PASSING NOTES.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20952, 15 February 1930, Page 6

PASSING NOTES.

The fog is rising from the Naval Conference, and the shadowy outlines of demands and compromises are taking shape. The inconsiderate haste which brought to nought the Geneva Naval Conference has given place to a wise delay. Cunctatio restituit rem, By preliminary discussions, by meetings over bowl and platter, by'daily journeys “ where everywhere falls the shadow of great houses,” by visits to historic spots where Shakespeare saw the light, where Milton lived in darkness, where William Penn lies buried, has the atmosphere been sweetened. Mr Stimson says:—It has been the time of my life. I shall never forget that it is all sacred ground. It reminds me that we have sprung from a common stock, and that we are blood-brothers. We must ever live in peace, and must Strive to establish peace in the world. And Miltonian scenes inspire another American cklcgatc to say:— Milton wrote “ Paradise Lost,” but if we can achieve success with the Naval Conference we shall have written across the page of history “Paradise Regained.” It is a conference of statesmen, not of mere naval experts. The admirals are away on the back benches, or are sitting outside with the clerks to be consulted only on technicalities. In this, as in many other things, the professional mind views its specialty as the tympanist yiews his drum, or the Highland piper his pipes. The uncouth terms which _ bristled in earlier reports are now either abandoned, or have become more intelligible. The official reporters did less than their best when they needlessly inflicted on the world such adjectives as “global,” “categoric,” "transactional.” No person, however official and eminent, is entitled to run amok among English adjectives. Which of the interpreters was guilty of the crime of coining a new word, " transactional ” to translate the French “ transactionnel ? ” Is English so destitute of resources as this? A transaction, commercial or other, is essentially a compromise. Between the French demand for.“global" limitation, and the British demand for “ categoric ” limitation came the French proposal of “transaction” The play was “ transactionnel,” Why not call it a “ compromise proposal ? ” English freely uses nouns to replace adjectives. Who speaks of the Watery Committee of the City Council?

The touring party of the Dunedin Chamber of Commerce has been rediscovering Otago. Members agree that “ the visit has been a great education.” Meant as a compliment to the visited, these words are surely the Mea Culpa of the visitors. They may well be the Mea Culpa of most of Dunedin. At various periods of the year Otago visits Dunedin en masse, rifling our shops and leaving well-filled tills behind. How many of us pay the return visit, and bow often do we pay it? Ample entertainment is awaiting, an open-armed welcome from nature and from man. Within the bounds of Otago and Southland, taking in Stewart Island, lies a compact area which is one of the world’s finest examples of a geographical multum in parvo. 'O'er the wild mountains and luxuriant plains Nature In all the pomp o£ beauty reigns. Dunedin has at its doors a variety of natural phenomena which London or Paris must make a world’s tour to see. And only ait such cost can a ducal Englishman or a wealthy Scot enjoy what is but a day’s journey for the humble dweller of North-East Valley or Roslyn. This tight little province can show Norwegian fiords, Italian lakes, _ Alpine glaciers, African rivers, American backwoods, Tyrolese waterfalls, Highland glens, Scotch lochs, Indian tonga roads, Rocky Mountain passes, Alaskan gold mines. It can show English farms, Danish dairies, Texan ranches, French orchards—and Chinese gardens. Abandoned miners’ huts and dismal piles of tailings are its history. Lyric streams and epic mountains are its poetry. In its impenetrable Far West lie the whitening bones of its explorers, where the Maori hen treads. It has its old Santa Fe trail up the *Molyneux Valley, and the tilts of the Covered Waggon, with sleeping driver, still creep along its outlying roads. But the Chamber of Commerce party and its Otago Central deputations dealt, of necessit” in prose, not in poetry. Parched lands, potentially as fertile as the Nile Valley, are crying for water. Water in abundance is within transportable distance, to make them blossom as the rose and flow with milk and honey. What is Dunedin doing?

There was a sound of revelry bv night,” is the burden of the cry of flavor Archer of Christchurch over the recrudescence of the treasure-hunt. He saysi

It is surprising that such a childish business can be carried on by people well enough off to run motor cars. The principal thing, however, is that, if it is true that people are careering about the city at 60 miles an hour by nHit there is an obvious danger to "the public.

These treasure hunts arc not new. In fact, they have gone tight out of fashion —except in Christchurch. In Dunedin, whose fashions to-day are those of Christchurch to-morrow, and of London a decade ago, they are long since dead. When they flourished here our then Mayor made no protest. No doubt he regretted that the much-talked-of emancipation of youth should have made the erstwhile slave the tyrant of age. Motor cars roaring through silent streets, their roaring out-roared by loud laughter of young men and the answering giggles of their partners! Dunedin citizens took all that lying down—in their beds. After all, there may be some truth in the theory that in all people there is stored up an equal amount of folly; that some work it off in youth, while others keep it till later. The former course seems the better. But Mayor Archer is “ surprised that this childish business should be indulged in by people well enough off to own motor cars! ” A Labour Mayor thus places on record his belief that wealth—even the modicum of wealth that would buy a motor car—naturally and inevitably brings wisdom witlf it. When it does not do so. he is surprised. Is this what his biographers will call “ the real Archer ” —a capitalist defending his class!

The Labour member for Timaru, Mr Clyde Carr, is nothing if not ingenuous. That is, if we are to judge him by his speeches as reported in Hansard. He differs from most other members of his party in the naive respect he shows to those—temporarily—in authority. Speaking last session on the Public Works Statement, he began by paying a tribute. “ however unworthy,” to the enthusiasm and unfailing courtesy of the Minister concerned. So far, so good, lie then continues:—

On one occasion, when I took Hie Minister and the engineer-in-chief—-it was really after hours—to look at the prospects of certain works on the waterfront of Timaru, the Ministerial car happened to get stuck in the shingle. We made all sorts of efforts to move the big car, but without success, until the Minister himself took a hand, and then we got the car out of the shingle. This little incident bears out the practical helpfulness and the practical and enthusiastic spirit that the Minister has always displayed in carrying out his tremendous task. First of all, “ took a hand ” is an expres sion taken from card playing, and in no way is it applicable to assisting a car out of mud. Mr Carr meant “ lent ” a hand. Further, you can’t “bear out” practical helpfulness, even if you try every day for a month. Parliamentary English merits discussion. But let that pass. The whole story rings familiar. It is not suggested that Mr Clyde Carr plagiarised it, or that the incident did

not take place. Having seen the Timaru shingle, and having heard its member, I can understand that Timaru is a Slough of Despond. It is the Minister who has plagiarised the circumstances. Either ho or the engineer engineered them. Medimval History is full of incidents auspiciously similar. Mediaeval roads were quite as bad as Timaru shingle, and mediaeval coaches were as shaky as the United Party, Royal coaches were often stuck up, and, with monotonous regularity, the royal passenger won the admiration of Ids subjects by the gracious condescension with which he alighted and lent a hand. Othos and Conrads and Heinrichs of the Holy Romau Empire did it. Kings of Old France did it. Frederick the Great of Prussia did it; but he introduced a variation into the story by taking a cudgel and beating his coachman. And, going still higher up, is there not the story of “Hercules and the Bemired Wagoner”? And was not Hercules the Public Works Minister of Olympus?

Dear Civis, —In a January issue of the Times appeared the following cablegram giving American vital statistics to date: —“The Census Bureau reports that the population of the United Mates at 10.45 this morning (Januarv 22)_ totalled 121,951,856, The bureau registers a birth every 13 seconds, and a death every 23 seconds. An immigrant enters the country every one minute and a-half, and one leaves every five minutes.” Can a person leaving a country be an “immigrant?” Yes, but only in America. An immigrant to the States may exceed his country’s quota. In that case things happen so quickly that he has not time to change his title to “emigrant.” The officials escort him straightway to the outgoing ship with apologies and bows and smiles and a cigar, giving him possibly a hurried counter-lunch at Ellis Island. On the ship he is labelled a “ returned immigrant,” But custom varies ia this matter. A century or more ago many men came out to Australia under Government auspices who did not receive the name of immigrants at all. Not one was turned back, for in those cases there was no quota. Those meu, or rather their descendants, are living in Australia still, and quite good people too. In more modern times an immigrant is he who migrates into a country. Ho who migrates out of a country is au emigrant A migrant? Like a migratory bird or an absconding embezzler he has no known destination.

But, apropos of the above statistics, this affectation of scientific accuracy is a manifest deception. Meticulous precision in statistics would generally not matter a tush except for the Statistician’s pretence that it does. In questions of population round figures and broad generalities are so much more impressive that they may at times rise even into poetry. Tennyson found it so when he wrote in his “ Vision of Sin ”:— Every moment dies t man. Every moment one Is born. An anonymous friend “passionately devoted to the study of sanitation and mortality,” carried his enthusiasm to the point of writing to the Laureate and pointing out that the poet’s statistics would leave the population of the world stationary. He suggested the emendation:

Every moment dies a man, And one and one-sixteenth Is born.

He confessed that even this emendation would not remove the inaccuracy, for the correct figure was 1.047; but, as he said, some allowance must be made for metre. The Dunedin vital statistics for January last were recently published;— Births, 147; deaths, 72; marriages, 55. These statistics might be expressed thus: —n birth every 5 hours, a death every 10 hours, a marriage every 13 hours. This statement is sufficiently impressive for you and me. But who wants to know that, in Dunedin last January, a birth took place every 5.061 hours, or that, during the same period, .198 of a Dunedin child was bom per hour? Further in reply to my last week’s correspondent, who wrote:—• There is no measure for poetry but metre, and poets sometimes transcend this by writing vers libres. Transcend? I should prefer a different word. But the usual indiscriminate condemnation of vers fibres is absurd. It all depends. There are vers fibres and vers fibres. You don’t ask a man whether he likes prose or whether he likes- liquids. As I say, it depends. Speaking as an advocatus diaboli, I should define vers fibres as poetry emancipated from the traditional rules of poetic rhythm for a certain well-defined purpose. How far the emancipation is carried depends on individual taste and on the nature of the purpose. According to the vers-libriat, poetical rhythm should always be closely appropriated to the emotion expressed or the image presented. No two emotions have the same tempo. The play of emotions cannot bo forced to await the baton as in an orchestra. And a particular emotion is itself rarely, if ever, rhythmical. The poet who seeks a more intimate, direct, personal expression of his emotions demands an instinctive rhythm rather than the old artificial rhythm, fatigued by tradition. No one can deny, for example the beauty of T. E. Brown’s well-known vers fibres:—

A garden Is a lonesome thing, God wot > Rosa plot. Fringed pool, Ferned grot,— The veriest school 0£ peace; and yet the fool Contends that God la not — Not God! in gardens! when the eve is cool? Nay, but I have a sign; 'Tis very sure God walks In mine. Analyse this for its thoughts, its images, and the emotions expressed; and see what you get out of it. But the fact remains that vers-librisra throws the doors wide open to mediocrity. I prefer the other. Cms.