PASSING NOTES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22326, 28 July 1934, Page 6

PASSING NOTES

Dear " Civis,” —

Great as is the part played by the Hitlers, Mussolims and other great moguls, of the authoritarian state, still stands the-everlasting question whether they made the movement or the movement them. Have they been the leaders or the led, the architects or the building workmen? Did they merely know the season when to take occasion by the hand? Did they merely ride in like surf bathers on the crest of the wave, or did they, by a mighty blowing on troubled waters, create a wave for themselves? The prodigious spread of the leader principle ” over Europe, from the mouths of the Elbe to the shores of the Caspian, surely goes to show that Fascismo and Nazimus are merely, a disease of the time. They are part of a wider movement, putting into action and practice ah,idea long floating round. Who was the theorist who brought such an idea to birth? Was it not our own Carlyle? This Sage of Chelsea, writing of his “ Heroes and Hero Worship ” in the quiet seclusion of a London suburb, became for the moment a Frankenstein, sending out into the world not a ravening .monster of flesh and bones, but a monstrous idea —the idea of the Divine Right of the Leader. Says Carlyle of his “ Hero in History ”: Much sorry stuff, written some hundred years ago or more about the Divine Right of Kings, moulders unread now in public libraries of this country. I say, “Find me the true Konig, King, or, Able-man, and he has a divine right over me.”

Ou this Hitlerian “ Puhrer ” principle, this theory of the leader, this “hero worship," this divine right of the strong, is constructed Carlyle’s philosophy of history. His heroes arc a mixed lot, but they are “ leaders ”: Odin, Mahomet, Luther, Dante, Johnson. And, in history, Cromwell, Napoleon, Frederick the Great. Before these common men should grovel. If they refused, “ O for an hour of Duke William,” he cried. From this sympathy with,the omnipotence of greatness, his admiration for September massacres and Frederick’s ruthlcssness was but a step. And it led easily and naturally to his monstrous idea that "in the long run, Might is right.”

A “ Leader ” entity, to lead, must needs have nonentities to be led. Clear ns crystal does this double principle emerge from the philosophy of Carlyle. For, like other philosophies, it has its Parsee-like dualism, its positive pole and its negative, its mind and matter, its darkness and light, good and evil, God and devil. No trace of doubt existed in Carlyle upon the category reserved for bis leader. “He is the lightning, without which the fuel never would be burnt.” He is the positive electrode, the good principle, the light, the mind. And in the other category lie the people. Who are the people? Answers Carlyle: “ The public is an old woman, let her maunder and mumble.” His contempories to him were “ pigmies.” Of some of them he wrote:

Yah! you worms! God, or at least His servants, will give you hell in this world —I know, no more than you about the next—for being worms.

What is democratic government? Little else than a red-tape talking machine, an unhappy bag of parliamentary eloquence. . • • A parliament speaking to Buncombe through reporters, and the 27 milmostly fools., . . . Chopping barren logic. And what are the rights of man? “ Surely, of all rights of man, this right of the ignorant to be guided by the wise, to be gently or forcibly held in the true course by him, is the indisputablest.” All the criticisms levelled against democracy by the Hitlers and Mussolinis of to-day are concentrated in Carlyle’s definition, of it; “A do-nothing guidance, and it is a do-something world.” *

No lack of unanimity—of unanimity to the last noun and adjective—weakens the British Cabinet’s opinion of the “Mosley stunts.” “A,circus of foreign origin,” says the. Secretary of State for the Colonies. “ The methods of a bully,” says his colleague the Minister of Mines. “Dangerous nonsense,” says the First Commissioner of. Works. But this closeknit unanimity does not preclude their killing two birds witlv one stone, or bringing down two apples ‘ with one stick. With lofty impartiality they take their stand on principle, improving the shining hour by aiming at the same time at both Left and Right: I don't believe in being dictated to,, either by Sir Stafford Cripps or by Sir Oswald Mosley, The whole world is grumbling and travailing today by being overgoverned by Ballyhoo governments everywhere. Still more strongly speaks another:

Two kinds of, people apparently desire to govern the country—cads on the left, and on the right bands of hoodlums who deliberately attempt to prevent free speech.

If words could kill, Mosley and all hie linen would now bo mouldering in the grave. But in dealing with the liberty of the individual the British custom is it to walk upon eggs. What parliamentary enactment or police regulation can, by a formula of words, control the shirt you are wearing? Liberty surely extends to a man’s underclothing. Unjust, therefore, is the anti-government gibe of Sir Herbert Samuel: “ The Government is asleep; you cannot meet blackshirts or browushirta in nightshirts.”

Between the correspondence columns of a weekly newspaper and those of a daily there is a chasm that no mere week can bridge. They differ as does a zephyr from a cyclone, a Roman stylus from a fountain pen, a Hamlet from a Hercules. In a London weekly paper there are controversies enough—but the controversies are the long-range firing of rival reminiscences, debates on the making of dew-ponds, on the watering of horses before or after feeding, on longevity in Ireland. Not if you sweated blood could you in a weekly correspondence column work up “the father and mother of a row.” For what quick play of repartee is possible with a man standing seven whole days away? Angry feelings cool at an amazing speed when you sleep on them—not once, but seven times. And When you let the sun go ■seven times down on your wrath. In a daily, the correspondence comes white hot from the controversial pen, on grievances that came to light yesterday and are still burning bright to-day. Few poignant grievances find their way to the quiet and gentlemanly, leisured and stately correspondence, column of a weekly. One thing merely brings up another, and the .retired Anglo-Indian, or the Cabinet Minister now in, the wilderness, gently announces to the world that he ’is still alive. An article on “ Nursery Rhymes,” quoting “ Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star,” or “ Little Drops of Water” at once brings out the results of vagrant reading, and the variations “I have come across”:Twinkle, twinkle little star, I don’t wonder what you are: You’re the cooling of the gases Forming into solid masses. Or another: Little grains of powder. Little dabs of paint, Make a woman’s wrinkles Look as If they ain’t. No civil strife will therefore emerge from a weekly debate on the pre-emin-ence of Englishmen or Scotsmen or Irishmen or Welshmen in the history of Great Britain. What better source of j inspiration have we than a competition i In excellence? Wrote the first corre- j

spondent—who kicked off with a few names from an “inexhaustible” list:

May I state that all the most famous names in British history Lave been English? Rulers; Elizabeth, Cromwell, Pitt. Philosophers: Bacon, Newton. Poets: Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton (the list is inexhaustible). Proconsuls: Clive and Warren Hastings. . Soldiers; Marlborough and Wellington.

Seamen: Blake and Nelson. The reply came quick and sharp—well, as quick as the sun could seven times encircle its diurnal course. Wrote a non-Englishman in gentle irony:

May I add a few names to last week’s “ inexhaustible ” list.

Law; Lord Mansfield (Lord Chief Justice), Lord Campbell (Lord Chief Justice and Lord Chancellor). Poets: Burns (and how much better known to . the public than 'Chaucer, Milton, or perhaps even Shakespeare). Literature; Sir Walter Scott. Soldiers: Lord Kitchener, Lord Haig, Lord Horne. Politics; Balfour, Bonar Law, Lloyd George, Lord Beaconsfield.

And was not Cromwell of Welsh ancestry? And was not ? But every name might be questioned, in both lists. Heaven only knows what movements of population have crossed and recrossed the Tweed or Severn since neolithic times. A walk along Piccadilly or our own George street shows us as many racial types as there are varying inches in statures, varying hues of hair and eye, varying shapes of nose and chin and jaw. Mere language is an accident, as changeable as the clothes we wear. For in the eyes of the Eternal a thousand years are but a moment.

“ Howlers ” are by no means confined to schoolboys. Artists perpetrate them —artists who should know better. The famous French painter David, standing one day before his own picture in a Paris gallery, heard a cabman saying; “That fool of an artist has painted a horse foaming at the mouth, yet the horse is not carrying a bit in it.” David stole into the gallery the same evening and painted out the foam. Artists employed to illustrate works of fiction are specially prone to howling, as was the illustrator who painted men shooting partridges with rifles, or who painted a violin with five strings. Two pictures of the time of the Regency show_ horses wearing nummahs, and vehicles with rubber-tyred wheels. Nummahs were used for the . first , time 70 or 80 years ago; and rubber-tyres not until towards the

middle of Queen Victoria’s reign.' Another, for which, as it is of the present, day, there is no excuse—no possible excuse. whatever.

A novel tells of a heroine being thrown from her horse. The illustration shows the heroine lying on the ground apparently senseless. She is wearing a riding habit, and from under it a little bit of white frilly petticoat peeps. Since when have women ridden in petticoats? Artists should really be careful. There is worse to follow:

A story is set in a Devonshire moor. In the illustration the yokels wear Scottish kilts. I doubt if West-

country folk have ever worn kilts of any description. The most disastrous artist’s howler of all —one that has set a whole world thinking wrongly ever since, is the classical mistake of the famous painter Jerome in his picture of the dying gladiator in the Eonian Arena. He has assumed that the spectators turned their thumbs down when they desired the victim’s death. As every schoolboy now knows, or should know, the ■ signal for death was an upturned thumb.

For ways that are strange commend me the adjudicator in forensic competitions. The’ other ■ evening teams from four affiliated colleges debated for the Joynt Scroll. Canterbury and Otago advocated an alliance between Britain and Japan, Auckland and Wellington deprecated. The Wellington side was.led by a Maori, who appeared to me so much in advance of the other competitors that had he been supported by an indifferent seconder he, like Bradman in the last test match, would have beaten the field. He was the only man among the competitors who spoke like an Englishman. This may have been a point in his disfavour. After all, the debate was being conducted in Dunedin, not at Oxford, where wit that ripples and speech that .lightly sends out the apt word is appreciated. This gentleman reminded me of Mr Balfour in his younger days. He was supported .by a seconder whose arguments appeared to me to , be more, cogent than any from the other side. I do not think I am alone in expressing my amazement at the decision of the judges, who placed Otago first. I do not wish to say anything in derogation of the Otago team, except that the Wellington team was incomparably the better. —I am, etc., Discxplious. A second debate on the decision given on the first debate would be an enlivening and instructive sequel to these forensic competitions. Crvis.