PASSING NOTES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21627, 23 April 1932, Page 6

PASSING NOTES

For melodramatic elements of character, action and situation, few elections of modern times have equalled the German Presidential conflict just concluded. The election was also crammed more than most with contrasts and contradictions, paradoxes and complications. The presence of five candidates, and the necessity of a clear majority'for a first-ballot success, made the task of the prophet unprofitable, and burdened the lap of the gods. The Communist candidate, Adolf Thaclmann, was an “ honorary general ” of the Russian Red Army. A “ freak candidate,” Karl Winter, still iu gaol, conducted his election campaign from the cell of the Bautzen prison. And of-course there had to be a Steel Helmet candidate. But these three were small fry smothered in the smoke of the first conflict. The two left over presented a contrast rarely seen outside a Savoy opera: A Gehnan against an Austrian; a sturdy, staunch old field-marshal of 84 against a restless, fire-eating young corporal in his thirties; a soldier and Protestant, supported by many of the Catholics, Jews and pacifists who had bitterly attacked him seven years before, against a house painter and Catholic supported by many Protestants and condemned by Catholic priests; the Nationalist Hindcnburg, the friend of Emperors, standing firm for a constitutional republic, against the Socialist Hitler, heading a “ National Social Labour Party,” and standing for a Dictatorship. The Nationalists and Monarchists who made Hindenburg President in 1925 had turned Hitlerite in 1932; and the Hitlerite Socialists and Democrats of 1925 are now Hindcnburgors. And all through the strength of one man’s character—a man who has achieved more fame by his peace-time victories than by his war-time successes.

Among the short-lived customs and habits that came in with the Great War and went hurriedly out with the Armistice were those numerous, “ war words," which served 'so well their day and generation! Hut the naval and military occasions that brought them to birth have gone, and have dragged their labels with them into oblivion. We use the verb “ regret ” in its primitive sense of “ grieve for the absence of ”, —we “ regret ” them. And we “ regret ” none so much as the verb “to camouflage ” —which no one nowadays uses without an apology. Yet camouflage fills a gap as much now as it did then. It expresses, as no other word can do, a whole mass of modern human activities —political, ethical, moral, commercial. Wo all camouflage, giving a specious appearance of innocence to what has marked characteristics of a different kind. At the present moment the whole world is racking its brains to find a new camouflaging term for a certain old and hoary practice—that of not paying one’s debts. At one time it is dignified by the name “ moratorium.” at another “ deferring of interest.” Then, as cynicism takes its courage in both hands, it is frankly styled “ default,” and passes on eventually to “ repudiation ” and to “ what arc you going to do about it? ” Even the humble “ wclshcr ” or “ lovnnter ” might call his default a “ Plan,” basing his ease on the high moral grounds that the creditor can better afford to lose a few pounds than the debtor. For in these days a creditor is always a financier encompassed by money-bags, and a debtor has come to mean a poor well-deserving man victimised by circumstances. The process of “ camouflage ” requires of course a certain skill, the lack of which lands a camouflage! l in distressing ambiguities. So Mr O’Brien at Carterton, who protests he did not mean repudiation at all: He drew attention to the huge rate of interest paid during the time of deflation, and advocated that interest should be charged according to prices. Thus we proceed in our cloudy dreams, as Coleridge puts it: — Clothing the palpable and familiar

With golden exhalations of the dawn.

There are 'some things which an export phrenologist cannot do without suffering acute vexation of spirit. One of these tilings is a visit to the National Portrait Gallery in London, For many of the portraits looking-down upon him would, simply not be playing the game. They would be breaking the phrenological rules they were supposed to observe. A great poet might have the head of an engineer, and a famous statesman that of a sculptor. Our phrenologist, of course, would make the ready reply that, for want of a little vocational guidance in their early years, many such men of great distinction and renown were merely square pegs in round holes, and would have achieved a much more triumphant success at some other job. A London phrenologist, more frank than most, recently accompanied the members of the Explorers’ Club round the National Portrait Gallery, and gave them some illuminating criticisms of the cranial bumps of some of our great men:

Judge Jeffreys (“Bloody Jeffreys ’’): I see no cruelty there. Tennyson; Poetic condition not ' strongly developed. Sir Thomas More: Lacked ability to be sociable.

Charles Lamb: Greater ability in prose than in poetry.

Charles I was convicted of indecision because of his long head, and the fact that “ his ears were not sufliciently away from each other to betoken the man of action.” If Darwin’s head had been a little wideretmd squnrer he would have had a different character. But I do not in any way blame the phrenologist for these misfits in high places. No man is able to count the money in a safe by -feeling the knobs.

One of tlie many advantages enjoyed by women is the privilege—if the gods so will it—of changing their surnames. And the same gods must therefore smile with special .favour on the love passages between Mr Bee and Miss Honey Johnston, or between Miss Molly Smith and All- Coddle. -But the problem of Christian names is much more serious—and to both sexes. Many children with inappropriate Christian names are not thereby encouraged to rise up and call their parents blessed. There is an impish cruelty in Mr E. V. Lucas’s recent statement that most people correspond to their names—that “ the Johns are Johns; or even Honest Johns; the Williams are merely Williams; the Noels are Noels; the Sachcvcrells are just Sachevorells.” And he maintains that readers read Edgar Wallace because bis first name is Edgar, and not Richard, as he was baptised. What are we to say of Puritan names? A list of twelve jurymen empanelled in Sussex in Commonwealth days reads like a prayer:— Fight - the - Good Fight -of - Faith White, Redeemed Compton, Wecp-not Billing,- Called Lower, Elected Mitchell, Peace-of-God Knight, Kill-Sin Pfemble,Stand-fast-on high Stringer, More-fruit Fowler. Renewed Wisbiiry. Faint-not Hewitt, Preserved Smith. Meek Brewer. Imagine rims riot at the thought of these unfortunates in a modern boy’s school. The arrogance of those oldtime parents sprang from their selfconscious rectitude. But even this arrogance is less condemnable than the lack of worldly wisdom of Air Smith or Mr Jones who call their children by the (indistinctive labels of John and Mary. Even raedhorses arc more carefully named.

The conundrum propounded in last week’s Notes, “ Sisters and brothers have I none, but that man's father is my father’s son,’’ is capped by a correspondent who quotes from “ Sun, Sand, and Somals,” by Major H. Rayne,

M.8.E., M.C., an Otago boy “who during the past quarter, of a century has worthily upheld New Zealand traditions in various parts of Africa”:— “ Once upon a time,” said Mahomed, “ a man came to a Somal encampment, and at the entrance met a woman to whom he cried, ‘ I do not talk with women, and am in a conversational mood. Is there ever a man here with whom I can have a chat? ’ “‘ln this encampment,’ said the woman, ‘is only one man, and he lies asleep inside the tent.’ ‘“Well, wake him up,’ said the man. “‘I am ashamed to wake him,’ said the woman. ‘"For what reason?’ said he. “‘Because his mother is my mother's child, and I am Itis father’s wife,’ she replied. “This is my story,” said Mahomed, “and sometimes a Somal will sit for two days trying to find out what relation that woman was to the sleep- . ing man.” Between the father-son and the motherson problems there is no visible difference.

An Oamaru correspondent comments pleasantly on a last week’s Note reporting the founding in France of a prize (the Prix dc Meursault) of 300 bottles of Burgundy for the best poem or novel in favour of the “ back to the land movement.” And he takes me to task for suggesting that a similar prize in New Zealand of corresponding farm produce—a lorry load of mutton, or turnips, or rabbit-skins—would lack the romance of 300 bottles of sunshine. He writes:— Methinks you must be forfeiting your rightful claim to the M.C.-ship of our weekly literary Saturnalia (or Saturdaylia) when the very contemplation of such beauties of Nature fails to move you to lyrical ecstacy. ... I admit that in a railway meat wagon there may be difficulty in findN ing romance. ... But if ’tis a sixhorse 1870 farm wagon —there’s romance indeed. ... Or an old-time ■ sailing ship with its load of mutton. .. Yes, I agree. Had my correspondent stopped here, I would have thrown up my hands. But he goes on to turnips—• with less success. And to the rabbitskins: Have yoq never hoard how graphically (and geographically) any Noo York fur magnate will romance on the subject of the Now Zealand beaver, arctic fox, and ermine? There is not a business man in the city who docs not at times complain of the handwriting of his humble office staff. And the same business man, it may be, issues his own correspondence in type, with a signature usually illegible. Yet, as we all know, brains and beauty of caligraphy are in inverse proportion: Mr Goschon, when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, once took up. some/ of his own handwriting, and did not recognise it, being very shortsighted. “A man who ■writes like that has no business to be in tile public service,” he said. ■ Horace Greeley, the great American journalist, was' tire despair of his printers:— Once when a fly had struggled out of an inkpot and wandered over a sheet of paper on the Editor’s desk, ■ the compositor (imagining it was the usual leaderette) took it upstairs and set several lines of a. most effective article. The compositor then went to Mr Greeley, and said, “I cannot quite make out this word, sir.” “Constitution,” said Greeley,’ and the rest of the article was duly sot. JFlics that leave a mark hohiijd them do hot matter. It is the flics that don’t that do. Civis.