PASSING NOTES.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20702, 27 April 1929, Page 6

PASSING NOTES.

We glide from one inundation to another. The deluge of municipal election tal 1 : chokes the conduits of the mind and heaps up debris in its ante-chambers. Are we municipally sick that there should be so much need of physic Y The nostrums are numerous. We should cleave to Waipori; we should get rid of Waipori. We must have another rating system: we need more water, protection against water, better drainage, more work for everybody, tar-sealing in the suburbs, the money that is going into the new Town Hall, a financial overhaul, and so on ad infinitum. One candidate quarrels with the extension of a museum containing “a few dead birds and some mummified fish.” He cannot see a return upon such possessions, He may not, even see another kind of return. Codlin’s the friend, not Short. That we expect to hear. But a plague upon all “ tickets,” and those who would put all the candidates through a strainer for our benefit. It is upon our own heads if we do not return a council of twelve good men and true, and a Mayor worthy of his robes. Has our city a sufficiently uplifting motto? Recently the Portsmouth Municipal Council decided to adopt the motto “Heaven’s Light Our Guide.” Alderman Sir Harold Pink said it appeared on the bows of the old Indian troopships that called at Portsmouth. Placed beneath the present crest, star and crescent, it would be very appropriate. Cr J. E. Lane thought it would be just as appropriate to select as a motto, “ The King, God bless him,” which appeared round the grog tub of the old troopships. The call of the polling booth will not go unchallenged on Wednesday. Wakefully with dog and gun the day will be awaited by some. May those who go after the paradise duck encounter Sir' Thomas Mackenzie, and. meet his eye—if thev can! The campaign against stag-hunting in the Old Country is attended with promise. Look at the names of the signatories to the petition asking for legislation against a cruel sport. They are not given in alphabetic order. Mr Bernard Shaw precedes Mr Arnold Bennett and Mr John Galsworthy The Bishop of Birmingham and the Chief Rabbi follow the ladies, It is said that the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals numbers many staghunters among its members, and is likely to lose them. The loss should be endured. Let the stag-hunters try being pursued instead of the pursuers, and their complacency might be a little dashed. My sympathies are all with the stag. So were those of Montaigne as thus attested:— Ae for me, I could never so much as endure, without remorse or griefe, to see a poore, Billie, and innocent beast pursued and killed, which is harmlease and void of defence, and of whom we receive no offence at all. a A. commo nly hapneth, that j en * 6 stag begins to be embost, and finds his strength to fail him, having no other remedie left him, uOth yeeln and bequeath bimeelfe unto Us that pursue him, with teares suing to us for mercie: Landseer’s awful picture of the Dyin« Stag amid a welter of dogs, and sea, and rocks—the engraving used to be popular as a household embellishment- -is a reproach to mankind. To capture the full flavour of the sport against which the tide is turning in England read John Davidson’s ballad of the Runnable Stag, the glorious creature, the sta<* of warrant, the wily stag that led the°liunt for twenty miles, and five and five, and would not bo captured. Three hundred gentlemen, able to ride. * free hundred Worses as gallant and Beheld him escape on the evening tide Far out till ho sank In the Severn Sea, T'fi.oe sank In the depths of the sea— The stag, the buoyant stag, the stag That slept at last In, a Jewell’d bed under the sheltering ocean spread The stag, the runnable stag. Another jeremiad from the stage, couched in the language of the prize ring! The “ talkies ” are going to ad minister " the final knock-out ” —the coup de grace of barbaric times—to the hard-hit West End theatres in London, Doubtless the danger is real. Mr Billy Sunday proposes to spread his version of the Gospel by “talkie” Mnema productions. Mrs Aimce Semple M’Pherson may perhaps follow suit. We are a favoured generation. The young people scarcely realise the measure of their fortune. Raised is the timely question of the possible effect -of the “ talkies ” upon the speech of juveniles. In children all important is the imita tive faculty. If they imitate speech supplied in the “ talkies,” if the childish voices take on “ the hard clang of mechanically-made speech,” how shall they be corrected? Already we owe a good deal to the films. Says a German Professor: The spreading influence of the kinema presses us forward, as the age of emotional adolescence begins earlier now than before the invention of the moving picture. Just so! Childhood gone before its time! The other day a judge in England described some film “ literature ” which he was called upon to read as “ written in a jargon which he ,did not recognise as English.” He had the courage to add that he had ‘ always regarded the film industry as the greatest menace that has ever arisen to literature, art, and civilisation.” Some people—old-fashioned people—may agree.

Sir Gerald du Mnrier, the actor, is among those who are not ashamed to prefer the ways of the past to those of the present. His advice to' a child of 21, could that child remain 21 for 50 years and have the choice of going for ward or backward for half a century, would he to go back—cutting out, of course, the war years. I would like to go back to a Bond street down which you were not , allowed to walk without a top hat and frock coat, and to the time when you sat at home to dinner with the family round the fire instead of going out to a restaurant and dancing with a man —girl—boy—well, you never know what they are these days, do you? I should like to return to the days when you did not always have to dance to time played on coal-scuttles and tongs. I should like to see lovely waltzes and the polka danced again, but not all this jazz. I propose that we should form a syndicate somehow to find some jn- * ventor who would make it possible for us to go slowly backwards through all the lovely ages and not forward to the things that are going to be. What wc may be coming to in this helter-skelter ago nobody knows. In the things that are to be, judged by some of the samples, there is not unmixed allurement. To fall back upon Browning's philosophy is, of course, always possible.

America lias two voices on the subject of armaments. Her delegate at Geneva talks naval limitation with piety and gusto. His words follow hard upon the announcement from Washington that authority will be asked from Congress this year for the construction of two great battleships each of 35,000 tons. Sir William Robertson, a British fieldmarshal of note, frankly outspoken as usual, offers the reminder that America’s acceptance of the Kellogg Pact has not been allowed to interfere with her building of 15 cruisers. When Sir William suggested a few months ago at a League of Nations Union meeting that the United States could not attach much importance to the League or to the Kellogg Pact he was accused in America of “ studied propaganda ” designed to hamper the Washington naval programme. Concentrate on getting rid

of the causes that lead to the creation of armaments is Sir William Eobertson’a advice. He brings a practical mind to bear on unpractical suggestions for armament limitation. Meanwhile, the air experts assert that big ships and big guns are out of date. Before the Institution of Engineers and Shipbuilders have been sung the virtues of small under-water .charges accurately dropped by aircraft. We are spending £50,000,000 to £60,000,000 a year on ships which can be rendered unbattleworthy by 101 b charges. Members of this institution know how thin the bottom of a ship actually, is and that it is beyond their skill to _ design and construct steel imlls which shall be impervious to the effect of 10lb charges, even in warships. What will it profit anybody if one form of armament disappears only to give place to another! The President of the United States will clean out, if he can, the Augean stable of American Crime. What river he may turn into it is for him to discover. Something about as big as the Mississippi is required. Mr Hoover admits that in proportion to population 20 times as many people are lawlessly killed in the United States as in Great Britain. It is an instance of “ licking creation,” of which good- Americans do' not often boast. The nation that cannot keep its own house in order is handicapped as the guide and mentor of others. But international war is to be declared against the criminal. Fifty nations are to be represented at a conference in Paris in November. The Old World will be called in to redress the balance of the New. Good Americans are hopeful. Crime is a comprehensive word. Mr Hoover may have to go scouring in more corners than he thought. Mrs Jean Devanny, who has been courageously lecturing us on matrimony, has described the “ companionate system ” as the remedy for the failures, ruins, and “ frequent housebreakings ” caused by the present marriage code. Housebreaking is to bo discouraged, and if marriage is an incentive to it there is indeed cause for inquiry. The case of Mr William Sikes, who was not a benedict, may appear a little puzzling. But every rule has its exceptions. Au excerpt from an account of a recent wedding comes to me from a correspondent:— The bride wore a gown of ivory chenille georgette with a dynamite girdle. The correspondent asks: “Is not this a case for the League of Nations? ” Possibly! Of course, the League is a busy body. One would expect a wedding in such circumstances to go off very well. Possibly the bridesmaids carried gelignite bouquets. As to the proprieties of the chse I am no authority. A dynamite girdle does not sound particularly cuddlesome. Had the sprightly Kate worn one, Petruchio’s wooing might have been of a still more explosive character. The mode is everything. Little it recks of Geneva. And young people are very venturesome nowadays. Cms.