PASSING NOTES.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21266, 21 February 1931, Page 6

PASSING NOTES.

Inflation and deflation are two opposing poles to which all political ideas seem to be gravitating. In the heyday of prosperity, the business man looks with satisfaction at his overdraft, he is expanding his own returns, with his securities meanwhile pledged to his banker. On analogy, the prophets of inflation would borrow more and still more, with an eye to ultimate profits.

But, counters the opposite school, future returns are problematical and illusory; you may be in your process of inflation “ hoist with your own petard.” In New Zealand the Forbes Government seems set for deflation, the pruning knife sedulously applied and no talk of further loans. In England, Sir Oswald Mosley and his back bench associates vaunt the merits of their large loan proposals, and Mr Lloyd George is dubbed 44 their white-haired boy ” —a singular enough term, in view of his grey hairs, but, in a political sense, not inapt, as Mr Lloyd George’s energies and his buoyancy in public life appear unabated by the pressure of years. A green old-age is his. Donee virenti canities abest Morosa. In Australia, M" Theodore has provided a cryptic outline of the decisions of the State and Federal Premiers and Treasurers in conference. The curriculum proposed seems to savour of both deflation and inflation. Mr Lang proves a dissentient note: some such ingredient was required for the charmed brew of Australian finance, 44 to make the gruel thick and slab.”

Mr Forbes, believing “ aux grands maux, les grands remedes,” has issued his bulletin of economies. In the first place it is admitted that a reduction of salaries in the public service was inevitable, and it is to be hoped that our friends within the service will recognise this with a commendable submissiveness. And, moreover, the trenchant cut of ten per centum all round is equal of incision and impartial in incidence. Post and telegraph employees, the guardians of law and order, teachers, and the rank and file of innumerable departments are to be treated alike. Are there any exceptions to the general rule? Are the super-superannuitants, judges, and magistrates to be subject to the levy? They may perhaps be regarded as privileged classes. In times of stress and depression the various components that make up our commonwealth are ever the more inclined to look askance, the one at the other. The lawyer lauds the farmer, when a knock Disturbs his sleep at crowing of the cock; The farmer, dragged to town on business, swears That only citizens are free from cares. It would be a fairly safe forecast that, as far as the salaries of the public service are concerned, a restitutio in integrum will depend entirely on the price New Zealand wool and butter may command, in the future, in the marts of the world overseas.'

“The old symmetrical spherical space theory is not possible under the new equations,” Professor Einstein said, closing his talk on his unified field theory. Einstein’s theories have given us furiously to think. This German Jew, born in the year 1874, retains a professorship at the Berlin Academy for Research. It has been said that he is in the enviable position of drawing a salary commensurate with the scale of his ideas and has nothing to do but sit and think. The result of this alluring quiescence is a periodic upheaval in the categories, fundamental ideas, and criteria generally, that have till now obtained in the world of thought. Yet Einstein has written to The London Times; No one must think that Newton’s great creation can be overthrown in any real sense of this or any other theory. . His clear and wide ideas will forever retain their significance as the foundation on which our modern conceptions of Physics have been built. This twentieth century “ruling monarch of the mind ” has written much concerning the shape of the universe, and such simple notions as those of time and space. He has finally submitted that “the universe now is a non-static expanding one,” but then this luminous equation may—as even Einstein changes his mind —be in the future subject to modification.

It is a far cry from the Prince of Wales and his royal brother initiated by a member of the present day Strauss family into the beauties of the “ Blue Danube ” as danced by their grandsires, to the days of Johann-Strauss the elder. Sir Horace Rumbold, a diplomat of the old school, who started his public career in the Foreign Office under Lord Palmerston, relates that it was Strauss who for the first time taught our languid youths and their partners what marvellous entrain lay in the genuine rhythm of the 44 waltzer ” as played by the sons of the Danube. Again in Vienna in 185 G Sir Horace was a great admirer of Johann Strauss (the son) and his marvellous band. I own to having a sufficiently frivolous taste in music to consider Strauss one of the most original and talented of living composers. The real places to hear him were saloons like 44 Sperl’s ”or the 44 Grosser Zeisig.” There, amid the fumes of tobacco and of Dreher’s malt liquor in long, shabby rooms, imperfectly lighted, full of tables crowded with gay couples whose union had begun with the first waltz that evening and would barely survive the last polka of the week, a perfect electric current seemed to reign between Strauss and his audience: one favourite piece would follow the other in quick succession, greeted with delirious cheering, that everything seemed to sway and reel and turn in more rapidly eddying circles under the power of his magic bow. The very air of Vienna was melodious with his music. Will the champagne lightness of the waltz usurp again the popular taste and oust the cloying nectars of jazz and foxtrot? Or is the age too indolent for the 44 lavoltas high and swift eorantos ”, of Terpsichore?

Reviews are to hand of an anthology entitled “The Art of Dying”; in this collection, the decor of famous deathbed scenes and the valedictory sayings of moribund celebrities have been traversed. It has been pointed out that the Emperor Hadrian achieved a playful irony, an Attic wit, all his own when in extremis he wrote the quaint apostrophe to his departing soul: Animula, vagula, blandula, Ah ! gentle, fleeting, wav’ring sprite. Friend and associate of this clay! To what unknown regions borne Wilt thou now wing thy distant flight? No more with wonted humour gay, But pallid, cheerless, and forlorn. The last words of Laguy, the mathematician, form an amusing episode. He was lapsing into a coma, and unable to recognise his friends around him. One of the latter, thinking of some comfort ing words for the dying man, leaned over him and asked, “What is the square ol twelve?” The stimulus was adequate, and Laguy replied, “One hundred and forty-four ” —and died. Two genetically dissimilar utterances have been attrib uted to the dying Pitt. “ Oh, my country! How I leave my country!” and “ I think I could eat one ot Bellamy’s pork pics.” Have the authors of this publication, which may find a place on our bookshelves alongside Sir Thomas Browne’s “ Hydriotaphia,” included the dying hours of Anatole France or the more recent demise of Lord Balfour, whoso soul, curiously detached during life, was wafted on its last journey to the strains of Bach and Handel?

During a recent robbery in Italy, the bandits, after plundering an old mar of his life’s hoardings, elected, on their departure, to kiss the hand of their victim. Why this chivalrous solatium? No doubt the bandits reasoned that the old man was due to die and could not carry his money with him. It would be better to make a distribution now, and for this, much thanks and kissing of hands. They were only doing what bandits of high degree have done from time immemorial, taken what they could vi et amis. When members of Parliament in England are sworn in as Ministers of the Crown, they kiss the King’s hand as a token of personal loyalty and a recognition of the honour conferred on them. The courtiers of Spain used to descend lower in the anatomical scale and in their official despatches subscribe themselves “ your Royal Majesty’s humble servants, who kiss your Majesty’s Royal feet.” But modern governors and ambassadors are not so servile as the West Indian governors of the days of Philip the Second. The origin of kissing as a sign of friendship and affection is related to some obscure atavism. It xs common to all classes of society, to young and old, to the poet and the peasant. The eugenist raises a forbidding hand; he sees in the act of osculation the germs of disease and death, but his physiological objections are laughed out of court. The disciple of the dismal science raises a weightier consideration. It has been discovered that the kiss is going out of fashion because it disarranges that complicated modern structure which we call the complexion; the actual damage is estimated at 10s 6d per kiss. Males are earnestly requested to bear in mind the philosophic maxim of Alexander Bam on “osculation”: “The occasion should be adequate, and the actuality rare.”

From Professor R. Lawson comes an extract in the original tongue from a letter of a Fi-ench journalist who has attained his ninety-first year. From one savant to another this is appropriate procedure, but for the benefit of my readers I must essay a translation: I have in my study a friendly little clock which has for quite a while been striking the hours for me. On October 7 last, in a veiled voice, it sounded the knell of my ninety-first year. You are surprised that I am still interested in literature. When I have the leisure, I read. Journalism is an excellent school for those who have only a modicum of ambition. In that school I have learned to discipline my thoughts and my language; and if I count for anything to-day, I owe it assuredly to my love of literature and my devotion to study—yes, for study even at my age, and for the better furnishing of my ideas. The Gods have been good to me. “ It is a good prescription for happiness,” writes Professor Lawson in an addendum. “ I wonder if all journalists live to be ‘ nonagenaires,’ and if they attain to the same cheerfulness towards 4 les dieux ’?” This is a friendly letter from the circles of the local University, A nonagenarian and a journalist! Such coincidences are not unknown. In the spirit in which it has been tendered (no doubt, pour encourager les autres) I accept and hand on th e missive. Cxvxs.