PASSING NOTES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21544, 16 January 1932, Page 6

PASSING NOTES

Deep and lofty and far-reaching—as befitted the occasion—was the Chancellor’s address to the University Senate this week. It swung down into the bowels of the earth with the ant, up aloft in the air with the soaring bee, back hito the far-away past and forward into the mid-distant future. It was scholarly, too, ■ giving the ’ senators a treat that was entymological and zoo-, logical, chemical and sociological, historical and economical—not excluding the agricultural and pastoral- The ant and the bee camb into it: — , Man first became • man . . . when he learned thrift, and the foresight implied in it. But. the bee and the ant had been, before him in ■ this. What obstructed their further • development was their minute size and the lack of hands, and the facilities to create new things or combinations of things. He became capable of moulding materials or other animals to his purpose. ... He could never have made or even thought of thia progress had he hardened his social life into the rigid organisation of the bee or ant. Rigid division into classes or castes, as among the Hindoos, kept him at the stage of social life that the bee and the ant had attained. Freedom to move up and down was one of the first essentials of advance. So you see that thrift alone —that much belauded thrift of the ant—has not helped it much, but has left it hopelessly in the rear of progress. I rejoice that some one has at last had the courage to deal a blow at this agelong cult of the ant, and has put the over-estimated ant in its right place. Ever since our childhood’s days, many a sweet resting moment has been disturbed and embittered by the command to “Go to the ant, thou sluggard.” This 1 militaristic and Communistic ant nation, of which every individual is a conscript armed to the teeth, which toils feverishly sat interminable Five Year Plans, failed to succeed because it thought of nothing else but thrift. It confused thrift with ceaseless labour, and left itself no time for schemes of social progress. So, to this day, no ant “ can move up and down.” In other words, its mechanical and cast-iron social structure allows no ant to carry a marshal’s baton in his knapsack. The ant remains an ant, while thriftless man has become “a little lower than the angels.”

The Canado-Neozealandian Trade Conference has concluded, and the envoys’ have departed, each to report to his sovereign Parliament. Each brings home in his handbag a draft of what will be known hereafter as the Butter Treaty. Why not? A recent treaty between the United States and Canada was called the Halibut Treaty, just because it dealt with halibut. Likewise we might have with Australia a Potato Treaty or a Foot-rot Treaty. Alas, that high state policy should often be so low, and' of the earth earthy! The humblest of domestic things are not to be despised by the most august state or statesman. When Henry VII married his son to Catherine of Aragon, most of his negotiations with the Spanish ambassador Pueblo —negotiations for which he mobilised all the diplomatic resources of his kingdom—dealt with the spoons and forks and household linen which, by treaty, the bride had to bring as her dowry. But in these democratic conferences on butter and potatoes the oldtime stage diplomatist plays no part. The type is well known; his nerves of steel, his inscrutable face; suspicious of everyone, trusting no one; passing his pvenings now dancing with princesses, now drinking champagne from ladies’ shoes, now stealing secret treaties from secret cabinets. This is the stage type of ambassador. The historic type is much less attractive and impressive. Sir Henry Wotton, himself an ambassador of note, defined an envoy as “ an honest man sent abroad to lie for his country’s good.” “If they lie, lie harder,” was Louis Xl’s instruction to his own envoys. In later days, Bismarck adopted the unsportsmanlike method of deceiving by telling the truth. But try we ever so hard, we can find no type or category in which to place our Canadian and Few Zealand trade envoys. Says a Press Association cable from Honolulu: Mr W. Downie Stewart and Mr H. H. Stevens, in a joint announcement, state that the details must await parliamentary ratifications. A fine spirit of friendlessness had been maintained throughout the discussions. “A fine spirit of friendlessness! ” If this be a new diplomatic method adopted at the Honolulu Conference, our own New Zealand delegate would bo a disastrous failure.

The choice of Honolulu as the locale of the Trade Conference was according to the beat mediaeval and modern tradition. Precedence and prestige count for much in these meetings between high contracting parties. Whether Mahomet goes to the mountain, or the mountain to Mahomet, the visiting party is always at a disadvantage. Ho suffers in his prestige. He inevitably comes as a suppliant. What spot on the Earth’s surface seems more divinely ordained for a New Zealand-Canadian conference inter pares? Honolulu is on neutral territory. It is mathematically and geographically almost midway between the conferring nations. And at the Hawaiian Hotel they do you very well. Alexander Of Russia the Emperors did not meet in Russia or on French conquered territory, but on a raft moored in the middle of the river Neimen. The problem of precedence was thereby solved. Where the coiP-'-ting parties number half a dozen, the solution of the problem becomes an intellect sharpener. The Treaty of Westphalia took four years to conclude; delegates met in 1G44, and many months were spent in questions of etiquette, and serious matters were dealt with slowly and jealously and with many interruptions. A circular room was provided, with an entrance door for each envoy. A table was set with the appointed chairs equidistant from the respective doors. At the ringing of a bell each delegate advanced at a fixed pace, in order that all should reach their assigned places simultaneously. In 1001, Spanish and French ambassadors and their suites fell to blows in the London streets as each side strove for precedence in a procession arranged for the reception of the new Swedish envoy. Says Samuel Pepys on the incident:— There were several men slain of the French, and one or two Spaniards, and one Englishman shot by a bullet. ... So having been very much daubed with mud, I got a coach and home, where I vexed my wife in telling her the story and pleading for the Spaniards against the French.

The harried and wearied journalist who sits at the Berlin end of the cable has in those days a depressing task. Small wonder that, being romantically and humorously minded, he turned aside for one brief moment of a dull December day from moratoria and reparation payments, and cabled an account of an ancient Black Magic recipe lying in the “ laboratory ” of the National Psychic Research Society awaiting a test: — In Winter, at full moon, amid the snow of the highest peak of the Harz Mountains, a maiden of pure heart, clad in white, must annoint a he-gont with a concoction of bats’ blood, scrapings of church bells, soot and honey. The animal will then turn into a beautiful vouth. The alchemical materials are all at hand, and cheap. And now the volunteering maiden has appeared in the person of Fraulein Urta Bohn, the 20-year-old daughter of a Breslau doctor, a world

authority on witchcraft. Recking little of the world’s shortage of food and the world’s superfluity of beautiful youths, this Psychic Research Society has decided, once and for all time, the truth or falsity of its recipe. And for all we know, at this precise moment, an unfortunate Harz Mountain he-goat may be agonizing in growing pains, and butting at its fate. The issue is momentous. For belief in Black Magic, though dying, is taking an unconscionable time in doing it. • . Black Magic assumes multiple forms, and is of all degrees of blackness —from the ravening were-wolf of Central Europe to the innocent dream-book of the servant girl; from the .savage witchdoctor drawing out disease along a string to the modern peasant carrying a magnet in his pocket to draw out his rheumatism; from the leopard’s claw worn as an evil-averting charm by the African native to the gold swastika carried as a lucky mascot by Miss Amy Johnson. The unifying principle in all these manifestations is fear of the future. There is scarcely a spell of Black Magic that does, not find its counterpart in the white man’s towns and villages to-day . . . showing how closely akin in matters of mind is the civilised white to the most primitive savage who ever crouched over a jupot. According to General Smuts, “ repressive laws and ordinances are powerless to prevent the witch doctor’s sway from being a menace to British rule in Africa.” Yet there are Welsh and West Country villages to-day where the entire rural population believes that certain “ wise women ” have power to cast spells and cause illness to man or beast. Three years ago, at St. Mawes, in Cornwall, a “ wise ” woman “ ill-wished ” a man into mental and moral collapse. In her wisdom she made £SOO out of him.

When you come into collision with a motor car as you cross a street, and you come back to your senses in a hospital bed, there are several, ways in which a modern Job might comfort the consciousness which you have regained. I First, there is the personal and would-be friendly: “Do you know, old chap, that pedestrians and gramophones make the same horrible sounds when run down ? ” The second is the numerical and statistical : “In America last year a quarter of a million people were killed by automobile traffic, or eventually died from their injuries; and in London alone there were 1003.” But bare statistics will leave you cold. You see too many of them. The daily press is full of them—of millions of francs and marks and dollars. The only way of making you sense even to your marrow bones the danger you have so narrowly escaped to-day and may run again next week is to adopt the pictorial or symbolic method by which the annual motor .holocaust is, so holocaustically described in a recent American monthly, under the arresting caption of “Another City Gone”:— Late Press despatches confirm a rumour that during the past 1 twelve months, as the result of a mysterious disease with which the authorities have been powerless to cope, the entire population of Tucson, Arizona — men, women, and children —has been wiped out. It will be remembered : that, in the course of the previous year, the whole population of Ann Arbor, Michigan, was annihilated by the same epidemic. And the year before that every man, woman, and child in Northampton, Massachusetts perished from the same dread disease. It might also be added, if anything, else were needed to make this epidemic the most deadly known to man, that the material damage done by it in the last two. years in America alone is equal to the whole initial cost of the Panama canal. If this does not make you sit up in your bed, your Job might continue: “The germ of this disease is thirty times as dangerous as the 1 typhoid bacillus. Alt is increasingly destructive to, the aged. It is specially dangerous to those who drink or smell of alcohol. It is most virulent at about five o’clock of a pleasant Saturday afternoon or of a public holiday, for at those times the germ is always fighting-mad at street corners or road-intersections. And the only place of safety on a Saturday is in your garden, and on Sunday at church.”

Dear Givis,—Could you giye me any information about the origin of the name Rotten Row, and the history of the road itself? Origin and history—all in one Note. Rotton Row was constructed by William 111, The origin of the name is obscure. The popular derivation is. from “ Route du Roi,” since it was first called King’s or Lamp Road. When first constructed, Rotton Row was an ordinary road. Its surface was changed to soft soil about 1734, the new road to the South having been made about 1732 by George II as a short way to Kensington Park, now Kensington Gardens; and this soft surface may have something to do with the emergence of the name Rotten. At first, as it was distinctively the King’s Road, riding or driving down Rotten Row was reserved as a Royal prerogative. The last occasion when this special Royal privilege was exercised may have been the following 50-year old incident: — The Prince of Wales and Lord Charles Beresford made a wager that the latter would not drive a horse and cart down the Row. _ A few days later, the Prince was riding there one morning, and. passed a watering cart. The driver, complete with shabby bowler hat and clay pipe, doffed the former and called out cheerily, “ Good morning, sir. I have won my bet.” It was, of coursfc, Lord Charles.

A batch of good stories from a London weekly to hand: — When Mr Winston Churchill was Chancellor of the Exchequer, he once made an extremely vigorous speech contrasting the Conservative and Socialist policies. As his speech progressed he grew more and more emphatic, thumping with his fists on the Ministerial despatch box to emphasise his words —a sure sign that he was in a fighting mood. At last he came to what was evidently his peroration. “ Either,” he said, “ the Government must remain firm in repelling attacks on the Constitution, or a —or a —,’ and here he paused for a moment to find an effective alternative. “Pro nobis,” chanted the irrepressible Jack Jones, amid the laughter of the whole House. A railway story;— The general manager of the Railway Company, travelling one day down his line, heard a porter call out at one station: “ ’Auwell, ’Anwell." He asked the porter his name, and took a note of it. A little further on he heard another porter calling out, “ Healing. Healing.” His name was also taken. On returning to his office, the manager issued an order that Porters Brown and Robinson bo directed to exchange their stations of Ealing and Hanwell immediately. A war story; — Shortly after the declaration of war in 1914 an officer in charge of an isolated post in Central Africa received an omnibus message worded as follows: —“ War declared. Arrest all enemy aliens in your district.” With every promptness he acted on the message, and sent back the reply, “ Have arrested three Belgians, two Frenchmen, an Italian, seven Germans, an American commercial traveller, and an Arab. Please say with whom we are at war.” Civts.