PASSING NOTES.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20834, 28 September 1929, Page 6

PASSING NOTES.

A nicely printed leaflet with the hold caption, “ God and the Politicians,” and m sub-heading, “ Education: A Proposition for Politicians,” is apparently in the category of those things to which our membejp of Parliament become hardened. To the quotation marks and underlinings justice cannot here be done. But how is this for a pretty question: “If prayer be deemed proper (op necessary?) for politicians, what's the matter with having it for schools and school children?” Most people will agree that our children arc not quite so grievously in need of prayer as our legislators. But let the great educational counterblast proceed:— There is some hope for the “ ordinary fool" who might assert that the State had “ nothing to do with religion but for the like of Sir Robert Stout to voice such fallacious piffle after his long service in public life!—and at , State functions where men of lesser rank (and school _ children) ai'c invariably snubbed, derided, or abused, if they fail to give lip-service to “God Save the King”!

There must be, surely, “ something wrong somewhere! " —a case of “feeblemindedness " —“ defective mentality." or what not; for the likes of which special provision is made in our Godless Education System!—which is "mentally defective” also!

So now we know where we are. Of course that is not all. The Bolsheviks and poor old Nebuchadnezzar must be dragged in. The former arc justly lapped in strong language. As for the graminivorous monarch, apparently he was opposed to the Bible in schools. But whether it is Sir Robert Stout, or Sir Joseph Ward, or Mr Atmore that is to come to eating grass until “ the cutting of his wisdom teeth” is not made very clear. Somebody, one feels sure, after studying this leaflet, ought to be penitent on herbaceous diet. A neighbour’s cat seems to be selecting a sample of it at the moment for a spring tonic.

Our commercial travellers arc a race. They hold the social and the business instinct in fine equipoise. Nobody reading of the ceremonies at tiie opening of their new club premises in Dunedin could doubt it. No more shall the absent-minded one, deep in thoughts of commerce, turn automatically up Dowling street, where the Salvation Army fortress offers cheer and encouragement to the weary traveller on life’s highway. There was almost a hint of mystery, a something baffling, in the references of historic import in the address of the president at the recent function:—

It was considered by some that the location of the club was not well situated for business men; at a meeting it was_ unanimously decided that it would be in the interests o£ tbe association to remove to more centrally situated

premises. Evidently in the view of our commercial travellers the little hills are among the little ills, The gentle rise of Dowling street, added to "the restricted hours of trading, and the increased cost of all commodities which the club traded in,” might perhaps not have turned the beam. But this hegira was inevitable, one may suppose, when “at the same tii a there was noticeable a distinct force in "the declining club life.” Here we become curious, here we are baffled. What was, what is this Force? The veil is dropped: We remain upon the esoteric threshold. That it has something to do with a thirst, a laudable thirst of busy men whose moments are precious, for a more central situation, it is natural to conclude. From thought of the tyranny of commerce we turn again with relief to the clubwarming party of last week-end:— Comrades, you may pass the rosy! With permission of the chair I will leave you for a little; for I'd like to take the air.

The New Zealand student debaters won easily at Sydney in affirmation of the view that the emergence of women from the home is a depressing feature of modern life. Even in the great gay city across the sea a select audience may still applaud the Tenuysonian creed:—

Man-'for the field, woman for the hearth; Man for the sword, and for the needle she; aa with tho head, and woman with the heart; Man to command, and woman to obey AH else confusion.. And yet, strange to say, there are two sides to the question. An Englishman’s home is his castle—when he is left in charge. But if woman never crossed the moat, would the status of the lord of creation be increased? Would he. on his own, brighten the world like a bird of paradise? Possibly, he would try. But m how many a home-wending reveller is the native hue of resolution sickhed o er by the pale east of thought. Two recent cablegrams seem to bear on the subject:— i Budapest a grocer declared that he had worked long enough, and that the ungrateful members of bis family were old enough to fend for themselves, ine result—a family council, the youngest daughter, a prize debater, eloquent on parental responsibility, and the poor shop 61 ' laDffct llpon a beam in his own This deplorable episode would seem to :;; n c t dan | cr , in clebatl> - One hopes that the Ixew Zealand students have not been sowing the seed of too much domestic trouble in the hitherto friendly Commonwealth. The other talc is scarcely less pathetic.— T nnrfnn hUsba ? d . B applied to .1 London magistrate for protection against their ■ wives. One asked the court to prevent his wife assaulting Uira, and a missionary was sent to interview the masterful lady. The same intermediary, whose fate lias not been lecorded, was ordered to espouse the cause of an applicant whose wife hit him so hard chat he was afraid to go home unless a policeman stood outside and within call. Another suppliant merely complained that his wife thrashed him every time he weu( I 0 lb ?.lamentation of the fourth was that his wife forced him to do the housekeeping and shopping and render accounts. Considered in the light of such cases which is the better-—that woman should emerge from the homo or remain in it? Man will got his deserts presumably in any case. They also serve who only stand and wait.

A new contribution to our leading literary controversy Ims just appeared. It comes from the pen of Sir Alfred Sludic, who has written a book. This is its title: ' The Self-named William Shakespeare, the Prince of Wales, born leo-i----tunate but unacknowledged: Son 'of TI.M. Qfieen Elizabeth and the Earl of .Leicester: Baptised in the false name ot luancis Bacon, Philosopher, Dramatist, Poet and Arch-Martyr thereafter named ViscounrSt. Albans’. This is really very promising, it would be almost a pity if what Mark Twain called the Bacon-Shafcespearc Scuffle were to die of inanition. Mr Mudie has no doubt done his best to galvanise it into new life. The Baconian Heresy is still Quite young—-scarcely an octogenarian. A library might bo fairly stocked, it is true, with the volumes for n 1 igainst. Shakespeare still survives comfortably enough. Upon the Baconians have been poured the vials of much righteous wrath. They have been smitten hip and thigh, denounced as steeped in morbid psychology, abandoned to madhouse chatter, victims of epidemic disease. Sir Sidney Lee has spoken of them as unworthy of serious attention from any but professed students of intellectual aberration. But ever and anon another of them comes up smiling, with futile lance and groggy steed, in a fresh effort to unseat the impregnable

national bard. Mr Mudie associates Queen Elizabeth creditably with the glories of Shakespeare. In a treatise of weight J. M. Robertson has written; “I do not despair of seeing seriously advanced the theory that the plays were written by Queen Elizabeth, who was a good classical scholar, and must have heard from her law officers a good deal about law. Sir John Davies pronounced her * the richest mind of all time.' ” Truly a remarkable woman, Good Queen Bess! No wonder her days were spacious. In the land of dollars the cult of the colossal knows no abatement. Three hundred and twenty-seven structures more than twenty storeys high—it is enough! New York is to have a new sky-scraper to tower,a modest two hundred feet above any existing building on Manhattan Island. It will have eighty storeys, and possibly—the details are not complete—two thousand eight hundred lavatories. Placed on the foreshore of our own romantic city, and rising a thousand feet, its higher floors would easily overlook the sequestered life of Kaikorai Valley. And our own Post Office that is to be is spoken of as an imposing structure! The heavenkissing Manhattan building over which Mr Al. Smith is to preside should be a nice comfy homey kind of place in which to spend one’s days. The facilities for dropping out to see a friend should be unrivalled. From the upper windows the view should be impressive when the earth is not blotted out by clouds, and the air at those altitudes will be fresh and bracing. Away up there in some roof cubicle or tub, swayed by the gales, the Philosopher might *have his abode, silent as on a peak in Darien, and muse upon the fretful fever of the pigmy world below. Man in such t building becomes an insect, an ant in an ant-hill. His ancestors lived in caves, holes in the rock. The resemblance between the cliff-dwellers and the occupants of a creation-licking American architectural triumph is sufficiently obvious. The new Manhattan building, and its fifty thousand inhabitants, should be promoted to the dignity of a separate State. It might desire to join the League of Nations. It is good to think of open spaces, where the only shadow cast is that of tree or barn. There are compensations for living in a land of earthquakes, even of the latest type precipitated by an enterprising cleric on the wet West Coast. . Dear Civis —Now that the scaffolding has been removed from our new Town Hall, an uninterrupted view of its noble proportions can be obtained. On the imposing northern facade arc two urns, the purpose of which has been exercising the minds of some of those who daily pass that way. Am I right in my conjecture that, as a Columbarium has not been erected, these urns are to .receive the ashes of the City Fathers who, by their noble efforts, and the assistance of our

worthy town clerk, second only to Sir Joseph Ward as a wizard of finance, have been instrumental in bringing about the realisation of the dreams of the citizens for more than half a century? This would surely be a more fitting reward to these estimable, selfsacrificing civic authorities than to be simply hung around the walls of our City Council chamber.-—I am, etc., Urn Burial. For the appeasement of public curiosity this should be subject matter for one of those instructive and readable minutes in the preparation of which our Town Clerk is a past-master. It may be that, seeing what we owe to his magic wand, these decorative urns are somewhat symbolic of unearned increment. It may be that they are merely for pot-plants—civic aspidistra. Their cinerary possibilities are fraught with more solemn charm. As the delightful author of the Hydriotaphia observes—-" To subsist in bones and to be but Pyramidally extant is a fallacy in duration.” But already the sparrow and the starling perch upon these mysterious repositories with a proprietary air. Civis.