaggy wood, Scotland was not designed by Nature for a dense population. But the stern conditions of Scottish life have produced a type of manhood that even on English "round can compete successfully with

the English type. According to Dean Inge, “ it has been said that the modem business man, if he is not a child of the Ghetto, is generally a grandchild of John Calvin.” True enough—you needn’t go further '.han Dunedin! It is the Scot’s sense of innate capacity that carries him afield. There arc noble prospects in Scotland, said • r Johnson of its scenery, “ but the noblest prospect to a Scot is the road to England.” And at home or abroad the Scots have always a “ gude conceit ”of themselves. That comfort is never denied them. “ Perhaps,” said an exasperated Southron at the end of an argument, “you’d like to claim Shakespeare as a Scotchman.’ “ Weel,” was the reply, “ I think his abcelities wad warrant the assumption.

Dean Inge —since I have mentioned him —may have the of yet another sentence or two. With this couplet Dean Inge begins his much offending book “ England ” Friend, call me what you will; no lot I stand for England till I die. With these sentences he ends it:— I have laid bare my hopes and fears for the country that I love. This much I can avow, that never, even when the stormclouds appear blackest, have I been tempted to wish that I was other than an Englishman. And in the middle of it he quotes an estimate of England by a foreigner, George Santayana, in words which, he says, “ every Englishman will receive with pleasure and gratitude.” These are the words — Never since the heroic days of Greece has the world had such a sweet, just, boyish master. It will be a black day for the human race when scientific blackguards, conspirators, churls, and fanatics manage to supplant him. Of this unholy crew—-“ scientific blackguards, conspirators, churls and fanatics ’ —must be the people who howl against his book. That is my judgment alter reading it with care. Dean Inge is a better patriot than his critics. The English papers have a confused story of marriage by accident —no fable, for it has figured in the courts. A Jewish Rabbi, in company with a lady applying at a London register office for a marriage license, went through the marriage ceremony without knowing what he was doing. “It must lie very disturbing,” remarks a London editor, to find you have acquired a husband or a wife when you thought you were merely applying for a license.” Usually a Jewish Rabbi is one of the cutest of mortals, and about the last man to bo casual and haphazard in taking to himself a wife. It is true that mistakes at the altar arc not unknown. _ In the manufacturing towns of Lancashire, factory hands arc sometimes married in the dinner hour, and then go back to work. It happened at one of these hurried mat* riages that the minister had two couples before him—the same ceremony to serve for both. To his dismay ho found that he had married them wrong—each husband had the other husband’s wife, each wife had the other wife’s husband. In dire distress he asked them to retire for a few minutes that he might consider what was to be done. They retired for a few minutes, and then came back to say that the minister need not trouble; they had talked it over, and it “might stay as it was.” All’s well that ends well.

From Glenham, Southland Dear “Civis,’.’—l thought you might be interested to receive throe genuine “schoolboy howlers”;— . A “neutral” is a man who isn t a man or a woman. From Latin word neuter—nothing. . , , i , A “verger” is a “virgin s husband. A “bitch” is a “she-batchelor. I tack to this a problem in avoirdupois set by a speculative schoolboy: “If yon were proffered . the gift of £50,000 in £1 notes on condition that you carried it on your back for a mile, you probably would make the attempt. Would you succeed, though ? It would weigh 160 pounds near a hundredweight and a-half. Sounds incredible. But it is easily tested. Divide by 50; then 1000 notes weigh three pounds. Anybody with a thousand £1 notes handy may put it to the proof. Civis.