PASSING NOTES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22260, 12 May 1934, Page 6

PASSING NOTES

Usually crowned with the mellow glory of an Indian summer, this our merry month of May has set in—as often docs its northern prototype of November —in Stygian gloom and almost Cimmerian darkness. Or, as Tom Hood puts it, No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease— No comfortable feel in any member— No shlue, no shade, no butterflies, no bees, No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds, No —vembtr. An unmerited foretaste of August has been this first week of May, “ slippy, drippy, nippy, wheezy, sneezy, freezy ” as the old English jingle has it-'-giving conversation to the taciturn, justification to the melancholic, and oaths to those so inclined. Yet even to these black and lowering clouds there is a silver lining. Submerge the material in the spiritual, bury individual in the race, and all will be for the best in this best of worlds. For does not his climate make the Englishman or the New Zealander what he is—or what we hope he will be? A writer on “The National Character” in a book just moist from the press says:— Our climate is responsible for our adaptability, our easy opportunism, and our remarkable and sometimes dangerous dislike of planning ahead. We have been subjected _to its vagaries for so many centuries that we have acquired the habit of invariably basing our actions on the the circumstances of the hour: to do otherwise, our racial experience warns us, is to act inappropriately. We are opportunists, disciples of the logic of facts, but seldom of ideas, and accustomed to regard circumstances as they arise with a humorous and tolerant resignation based on our experience that they will shortly change for the better. . . . Our climate is one long discipline of fact. Head New Zealand for Britain, and al! this is true—but more so. This from an Englishman about the Englishman—the Englishman with his hundred climates. To Mr Santayana, the deep-down basis of the Englishman's strength and tolerance is the weather from which he suffers: His adventures are all external; they change him so little that he is not afraid of them. He carne s his ■ English weather in his heart wherever he goes, and it becomes a cool spot in the desert, and a steady and sane oracle amongst all .the deliriums of mankind. Never since the heroic days of Greece lias the world had such a sweet, just, boyish master, “ Climate fashions the race ” was the doctrine of a famous frenchman of last century. Ho took the English climate ns an illuminating proof of his theory. England, he said, was a land of dampness, rain, mud. The heavens poured down their rain, and the earth sent up fog to meet it. When the Romans came to this land they thought they had come to the confines of hell. To-day, the Thames in winter was the River Styx, and its gloomy banks were the gathering ground of embarking shades. Having no sunlight, the Englishman made it; and gas lamps in street and house were lit all day for weeks on end. Wbat can one do in this sepulchre? To remain at home encourages retrospection and suicide. To go out is to put forth effort, to brave the cold and damp. Such a climate prescribes action, preludes idleness, develops energy, teaches patience. Ideas here do not burst out into passion. The temperament is calm and phlegmatic, not prone to revolutions. . . . Such a climate send g a powerful vigour leaping through the body, and an imperative need for activity forces young men out to bestir their bodies. . . . And in this climate the maidens are slender, strong, selfpossessed, and exempt from coquetry.

Think not that our Frenchman stops here. He goes further, strenuously leaping from cause to effect—or from effect to cause. And all with rigid logic. For climate fashions the race, and never underplays its hand. It gives to the Englishman, we are told, his uncontested supremacy in his family. He can disinherit his own son. His wife follows him to the very ends of the earth. Every Englishman, too, is born with a political sense, and a feeling for social order —for docs not every eon call his father “ Governor ” 7 “ When I see the very devil breaking out in the daily press, am I to expect a revolt on the morrow? By no means. That is just their way of speaking, and ideas do not become passions. When I hear an orator at Hyde Park denouncing the Lords as ‘coquins’ before an applauding crowd, is a revolution impending? No, that is merely politics.” Thus does the effect of climate march on- from triumph to triumph. It is the English climate that produces the exuberant hairiness of the men. To climate, also, is due “ the large and powerfully-shod feet of the women, designed for walking firmly and comfortably in the mud.” These excrescences and these fundamentals are, both of them, the inevitable effect of mist and rain. Between the English climate and the New Zealand the difference is one of degree, not of kind. And we may take comfort in the prophecy of Froude that in these sea-girt islands, round whose shores the ocean roars and bellows, we are destined to be the future great nation of the Pacific.

According to Voltaire, the English nation is “ froth at the top, dregs at the bottom, but the middle is excellent.” No doubt the British Liberal Party, in its heart of hearts, and without using Voltaire’s vinous analogy, entertains the same view of the House of Commons and of the electors who vote it into being. If this be so, who has not sympathy, and to spare, for Sir Herbert Samuel and bis Samuelites? Are they not the last staunch remnants of dieliard Freetraders who see their Freetrade principles pushed off the national coach? Samuel and his men joined the National Government, and found it a quicksand of unkept promises. Mr Neville Chamberlain, speaking to the electors on the eve of that day of days of 1931, said, “You have not to decide to-niorrow whether you are going to have a tariff or Freetrade.” Mr Baldwin said simultaneously, “ The FreetradeProtection issue is not the real issue.” And Mr Ramsay MacDonald: “ There is nobody talking about full-blooded tariffs.” Thus the Samuelites became “Nationalists” under an “agreement to differ.” They found themselves submerged—these 40 Liberal Traders —in a National Party of 470 Conservatives, 13 MacDonalditcs, and 30 Simonites, most of whom were Protectionist Philistines. How could such a tail prevent such a dog from wagging? Their impotence was remorselessly rubbed in when Lord Stonehaven, chairman of the Conservative Party organisation, proclaimed, “We have a Nationalist Government with a mandate to carry out a Tory policy.” There are limits to what Liberal Freetrade flesh and blood can bear.

Sir Herbert Samuel, a few months ago, led his men “ across the floor,” and now revels in his new-found liberty. With what hungry avidity did he seize upon the New Zealand “inquiry” about reciprocity as a substitute for quotas. The wish fathering the thought, an “ inquiry ” rapidly grew to an “ offer ” ; from an “ offer ” it grew further to a “ demand.” When “ offer ” and “ demand ” were both denied, Sir Samuel increased it still further to “ inquiry which no business man would neglect.” In the words of The Times: The House of Commons episode was merely a peg on which Sir Herbert Samuel hung a long Frcctrado speech.

It was a poor peg for the purpose, since the chief desire of New Zealand is to eliminate foreign competition, . not to see competition thrown open to the world. But it was left to the News-Chronicle leader writer to put metaphor to the service of polemics: The Government, before Mr Elliot embarked on his perilous adventure of reorganising agriculture by creating an artificial scarcity, made a bargain with the dominions which is now’ hung like the Ancient Mariner's albatross round its neck. Great as was the imagination of Coleridge, the News-Chronicle improves on it. For the News-Chronicle’s albatross was probably meant to be a millstone. A triumphant epigram was Mr Thomas’s contribution: Mr Thomas convincingly answered those who are desirous of returning to a Free Trade that never was or advancing to a sb-called Free Trade that never will be. Useful service is done to New Zealand speech by its annual examination up and down the country by the various Competitions Societies. And “ external ” examinations have in this matter an uncontested value. Mr Ernest Jenner, judge at the Christchurch Competitions festival, said last week: Fortunately. New Zealand does not suffer from the “ terrible dialects ” met with in England, but some of the singers fail to use the standard English vowel sounds, and the speech is very impure. , . . The speech of members of the younger generation in New’ Zealand is much worse than that of their parents. A deadly indictment this, pointing straight at New Zealand schools and those who teacli in them. A change of heart is wanted, more patriotism, more respect for English traditions. There are “ Nationalists ” among us who salute the flag on all ceremonial occasions, but wish to cut the painter in matters of language. “ New Zealand has arrived at nationhood,” they say, “ and is entitled to its New’ Zealand speech.” “ Separationists,” they wish to eat their cake and have it. They accept the written word, religiously demand its traditional spelling, piously speak of our English heritage of language, are rigid puritans in matters of grammar, yet give to our spoken language any old sound they please. Are these teachers .merely making a virtue of necessity and constructing a doctrine out of their own want of knowledge? Nobody sings “ Auld Lang Syne ” correctly. . A sweeping statement this — but the Burns Federation of Great Britain makes it, and a Burns Federation knows. The Executive of the Burns Federation is to issue a brochure which, will tell the world how’ its greatest song of friendship should be sung. “Auld Lang Syne "is the song that nobody know’s, for it has never succeeded in establishing its own words correctly. Millions of gatherings have taken up its strains in an overflow’ of warmheartedness, but most of them have made the welkin ring with garbled lines, phrases that Burns never wrote, variations that neither scholarship nor taste approves. Trusty “ frien’s ” still supplant trusty “ fierce “ cups o’ kindness ” still battle for position with “gudewilly waughts”; and the lovely, lin- t gering last line of verse and chorus, “ For auld lang syne,” is still ousted by the breathless scurry of “For the days of auld lang syne.” The brochure will be distributed among Scottish societies all over the world in order that a concerted effort may be made to have the song sung correctly. Not al! the efforts of all the Scottish societies in the world will secure the right rendering of the old song by the Sassenach. What Englishman can give the right gargle to the “ wauglit,” or the correct melody of vowel to “Gic’s a baud o’ tiiine ”7 Nay, what “ Southron ” can even pronounce correctly the simplest of all words “gude?” Let the promised brochure contain a phonetic transcript, ami an English translation, with instructions that “ gude-willy waughte ” are not to be mutilated into “ gude willywaughts.” Civib.