PASSING NOTES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22054, 9 September 1933, Page 5

PASSING NOTES

Of language, as a department of Nature, it might be said: So careful of the type she seems, So careless of the single life. The single life of Signor Mussolini, for example, is to language a thing of little consequence. It is here to-day, and tomorrow will be away. But as a label for the modern type of dictatorship the name of Mussolini has already contributed a new word to the languages of the world, and the word will linger when II Ducc himself lias censed from troubling and when Italy is at rest. He will have joined our friends Don Quixote and Judge Lynch, Epicurus and Machiavelli in adding a further word to all dictionaries. Sd language clings to the type. But why has Mussolini been chosen to join this honoured company? Why has he so captured our imaginations? Is his dictatorship the quintessence of that sort of thing—the purest and most ideal manifestation of one-strong-man despotic rule? By no means. A much finer type of dictatorship was born in far-off Venezuela a quarter of a century ago and is still going strong. Unhappily for this dictator, his name is Gomez—General Juan Vicente Gomez. And the name of Gomez is as plentiful in Spanish as the undistinguishing and undistinguished names of our own Smiths and Browns and Robertsons. Gomez can never preserve a type; he has merely a single life.

Years before the dawn of Mussolinism, the sun of Gomez was high in the heavens. His story takes some believing, but Current History vouches for it. At the beginning of the century the. notorious “dancing President” Castro, “the greatest linaheia! nuisance of the age,” had debauched Venezuela, repudiated her debts, bankrupted the State, and by his misdeeds had almost brought Britain and America to blows. Gomez, the exherdsman, Castro’s Vice-President, seized opportunity by the forelock while his chief was spending in Europe the money he owed in Venezuela, One winter’s morning Gomez sauntered alone and unarmed to the city barracks and arrested Castro’s nephew in front of his armed troops. Proceeding thence to the Presidential mansion he slapped the face of the first official who dared to offer a protest. ’ Within an hour he had made himself President. Within a fortnight he had balanced the Budget “ by the ruthless use of red ink.” Within a year he had produced a favourable balance of three and a-half million dollars. When Castro returned home hot-foot he was met by anti-dumping regulations and refused admittance. What is known as “the luck of Gomez,” aided by an unshakeable moral ascendency and an iron will, has raised Venezuela to a prosperity unequalled in South America. He has accumulated his annual surpluses, given his country 4000 miles of modern roads, built new seaports and new railways. Yet he knows only the three R’s.

Gomez in his progress found his friends a greater nuisance than his enemies. In Venezuela, with its seven revolutions a decade, spoils had become the natural expectation of the victors, and the numerous relatives of Gomez looked for their unearned increment. Whatever be the antonym for nepotism, Gomez adopted it as his policy: President Gomez exiled his favourite sou to Europe for disobedience, . He sent another of his sons to prison for two years on the complaint of the father of a girl, A third son he exiled to a distant ranch for demanding credit, from tradesmen. He removed his half-brother from political life for shipping gold to Curacao at a time of political uneasiness. He dismissed his cousin from the charge of arms and munitions when that cousin displayed a curious faculty for knowing whenever the President was •physically indisposed. . . . The same barrier of discipline and restraint separated Gomez from family, friend and foe. No son, grandson, or nephew would dream of taking a decision without informing him of it.

The pages of Livy have made Titus Manlius, consul of early Rome, the world’s type of stern, unyielding father, for did he not put his own son to death for disobeying an order of his uncompromising parent? Gomez has outManliused Manlius. His story, in fact, suggests an essay on the commonplaceness of the so-called heroic. Livy is mostly to blame for endowing events and characters of the heroic ago of Rome with a too high place in the world’s hierarchy of greatness. Too much is made of Cincinnatus who, ruined by a fine imposed on his son, was tilling his little farm across the Tiber when messengers of the Senate came to announce that he had been made dictator. “ With great simplicity he leaves his plough, conquers the Aequi, and returns once more to his furrows.” _ Did not our own Mr Massey receive his nomination as candidate for Parliament on the prongs of a pitchfork as he worked with his hay on the top of a wagon? A wanderer through England and Wales contributes to a London weekly a list of picturesque old village names. Here are a few:— Broad Oak: Red Roses: God a’ Mighty Hill; Cross Hands; Southerndown; Lover’s Leap; Nether Wallop; Brewersoak; Gatherwind; Craekleybank; Gay Bowers; High Easter; Pity Me: New Delight; England’s Gate; Mousehole; Dead Maids; Loggerheads; Prickwillow; Yardley Gobion; Worm’s Head; Devils Bridge; Stow-in-the-Wold. A similar seeker of the picturesque in New Zealand place names might list the following—all mentioned in the Post Office Directory: Ngapaenga; Opuawhanga; Waerenjjaokuri; Ohaeawai; Wainihinihi; Waiotemarama; Waerenguahika; Ngaawapurua; Punaruawhiti; Tiakitahuna; Wairongomai; Tangiteroria; Aokautere; Tataraimaka. These two lists thus juxtaposed raise the pointed question whether, in naming our places in euphonious Maori, we are not overdoing it. For one man in a thousand the Maori names have a meaning quite as sweet and fragrant as those of England. For the remaining nine hundred and ninety-nine they are a concord of sweet sounds—only that and nothing more. And of these remaining men-in-the-street the vast majority pronounce the names without sweetness or concord. We sacrifice picturesqueness of sense to euphony, and then promptly destroy the euphony. Can absurdity further go? Wrote a correspondent to the Otago Daily Times last month: Your issue of the 22nd inst. makes reference to an address by Mr .T. J. Kennedy, in which he referred to the? charm and beauty of the Maori langnaac. It would be interesting to hear Mr Kennedy's opinion of the local pronunciation of the following Maori names:—“Tonga” (Tongor); “ T’unga ” fPnnger): “ Wnikouaiti ” (Whacker White): “ Tahakopa ” (Tar Cope); “ Mihiwaka ” (Micky Wakky).

What constitutes euphony in a language? Among the euphonious elements vowels take precedence over consonants, long vowels over short vowels, soft consonants over hard consonants. According to a Harvard professor of modern languages, a scholar of international reputation, the most euphonious of the great languages is Italian. Next in order he places French, Spanish, German, Southern English. And he establishes his own impartiality by placing his own American English low down in the scale. Close to Italian would come Maori. Since every Maori syllable ends in a vowel, double consonants are unknown, and proportionately greater is the euphony. Maori forms of English names oil her intercalate a vowel between clashing con-

sonants or suppress one consonant altogether ; “Christopher” (Kiritowha); “William” (Wiremu)Charles ” (Hare); “George” (Hori); “Lucy” (Ruihi); “ Thomson ” (Tamilian!); “ Joseph ” (Hohepa); “Stephen” (Tepene); “James” (Henii). In Maori we have an object lesson in the history of human speech. “ Man sang before he spoke,” and his first singing cries were monosyllables. Monosyllables gradually agglutinated into polysyllables, words decayed into mere inflections, apd finally we have the inflectional language. Maori is passing out of the agglutinative stage. Native Mexican is still in it. From Mexican “alt” (water), “chichiltic” (red), “ tlaeatl ” (man), and “chorea” (weep), we have “ achichillacachocau ” (the place where people weep because the water is red). In the four ideas of “water,” “redness,” “ man,” “ weep,” we have all that is required to express the sorrow of a tribe where the blood of tribalwarfare has flowed. In naming our New Zealand places we might well choose Maori if the names appealed to our imagination and understanding, If they don’t, we shouldn't. Dear “ Civis,” —To your penetrat- • ing note on the Lloyd George Memoirs it might be added that war is a time of action; Lloyd George was preeminently a man of action, and men such as Asquith and Balfour preeminently men of thought. Hence L. G.’s emergence in wartime and (in part) his retrogression in after-war days. Further, all great men® (being naturally not perfect) have more or less defects. Such defects do not necessarily diminish their, greatness. It might even be said that many of Lloyd George’s positive qualities in wartime rose from his defects, just as the defects of Balfour as a War Lord arose from his qualities. The easy old-time distinction between “ man of action ” and “ man of words ” is much too rough and ready. Lloyd George was both. Without words he would not have transformed Britain into a gigantic munitions factory when munitions were the prayer theme of every report from the battle-front. Lloyd George’s distinction was his “ energy.” Kitchener was a man of action, but not at the time, according to L.G., a man of energy. He had left his energy on <he Empire’s battlefields. The method of Mr Lloyd George’s characterisation—of his opponents and of himself —is over-simpli-fied and too clear-cut. Human nature is more complex than that. Were his victims not all dead, wc might enjoy some interesting repercussions. Dear “ Civis,”—As you are _an authority on questions grammatical and otherwise. I should like your opinion on the following phrases which often occur in the advertisements in the Otago papers:— “Second-hand men’s clothing “ Left-off children’s coats”: “A handsome lady’s hand-bag “ Highgrade ladies’ shoes.” Also: “Dr Stuart’s Monument,” “ Cargill’s Monument,” —I am, etc., • A G HOWLER. My correspondent is right in growling. A “ second-hand man ” is a widower. But widowers’ clothes have no distinguishing characteristic, unless i'; be a certain air of neglect, and a slight paucity of indispensable buttons. “ Left-off children ” arc foundlings—not yet at the coat-wearing age. And high-grade ladies? The examples of which “A Growler” complains are all cases of disorder. Since it is quite as easy and quite as expressive to say “Men’s second-hand clothing” as to say “second-hand men’s clothing,” the error is quite without excuse. I see nothing wrong with “Dr Stuart’s Monument.” There is a “b elson’s Monument” in Trafalgar square, and similar forms are seen in “ Guy’s Hospital,” “ St. James’s Park.” It should not be forgotten that the use of the possessive form is not confined lo possession only, but is extended to include what grammarians call the subjective and objective genitives. “ Cargill’s Monument” is not the monument “ possessed by Cargill,” but “ built in memory of Cargill”—that is, an objective genitive, Civis.