PASSING NOTES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22498, 16 February 1935, Page 6

PASSING NOTES

A good Opposition speech has a recognised technique. You erect a rapid picture of an easy millennium, as complete as may be; replete with all the odds and ends that have strayed into your mind at your . dreamiest moments. Against this background you throw the acta and . achievements of the Government, building up a fierce indictment both on what it; - has done and on what it has left undone. Simple and easy though the method is, the Deputy Leader of his Majesty’s Opposition in New Zealand did not rise to the height of his great argument in Dunedin this week. His picture of the millennium was as sketchy as a present-day bathing suit,. and his 'tale of the Government’s misdeeds was as short as Mahomet’s dream. From the chairman’s table, too,, his Worship the Mayor tried his apprentice hand at, a millennial picture of his own, describing l a state of things “ when the people will rule j. ; • . and the representatives of .predatory wealth .Will hot prey . pppn .a defenceless public.” Meagre aiid unsatisfactory were both attempts. Even you and I could have done better, for, Heavenknows, wc have models and samples enough and to spare. These have come to us from all ages, ancient and modern, for man has never, been without his child-like yet-irresistible impulse to construct an imaginary heaven upon earth in'which every prospect. pleased and man .was not vile.

This pleasant and harmless Utopiahabit, so far as we, know, was started by Plato. Where was his “ Republic ” ? Its latitude and longitude he did not know. His successors liked to give their airy imaginings a local habitation and a name. But in such a secret'contempt did they hold these children of their idle fancies that most of them significantly gave to their ideal state the name of “ Nowhere.” Thomas More called his imagined land " Utopia,” meaning “Nowhere,” No doubt it was situated on,the 181st meridian of westlongitude and the. 91st parallel of north latitude. Carlyle’s ..blessed land was “ Wcissnichtwo” (“I know not where”), and Sir Walter Scott’s “ Kennaquhair ” (“I dinna ken whaur”). And Cervantes tells us of the happy land of "Trapohan” (“the land of dishclouts”). Other dreamers about the land of “ Nowhere ” were more geographically minded. They had a “ place complex.” They added realism to their idealism by giving the land of their dreams a definite locality. The kingdom of Miconiicon was to be found after a nine years’ voyage from Carthagena. Bacon placed his New Atlantis somewhere in the Southern Ocean —in doubt, that curious and credulous moderns might take it to be Aus: tralia, or even New Zealand. Did Bacon himself believe in it? No. For he says elsewhere th&t “an acre in Middlesex is better than a principality in Utopia.” Mussolini would not now be threatening the land of Prfester John if what we were told of that land were true —that horses were made by casting stones into the air, and ships by casting leaves into the sea. That land of “ back-to-front,” which Samuel Butler hit upon in the upper reaches of the Eakaia and appropriately named “ Erewhon,” has never been found even by Government surveyors or station musterers.

Descendants of these'old-myth mongers are all round us. Some of them, ignoring such delectable spots as Micomicon or the land of Prester John, select Muscovia as their New Atlantis—and become Friends of it. It is as good a choice as any other. Neither they nor we know the truth about it, and they can get away with it. Others of them, fearing the sophistication of the modem world, have abandoned . the “ place complex ” for a “ time complex.” Without going beyond this land of New Zealand they use the future as a soft option, and construct an imaginary State, not in “Nowhere,” but in that fictitious point of time which might be called' “Nowhen” dr “Never.” “Next year” —says Mr Cox; , Next year, without, doubt, when Mr Fraser visited Dunedin as : a Minister of the Crown, the various ’ trading organisations/would■Vie with each . other' in giving him welcome. He would be lunched, dinnered, banqueted, and suppered. . : As who should say— I saw a hew world In my dream, Where all the folks alike did seem And I thought to myself. How nice It ■' iS ’ V ■■ ' For me to live In a world* like' this, ■ t '; Where things, can happen, and clock# can strike, And none of the people are made alike.' Once they cross the ecuator, Oppositions, like parliamentary elections, are never the same again. The tropics take the heat put of .them, Compared with their British prototypes ■ they are tamo affairs, less robustious and less lively. Who does not miss, the uproarious days of 40 years ago, when an election meeting provided entertainment far surpassing a football match, and drew greater crowds than does a present-day wrestling bout? Those good-humoured riots were pleasant things. Parliamentary Oppositions in New Zealand have followed this trend toward political antenna. They mince their words. Mr Fraser, it is true, opened out like old times in one phrase, but only one. The prolongation of the life of Parliament, said he, “was not only dishonourable, it was politically dishonest.” What would be said in New Zealand of such language as that of Lansbury's Labour Weekly, which said in 1926: Stanley Baldwin, by the grace, of the Father of all Liars Prime Minister of Britain, is once again revealed as the most incompetent and brutally stupid person this nation has ever. been afflicted with as chief of the Staten-elected to power by the most infamous and- blackguardly campaign of lies ever experienced in this island. He has succeeded in proving himself worthy of such a campaign by breaking l every' pledge and promise made to the electorate. And the Daily Herald in 1927; Mr Baldwin has lost no time in picking up his old trail of humbug. . .' . The hissing (of the Labour Party) that ushered Mr Baldwin out of the Chamber was no mere transient ebullition of party feeling. It betokened a deep loathing of a statesman who shirks his cardinal duties. Thus does violent language become in time as harmless as the whisk of a feather duster. Even to that imaginary robot known as the man in the street the humble positive has become stronger than the superlative. The Carnegie atmosphere in the city brought in by the visit of the president of one of the Carnegie’trusts suggests the subject of millionaries in general, and of millionaire Carnegie in particular. In various ways can you leap over-night into the ranks of those whose bank balance, is a burden. You may discover an oil well in your corner section. You may corner the market in pepper or wheat. You may possess those wonderful labour-saving devices of a millionaire wife or a millionaire father. Or you may be a Carnegie. None of these had he. Born in a cottage in Dunfermline, driven from Scotland as an undersized boy of 12 by machine labour, employed in an American bobbin-factory at one dollar 20 cents a week, promoted to the engine and boiler, then advanced to be errand hoy, he picks up the Morse alphabet as the third man on the American Continent to learn this art, and becomes, still a youth, secretary-clerk to one of the managers of the Pennsylvania railway telegraph system:

One morning the train service was completely blocked." On- this’ singleline system the result was. chaos. Young Carnegie,'having arrived early at .the office, learned the situation. Though the'.manager was ■ absent, . he had the instant audacity to issue in the name of his chief telegram after , telegram.. When . his chief -arrived the whole traffic , block, .was disentangled. , Shortly after, a disasttous collision, occurred, again when; the .chief, was absent. The whole line waa blocked.; Young. Carnegie issued in his chief s name a peremptory. 6rde.J;i.“/Burn the trains.” Hours and possibly days were saved by the extraordinary decision of, character . which,’ this little Vis tripling displayed; So .young Carnegie rose by leaps and bounds. By 1868, at ,the age of 33, his income was 50,000 dollars. His intentions at that stage' are on record in his own handwriting: .-. ■ I'can now arrange all my business so as to procure at least 50,000 dollars per annum. - Beyond this never . ; earn —make no effort to: increase, fortune, but spend the-surplus each year for ; benevolent purposes. .• I i . will resign . business at 35. : ' i Biit, the years sped by. Worlds,fetill to he conquered opened out , their arms to’ him. He became possessed with the belief in the vast potentialities of iron. He replaced wooden bridges With iron, travelled the world, found Bessemer, and with him. the possibilities of steel;Aet to Work to eliminate phosphorous from steel, and reached the head of the American business, world; .Before .he/died.:he liad distributed 324,000,000 dollars. ;Of all 1 life had ever 'made only 10 per cent, had befen usad fpr his cwn : personal and family purposes. ■ In short, for every pound, sterling; he .had earned, he. had given away 18. shillings. Can education, even Scottish education, produce - a Carnegie? 1

Dear “ Civis,”— In this feminist age one may feel inclined to adopt the attitude of the man iu the omnibus who asked an unseated lady if she believed in women’s rights. Oh her answering in the affirmative he replied, “Well, stand for them.” Nevertheless some lingering instinct of. perverted chivalry prompts a little shiver, when I.read in' the cricket news that “ Snowball has been bowled by Daniels,’ or words to that effect, and discover that the protagonists in this miniature drama are ladies.' One recalls Matthew Arnold’s_ distaste for the . statement “Ragg is in custody.” It is all very well for women, within the boundary of a community such as a school or gardening col lege, to address one another as Smith, Brown, or Robinson, but may wc not be permitted this reninant of a convention in the daily press and on the radio? —I am, etc., Disctpucus. Wlien you come to think of it, the man who plays croquet or, net-ball, who stands firmly oh his right to wear , skirts, and who wears a pancake hat on his ear—is he not a feminist, and. the only true feminist? Likewise, the woman who plays cricket or football, or wears beach trousers, or smokes a pipe is a masculinist, insisting on her God-given right to be as masculine as men. The vogue of feminism is, at present, almost dead —or is not feeling well. A masculinist must therefore accept the position. If she eats her cake she cannot still have it. In playing men’s games she must use her surname, though irt playing one man’s game she may eventually have to lose it. How could, a blushing, reporter hand in to his office the news that: “Mabel made a good catch,”,“Molly was last man out,” “ Myra got Maggie to the pickets at, square-leg,” pr -“ Moira got 4 by a-lucky snick through, the slips off Madge ”.? The other alternative is a succession of Misses—nouns as well as verbs—unless you changed the verb and said “Miss Johnston failed to make a hit.” ~ ’ Civis.