PASSING NOTES.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21040, 31 May 1930, Page 6

PASSING NOTES.

“A Woman With a Secret.” Under this arresting title appeared an extract in Thursday’s Otago Daily Times from a London paper to hand:— The most closely-guarded secret in the world—the contents of Mr Philip Snowden’s Budget of Apri, 14—was in the possession of only eight persons, and one of them was a woman. Apart from the Chancellor, the others in the great secret were, Mr Ramsay MacDonald ' and five highly-placed officials. , . Mrs Snowden is the first woman for years who has been entrusted with such a secret. Neither Mr Asquith nor Mr Churchill allowed their wives to have the slightest inkling of what they were going to spring on the House on Budget day. Neither excessive nor unusual were such impressive precautions. Not being a Margot the Limit, Mrs Snowden could safely be told, and a few high Treasury officials would remember something of their own handiwork. Chancellors of the Exchequer—even the greatest —require aid in the mechanics of figures. Gladstone failed in the Arithmetic paper in his Oxford Rcsponsions. And Lord Randolph Churchill, gazing at the care-fully-prepared decimalised returns of his Treasury officials, asked “ what those damned dots were.” The report above' quoted merely reveals tbe tortured suspense and the hushed expectancy with which this first Socialist budget was awaited. For months leader writers in English papers had been writing ominously of the “ Creeping Shadow.” “Up to now,” said a paper of last August, “Mr Snowden’s title to fame has been rather in what he has said and the way he has said it than in what he has done,” but “ in April next he will be the centre of a first-rate electrical storm.” Truly an intelligent anticipation. The creeping shadow was metamorphosised into a cadaverous an.l hungry inonster. No amcathetic soothed the path of the surgeon’s knife. In fact, Mr Snowden’s bite was worse than his bark. A history of British Budgets would be a history of personalities. ..Chancellors of the Exchequer—Paladins of High Finance, as Disraeli calls them—have their individualities like less august mortals. The Gladstonian precedent was one of tremendous audiences and speeches of portentous length; elaborate figures elaborately revealed, but plain to the meanest understanding. It was he who introduced what, became in time one of. the most boresome moments of the Budget .speech. His plan ■ was to interject now and then into the gravity, not "to say the boredom, of elaborate figures, gleams of what were considered by the House of Commons as examples of side-split-ting humour, Churchill’s presentation of his Budget is thus described:— He had" everything for which his soul craved. First, immense notice by . Press and Public, Secondly, an opportunity of making a speech whichbrought out all his oratorical qualities. And 1 should put last, though it was probably the first thing in his mind—surrounded by his very attractive family. Snowden’s manner is characteristic:— Tenseness in facial expression and language. Face pale and set. The shadow of pain not far away. A voice which conversationally is most agreeable is apt to become unpleasantly high, and suddenly to drop to a whisper scarcely to be heard. He E resents his case remorselessly. He as humour, but it is grim, Foeman in many a Titanic debate, Snowden and Churchill delight in attacking each other’s Budgets. “ Aren’t you rather hard on Churchill,” some one asked him after one of his attacks. “ Perhaps, but I like him. It is lovely to watch the expression of his face—like reading a book.” Snowden himself tells the story that during his Civil Service days a man once lodged a complaint against him of incivility. “Why!” replied Snowden, “1 never said a word to you.” “No, but you looked plenty,”

The world has seen no greater benefactor to his species than the man who first invented the wheel. He it was who first introduced the idea of “ revolution. 1 ' But since his day the word has acquired a legion oi senses. It may mean merely the useful, familiar, and beneficent turning of a wheel on its axle. It may also mean the orbital motion of sun, moon, stars, and planets. It has become a symbol of life. From the rotatory movement of Fortune’s wheel we get the sudden rise to eminence and power of what was originally on the lower rim and the corresponding depression of what was at the top. Whether the movement be common or communist, all that is required for this sort of revolution is a crank. But different Trom these kinds of revolution is that which is now knocking at our gates—not with the sledge-hammer of the political or economic reformer, but with the gentlyrapping fingers of Woman. Miss Amy Johnson, running rings round the world of men, is not the first harbinger of this world-revolution, but her heroic exploit conveys to men a message too significant to be brushed •aside. The world is changing, or has changed. Hot only in the newly-discovered realms of the air does woman claim equality, but in the domain which man has for centuries marked out as his own. This is, in Lord Wakefield’s words, the domain of “ courage, enthusiasm, efficiency.” Her achievement is one in which even a male aviator would consider he was flying in the face of Providence. In such airy flights Miss Johnson is not a rara avis.

Mrs Miller flew from England to Australia. The Duchess of Bedford traversed both ways the route from England to Africa. Lady Bailey, ‘ mother of five children, made a world’s altitude record for light planes, was the first woman to fly the Irish Channel, and in a light plane made a solo flight from Croydon to Capetown and bnc And Lady Heath. But why extend the list? Man must cease to talk of woman’s “ sphere " as if it were a round shape flattened out at' the “ polls.” The revolution has come. For when woman takes the air she leaves her former domain empty, untended, unguarded—a weary, weeping, waste wilderness of forlorn men and helpless children. Men will have to bend over the Monday washing. Sic transit gloria Monday. ° Last in a long list of Southland Civil Servants printed in the 1872 volume of the Southland Provincial Council Proceedings appears the name of Joseph George Ward, Telegraph Cadet, salary 15 shillings per week. The small leather knapsack of the telegraph boy already contained a Prime Minister’s baton. The old German dominie who saw in every German schoolboy a potential or prospective Bismarck was in the rights of it For these reasons and others, and whatever be our political opinions, the generous tributes to the ex-Premier from opposing political leaders make pleasant reading. They remove—or tend to remove—at least one mun-in-the-street mis conception. This is that political opponents must needs be inveterate foes, regarding each other as a Brahmin does an Untouchable, or a cat a mouse. It has happened before this that apparently bitter foes in the House of Representatives arc inseparable cronies in Bell amy’s, where by tacit understanding a quiet corner couch is always left vacant. Bellamy’s has its uses. Is not Bellamy a corruptiofi of “Bel Ami ”v

of reference by which I might trace a remark of this man or tnat, and possibly sheet home to him some of his errors. Hansard. An index to Hansard! As Lord Rosebery remarked of Forsyth’s “Napoleon in St. Helena,” it might be “ a dreary book crowned by a barren index.” As some one has said, two classes of- books in particular should always have a good index—the best books and the most unreadable books. Quite wrong. For neither of these classes of books are adventitious aids desirable. But an index verborum or an index rerum or a concordance to Parliamentary Debates would be a boon to political students both present and future. Its compilation would call for brains, discretion, experience, and a multi-coloured political hue. Macaulay once said to his publisher ; “ Let no damned Tory index my History.” An index to Hansard might run as follows, giving the ipsissima dicta of members;— Is glad. Sullivan, J. W. p 117 Is sorry, Jones, D., p. 112. Humour, not argument, Wilford T. M., p. 121, Member happens to be, Munro, J. W., p. 125. ’ g(J lce . on the. Hunter, Sir George, p. Fourteen months,. Clinkard 0. H. p. 48. Mind, his, great, Coates, Hon. J. G., p. 85. leisures, wrong, Perrelle. Hon., p. These “ indical cryptograms ” merely mean that Mr Coates “ had a great mind to read ” a certain report, that Mr Perrelle charged an Opposition member with quoting wrong figures, that Sir George Hunter did not want to tread on thin ice, and that Messrs Sullivan and Jones were glad and sorry. Let each reader of Hansard make hia own index. When Opie was asked “ How do you mix your colours? ” he replied,' “ With brains.” Add brains to the patience of Job and the industry of a coolie, and the thin o, is done. . ° Dear Civis, Do the small wheels of a motor car move faster than large ones? A friend of mine argues with me that very small wheels are a mistake, as they turn faster, and therefore throw up more mud on the mudguard. Could you decide the question? The speed of revolution of a wheel attached to a vehicle is not a difficult problem. Every point in a, wheel has two combined motions—one horizontal, in the direction of the body of the car, the other circular, round the circumference of the rim. These are equal -in magnitude. The point momentarily at the top of the wheel has therefore two forward horizontal speeds, each equal to that_ of the car. This point is therefore moving exactly twice as fast as the car. The point momentarily at- the bottom of the wheel has also two equal motions, but opposite, one forward and one backward. These neutralise each other. The point is therefore momentarily at rest. This is independent of the size of the wheel. A smaller wheel would naturally make more revolutions than a larger wheel in traversing the same distance, but this has ho reference to speed. The points not at the top and bottom would vary slightly in speed with wheels of different sizes, for the direction of their circular motion varies with the curve-angle of the arc of the wheelhut only slightly. Not enough to matter, The linotypist’s well-known objection to a diagram precludes further explanation, Watch the wheel of a cart or motor car, and mark the momentary immobility of the point touching the ground.

Since Daniel O’Connor’s, famous mixed metaphor, “ I smell a rat, I see it floating in the air before me, 1 will nip it in the bud,” political speeches in the heat and turmoil of debate have been full of them. Such confusion of thought shows an imagination temporarily out of the control of reason. A member of the House of Commons, alarmed at the growth of revolutionary opinions, drew a terrible picture of the futures I warn Honourable Members of the House that this chamber may be invaded by ruffians who will cut us into mincemeat, and throw our bleedheads on the table to stare us in the face. An ardent Freetrader, at the close of a fierce election campaign, declared: Friends, show to-morrow by your, votes that the Tariff Reformer, with Ins specious appeal to the dear loaf, shall never drag the thin end of the herring across the plank of an enlightened democracy. Even Mr Ramsay MacDonald once referred in the House of Commons to “ the empty graves where all our ruined industries lie.” And Lord Morley at Oxford in 1909 stated that “ Indian reforms have at length come to birth after, being for many months on the anvil.” A Unionist M.P., speaking against the Irish Home Rule Bill some years ago, indignantly exclaimed: “The right honourable gentleman is trying to thrust this Bill down our throats behind our backs.” A young member in the full fervour of his maiden speech concluded thus:' " No, Sir, the British lion, whether he is crossing the plains of India, or climbing the pines of Canada, will never draw in his horns or retire into his shell.” Civis.