PASSING NOTES.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21196, 29 November 1930, Page 6

PASSING NOTES.

The man at the other end of the Press Association cable service has a sure dramatic instinct—but only in embryo. What he lacks is dramatic technique. He has an unerring flair for a striking situation. But no sooner has he worked up his audience to the tip-toe of excitement at the approach of the dramatic “ crisis ” than he cynically rings down the curtain, puts out the footlights, and tells the people to go to their homes. The little drama which was proceeding so satisfactorily in Japan a week ago—and which, for all we know, is still proceeding—was summarily suspended at the close of the second act. A cable dated November 18 gave all the requisite data of an introductory and explanatory first act:— Waving a red flag as _a protest against the discharge of fugi cotton employees a workman has been sitting on the top of a 130 ft chimney in Kawasaki 1 since early on Sunday morning regardless of efforts made to dislodge him. The use of' fire-hose and smoke was ineffective, '■ct Two appeared two days later.;— I The man sitting on a chimney regardless of rain and cold continues to defy the efforts made to dislodge him. The police, are worried. Tomorrow the Emperor will pass the locality when returning to Tokio from the naval manoeuvres. These two acts fulfil all the dramatic rules and canons—Aristotelian, Shakespearian, Shavian, Act One defines the situation, places the hero in his position of peril, indicates the hostile forces arrayed against him. With Act Two the “crisis” comes stealing on—the approach of the Emperor—when the fate of the hero will hang in the balance. The mention of naval manoeuvres, with its .hint of fleets still in being off the coast, and of unholy engines of destruction awaiting the Emperor’s nod, is reminiscent of Euripides and Bland Holt. What is going to happen to the devoted figure sitting dauntlessly aloft amid streams of hose-water and clouds of mirky smoke, and threatened by Jovian thunderbolts from ships’ gunst The audience waits on, agape with expectation, while the whole interest of the drama is still in the air. Even the hero’s name is left unknown. Is he intended to be symbolic—a symbol of humanity thrown haphazard into a hostile world? Or is he merely a university student? But this nameless Japanese stylite has famous ancestors. He is doing nothing new. Ever since early medieval times pillar-saints of elevated minds have sought in this way to express their dissatisfaction with the world. The seclusion of the hermit’s cell, of the heart of the desert, of the depths of the forest, did not appeal to them as the right way to make a public protest. Simeon Stylites in the . fifth century, after nine years of voluntary immurement in a narrow cell, established himself on the top -of a column 72 feet high—and lived there for 30 years. From his lofty pulpit he preached to thousands of-pilgrims from distant lands. His record was broken by his disciple Daniel, who spent 33 years on the top of a column in the more trying climate of the shores of the Bosphorus, Down to the twelfth century Syria had many pillar-saints. A sixth century German monk named Wulfailich attempted the pillar life, but the neighbouring bishops frowned up at him, and he came down. Anatole France, in his playfully^jesting way, discusses the origin of the flourishing Egyptian town of Stylopis. Paphnutius, on seeing the column, recognised it from his dream, and calculated its height at 32 cubits. He ordered a ladder tp be made of that height, . . . He had brought no provisions, trusting in divine .Providence and to charitable peasants. . . . Soon the report of this extraordinary existence spread from village to village, and labourers from the valley came on Sundays with their wives and children to look at the stylite. . . . The disciples of. Paphnutius obtained permission from him to build their huts at the foot of the column. . . . The Abbots of Ephrem and Serapion, informed of these proceedings, came to him and in vain ordered him to come down. . . . Pilgrims flocked from all parts. Some came from long distances, and were hungry and thirsty. The idea occurred to a poor widow of selling fresh water and lemons. Next a baker brought some bricks and built an oven close by, selling loaves and cakes to visitors at good profit. .. . The crowd of visitors increased unceasingly, and a caravanserai was built to house the guests and their servants, their camels and mules. . . . At the end of six months a city had arisen with inns and wineshops, a guard-house, a prison, a tribunal, and a school kept by an old scribe. President Hoover, emulating Hercules, is about to clean out the Augean stables. In other words, as the cables say,-he is determined to wash out the gangsters once and for all, and their forced tribute “ raked off ” from Br. tklyn laundries and Californian vineyards. And he may take a look on his way at the Chicago gunning season. Chicago apparently will call for his special attention. Yet the outside world should view the reported happenings in that city with a worldly-wise sense of proportion. In a current English weekly an English visitor to America writes on “ the truth about Chicago.” He says :■ — . People are secretly thrilled at the • . a , a city, superficially civilised in the same general way as their own, behaving out of business hours like a family of intoxicated headhunters. ... To read in The Tunes over the morning egg of A 1 Capone and “ Bugs ” Moran saying J". with bullets up and down North Clark Street only leads them to reach •x, vi e P®PP er > keeping the place with the other thunb. But let them read on. I will tell you what happened to me. He stepped from the train at the Illinois ' Central Station clad in a bullet-proof waistcoat and a general garb of universal suspicion. Even the taxi-cabs were suspect. How to select one that was not “ planted ” to decoy the innocent tourist? But the taxi driver he chose was friendly and polite—had never seen a gunman—had never heard gunfire since the war * had heard of only one violent death in the neighbourhood during the previous sis months, when a man fell out of a fourteenth floor window. The Englishman decided that the fun must begin at dusk. He inquired from his friends. “To the north and south of the ‘Loop,’” he was assured, there are disreputable neighbourhoods, and on the west side you could hardly hear yourself shoot.” Armed with these directions, a guileless look, and an insatiable curiosity, he set out next day to discover the city of terrors. He visited high night clubs and low night clubs, walked about alleys which were said to be suicide for a brace of police. He never saw men shooting at anything more deadly than a crap game with dice. Men in the Black Belt had heard or seen no shooting themselves, but warned him against “The Valley.” Men in “The Valley” likewise cautioned him against the dangerous “West side.” Everyone in the “ West Side ” spoke to him of the risks one ran in the Sicilian district about Orleans street, . 1 never met an ordinary inhabitant of the city who knew any details of a crime except those in the ZS ev ™ ?f jt ? ere in his own dmtrict. Chicago is safe for you, i {“4. 1 “Jj h °P e Mayor adds me to the City pay-roll for saying so.

The invasion of the peaceful English countryside, by the whirl and turmoil of modem life leaves behind it much more than dust and petrol fumes. It I lays its sacrilegious hands on the pro--1 nunciation of old English place names, | which are as sweetly scented with old- | time fragrance as the honeysuckle and the roses over the cottage door. Not for this reason, but to assist the harddriven broadcaster, has the 8.8. C. issued its new volume of “ Recommendations to Announcers Regarding the Pronunciation of Some English Place Names.” It is a timely production, which may stave off for a while from these sacred names the foul attacks of vulgar spelling. Already Cirencester is undergoing a barbarous change from the original “Sissister ” to the new-fangled “ Syroncester.” And Daventry is losing its melodious “Daintry.” And Slaithwaite its immemorial “ Slowit.” What has spelling to do with the matter, any way ? Let those who merely know how to read and write keep their uncouth hands off the sweet heart of the Old Country The 8.8. C. volume gives a list of no fewer than 1500 names based on information supplied by local listeners, and supported by statements of local vicars and local postmasters. Here follow a few:— Harewood (pronounced harwood); .Eynsham (ensham); Colne (cone); Dunwich (dunnich); Calcombe (chaycom); Bicester (bister); Lympne (limm); Slaugham (slaffam); Teignmouth (tinmuth); St, Neots (St. Neets): Claughton (clafton); Kesteven (kesteeven) ; Elswick (elsick); Meppham (meppam); Gillingham (jillingham). As a matter of fact, not one place name in a hundred thousand in England or in Scotland or in New Zealand, is pronounced as it is spelt. Try one of our place names on a foreigner, aad watch the result. The only place names in New Zealand spelt phonetically are Maori—and we promptly and universally unphoneticizc them. Work in Educational Psychology is. proceeding merrily. Ths wonder is that the labours of all these educational alchemists have not ere this produced the educational philosopher’s stone.. The newest field of inquiry is that of “ Adult Learning.” The intricacies that confuse the path of child education are insignificant in comparison with the encrusted insensibility and stolid imperviousness that block the entrance to the adult mind. The investigator who, with axe and slasher and saw, could blaze a way through this thicket of undergrowth would remake the world. But progress in this great subject seems so far to have been slight. And the methods adopted in the research do not point to success. Says an American Reviews— Partridge measured the amount of practice required by the two adults in learning not to wink when a hammer of rubber struck a plate of glass in front of the eye. The course of learning not to wink at the sight and . sound of the hammer waa as follows: Each number gives the number of times the winking was avoided in each hundred trials; Subject A: 0,0, 11, 6, 16, 20, 34, 53, 36, 42, 57, 45, 42, 53, 50. Subject B: 0,0, 2,4, 4,0, 8,2, 6,4, 0, 28, 8,4, 21, 32, 65, 39, 81, 83, 77. 92, 86, 97, 99, 88, 98. Comparison between these two winkers is interesting. Subject A’s rapid improvement makes B’s slow progress look foolish. At the eleventh trial B winked every .blessed time, while A had reached a non-winking total of 57. But soon B picks up and forges ahead, and at the twenty-fifth trial he winked but once. At that stage he had reached the point of winking with one eye at the whole proceeding. _ Psychological investigation of another kind Js described in the same Review. Mental tests of the living have been about the world here and there for many years. But mental testing of the dead is something altogether new. “ Case records ” of distinguished historical characters are presented, and mental tests, claiming to he “ 82 per cent, reliable,” on the basis of a “ reliability coefficient of historical data.” Says the writer:— Here are some of the I.Q.’s of dead geniuses between the ages of seventeen and seventy-six. Copernicus’s I.Q. is 130. Copernicus falls short of a medieval German theologian named Johann Reuchlin, who is marked 150. Abraham Lincoln receives an I.Q. of only 140, while somebody named Metastasio is entitled to 145. John Adams gets a mere I.Q. of ISO, as compared to an English divine, named Francis Atterbury, who rates at 150. Wolsey’a ‘’intellectual capacity ” is 200 or even higher, while Cromwell shook the world with an intellectual voltage of a mere 115.' Spinoza beats Cromwell by 30, but he couldn't quite make the grade of Robert Southey, whose I.Q. was 155. The interest of this I.Q. system is its applicability to you and to me. Under the ruthless blue pencil of this examiner Abraham Lincoln receives 60 marks less than Wolsey. And Copernicus and Cromwell are mere duds with 130 and 115. The rapid descent of these values for geniuses, whom the common man might bracket as equal, inevitably sets down my own I.Q. as 2, or possibly 2 plus. And the meaning of 1.Q.? With my I.Q. of a paltry 2 I can only make a wild shot at “Index Quota.’*. Probably this answer will bring my I.Q. down ■to “ one minus.” Civis.