PASSING NOTES.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20075, 16 April 1927, Page 6

PASSING NOTES.

A sharp-witted society critic whose books have run to half-a-dozen in less than half-a-dozen years, dubs himself “A Gentleman With a Duster.” A Housemaid with a Duster would have been more congruous. What has a gentleman to do with a duster? I understand that Fleet? street knows the name given him by his godfathers and godmothers; indeed, I might set it down here ; but let him pass, “A Gentleman with a Duster” giving in his latest book, ‘‘The Howling Mob,’’ January, 1927, a severe “dusting” (in the military souse) to things and person? most sacred. His “howling mob” is no other than Democracy—at the hustings and the polls; and if Democracy were properly aware of a book published at the restrictive price of ss, Democracy would rise up and stone him. His main doctrine is shadowed forth in a passage from Carlyle which I give myself the pleasure of quoting :

Your ship cannot double Cape Horn by its excellent plans of voting. ine ahip may vote this and that, above decks and below, in the rmpst harmonious exquisitely constitutional manner; the ship, to get round Cape Horn, will find a sot of conditions already voted for and fixed with admantine rigour by the ancient Diemontal Powers, who are entirely careless how you vote. If you can, by voting or without voting, ascertain these conditions, and valiantly conform to them, you will get round the Cape; if

you cannot — Well, if you cannot —“the ruffian winds will blow you ever back again; the inexorable icebergs, dump privy-councillors from Chaos, will nudge you with most chaotic admonition ; you will be flung half-frozen on the Patagonion cliffs, or admonished into shivers by your iceberg councillors, and sent sheer down to Davy Jones, and will never get round your Capo Horn at all!” Thus, in the Carlyle manner the Carlyle wisdom. Scant acceptance it has had. Carlyle was a British Cassandraspeaking Heaven’s truth but doomed to be for ever disbelieved.

Getting round the Cape of §torras is the actual problem of our Ship of State at this very time. Under a ‘‘Phantasm Captain,’’ as Carlyle would say? Will the bridge take orders from the stokehold? Likely enough. A year ago it was little more than a Phantasm Captain who as Prime Minister met and probably shook hands with Mr A. J. Cook, who had publicly called him a humbug and a liar. It was the bridge taking orders from the stokehole when Parliament voted twenty millions sterling virtually to keep going a miners’ strike that in lost wages, not to reckon ruined industries, cost more than would have sufficed to buy up all the collieries in the country, lock, stock, and barrel. Hence to-day -Mr Churchill’s lame and limping Budget. Not that a gaping deficit is any novelty. Never within living memory has a French Minister of Finance produced a Budget that made both ends meet. So it is said. The French have their own Cape of Storms to round. Mors than once in recent times the (French have seen Democracy, rotten ripe, swept as rubbish to the void, and in its place an alert, astute, and exceedingly vigorous autocracy. Needless to explain our thrills and throbs when the King’s son goes by. A correspondent writing from Canterbury thinks otherwise: Dear “Civis,”—The visit of the Duke and Duchess of York was necessarily a flying visit. They wore coming, they wore hero, they were gone; yet a wave of enthusiasm swept the country from end to end. Now. that the experience is over, we arc left wondering. Was it enthusiasm for the young couple personally? I missed the privilege of seeing the Duchess but have heard much of her smile. Evidently smiling was her special function. The papers were full of it. In a northern journal I saw a picture of her looking out at a railway carriage window. The smile seemed to fill the window. As for the Duke, ho appeared to bo a quiet decentlooking young follow with no particular points about him. Is that the whole story ? Not in the least. The Duke as the King’s son represented to us the Crown. The Dominions one and all, together with a dozen dependencies, have a common relation to the Crown, and thus our far-flung Empire finds its unity and holds together. This is the whole story, or something like it; and it explains everything.

A Christchurch Socialist is reported as catechising our alleged Socialists —the local M.P.’s and his Worship the Mayor, who is also his Reverence —about their “crawling” before Royalty. “Crawling” !—the chances arc that the catechiser was himself a “crawler.” When the Duke was on the scene ho crawled away out of sight and hearing. His very hatred is testimony to the divinity that doth hedge a king. Come within its range—you thrill and you throb. The Socialist, to his disgust, thrills and throbs with the rest, and can’t help it.

The Lord Mayor of Sydney, who is n Labour man, has the distinction of crawling to Royalty in a manner peculiarly exasperating. Thus a Sydney cable: The Lord Mayor (Mr Mostyn), who is also assistant secretary of the Electrical Trades Union, has been suspended by that organisation from the latter office for welcoming the Duke and Duchess of York “with all the pomp and splendour of the mediaeval ages, and in defiance of a mandate from the Trades aud T.abour Council.’’

He did it “with all the ami splendour of the mediaeval ages,” by which we are to understand that he wore official toggery that might have been made for the Mayor of Eatanswill. Seldom do municipal robes of office rise above that. But worse remains behind; —he did his mediaeval crawling in defiance of the mandate of his masters, the Trades and Labour Council. The Lord Mayor of Sydney is not to be the chief citizen with all that belongs to citizenship concentrated in his person; he is to he a marionette pulled by strings, his galvanic movements controlled by a dozen or so of obscure nonentities who lurk in the dark. This is that blessed caucus system in which democracy like vaulting ambition o’erleaps itself and falls on t’other. It is not a city council that governs the city; it is not a Parliament that governs the country: it is not a multitudinous electorate that governs the Parliament. It la an Invisible caucus, a Venetian Council of Ten, that governs the lot.

I have a correepondent this week who begins;—"You are always poking fun at ( tho infallibility of the Pope, as for instance in last week’s Passing Notes.” That is not so. In last week’s Passing Notes I said that I could more easily believe in the infallibility of the Pope than in Sir Oliver Podges forty thousand million million entities, whatever their nature, that go to make up the millionth part of a grain. As I respect Sir Oliver T-odgo profoundly, that was very flattering to the pope. But let us hear: [s not the rmht explanation just this’ \s head and loader of the Church of Pome. whatever in faith and doctrine the Pope decide., on that becomes, ipso facto the faith and doctrine of the whole Catholic Church. The position is similar lo that of our House of Commons. The House of Commons cannot, do an illegal act, for all id a'U-i, as such, are legal. In the same nay', the Deity cannot do an immoral 1( -t for all His acts arc moral. 'Tlm-e | Vi>t two instances are given by Aiex6„der Paint. Gladstone said that for i. Catholic to absent to the infallibility 01 the Pope was jo; much an act of judgment as a Protestant - But the Catholic, as Catholic, airtady belongs to a church system of which Papal infallibility is now an integral part. In lias been facet ion-I v observed that dnee the famous Vatican Come 11 in the early ’-rvemics p-omn'gaffng the dogma of Pap-aJ falllU’lity im Pone has given iterance to the w’nM of anything of real importance. If trim, a remarkable proof of the Tzpa'li discretion.

I am much beset by correspondents this ■week. And as it is holiday time, I take the good the gods provide me. For instance, here is a parable of China: If one stands on a long sea beach ho sees at his feet the surf breaking m white foam. But beyond the immediate and noisy surge he sees the blue illimitable sea, a vast expanse that raises no riot and gives no sound. So with China. Belligerent thousands or tens of thousands, marching, counteimarching, altacking, retreating, knocking off for lunch or going in when ic rains; and, on the fringe of these, brigand cut-throats sniping and tooting, in alliance with student mobs that gee up strikes and boycotts.—etc., etc., a» per daily cables; —all this is as the foam breaking on the beach. But beyond the horizon are some four hundred millions of peasant Chinese —the blue illimitable sea, a reservoir of mystery and silence. What do the four hundred millions think about it?

They don't think about it at all. The chances are that the four hundred millions, or the greater part of them, don’t so much as know t,hat there is a war on.

From Portobollo—which is in Presbyterian Otago, though the fact would hardly be inferred from what follows: —

Dear “Civis,” —Allow me a few friendly critical remarks on what you say in reference to the Pope’s and Bishops’ condemnation of tlio new fashion in women’s dress. You, do not see immodesty in those now fashions provided they do not give disgusting publicity to the breasts of tho wearer “twin protuberances meant only for the nursery and sucking babies”; in this you sin likewise. Listen to w tho wisest man the world ever saw says about them: "Thy two breasts are Ijko two young roes that are twins, which feed among tho lilies.”

The wisest man, Solomon to wit, had a wide experience in these matters; but his extensive domesticities would be on the harem type, and publicity is foreign to the harem. And although “the female breasts arc the members by which the life-giving fluid and magnetism of the mother’s love are imparted to the newly born,” not for that reason would Solomon, who knew all about it, have wanted to exhibit these members to tho world. Tho happy shamelessness of “our first parents” in a climate milder than Otago is nothing to the point; nor do I agree that “hiding tho outline of tho human body in coverings black and white” is “hideous.” It is impossible to deny that “the highest flights of Grecian sculpture portrayed the female form in nudity;” but if the Venus of Milo in flesh and blood left the Louvre, where she has tho distinction of a room to herself, ana appeared in the streets, tho Paris police would commandeer the nearest fiacre for whisking her away to the Chatelc' or other official harbourage for improper females. At tho bottom of this uuapostolie epistle the signature "Puritan” seems apt and fit. For there were always Puritans who didn’t live up to tho name. Civis.