PASSING NOTES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23014, 17 October 1936, Page 6

PASSING NOTES

The Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton. Modelled on this well-worn statement, and sharpened to a cutting edge by the parallel, is the current gibe that ‘'Addis Ababa was lost on the playing fields of Harrow. 1 ' The sting of the gibe lies in the simi larity of two dictators and the contrast between two Britains. The Eton' ian and Harrovian references are, of course, both symbolical, including in their praise and their blame the village greens and city sports grounds of Old and New Britain The meaning is clear. The Etonian eulogy pictures the Britain of a century ago with the sinews and thews, the grit and virility that saved Europe from a Corsican dictator. The Harrovian taunt alleges that, in a later Britain, the spirit and stamina bred on school and city playing fields wilted ignominiously before the threats and blusters of another dictator, —that a Bi’itain which in the 1810’s sent her legions to tire help of Spain shrank in 1935 from saving Abyssinia. But the gibe may become a eulogy when more is known. A decade hence the veil may be raised on the recent inner history of 10 Downing street, and what might have happened in 1935 may stand out well against the background of what did happen in 1914 Each dawning day presaged war on the morrow. “ The fabric of peace is growing very thin," said Mr Cordell Hull, of New York. And statesmen in every capital in the world from New York to Tokip saw a Europe that might be ablaze before the week was out. For the Fascist chosen moment might be the. Nazi now-or-never, and the Italian dictator might at any moment have been thrown into a fraternal embrace with the German. Bloodshed in Abyssinia had to be weighed against a blood-bath in Europe. And Britain for the moment was disarmed, unarmed, and for taking her part in a European war she was to all intents and purposes one-armed.

Into the resultant perplexities and intricacies of this situation New Zealand has jumped with both feet. So the cables say. The attitude of Mr Jordan (N.Z.) in the Credentials Committee was a source of embarrassment, Instead of passively following Britain, Mr Jordan, who with M. Litvinoff (Soviet Russia) was one of the leading figures in the debate, pointedly asked who had denied the Emperor of Abyssinia the right to fight his case before the League. Nobody replied. Mr Eden remained glumly silent. . . . This a week or two ago. This week likewise—still in a hurry—Mr Jor dan urges haste on the Covenant question, the world’s thorniest prob lem. No quarrel arises from the sentiment and matter of Mr Jordan’s contributions. They may be as right as right could be. But the manner and occasion were deplorably wrong. “Happy man, thus early in the limelight,” is the right and proper cable heading of the New Zealand press. But even the limelight thus thrown on New Zealand and on her High Commissioner is small compensation for the gaiety of nations to which our country has contributed. Only the politeness traditional from Britain to her Dominions—a politeness not always reciprocated—silenced the natural comment at the coming of this new Daniel to judgment. A preliminary consultation with the British dele gation might have been an elementary business-like procedure. A thorn in the flesh must his backseat driving of “sturdy independence” be to men who had lived for months with a harassing problem, co-opting for its solution a whole corps of ambassadors, a whole legion of Intelligence servants, and the most expert Foreign Office in the world Attributed to the New Zealand High Commissioner is also the followingNew Zealand is prepared to take its full share in complete economic sanctions, and to join with other members of the League in collective application of force against a future aggressor, and would agree to the establishment of an international force. Again no quarrel with the sentiment of the pronouncement. But it was not the part of the smallest of the dominions to make it. What, asks a commentator, would be New Zealand’s practical contribution to the defence of the attacked European people? The answer might be: New Zealand is prepared to fight to the last drop of European blood. A naive fondness for the impish wit of the “ spoonerism ” is revealed by “ Erewhon ” Butler in one of his Veel letters —now come to rest in the Turnbull Library. In a letter to Miss Veel on the death of her father, his old Christchurch friend J. C. Veel, one-time editor of the Press, Butler wrote: I have repeatedly used in my books one delightful piece of humour of his. I mean the making of an atrocious misquotation and then innocently saying, “I quote from memory.” I did this as I thought very effectively in “Alps and Sanctuaries” when I quoted Tennyson as having said, “There lies more doubt in honest faith, believe' me, than in half the systems of philosophy ”—or words to that effect memory.” Here the theft was double, for the misquotation was stolen from my friend Mr H. F. Jones, and the “ I quote from memory ” from your father. I wonder if he ever knew of the theft. Dictionary-defined, a “ spoonerism ” is a “ transposition of the letters or sounds of a word.” And tradition has it that the founder of both thing and name, the Rev. Dr W. A. Spooner, warden of New College, Oxford, actually gave out the hymn “ Kinquering Congs Their Titles Take.” In sober fact, however, the real “ spoonerism ” —the gift which gave Dr Spooner his easy title to immortality—was more than a mere jingling of consonants and vowels. It was a metathesis of words The Bodley Librarian of the time had a bad squint. One day he and Dr Spooner suddenly met at the corner of St. Mary’s and collided with one another, “ My dear sir." said the librarian testily, “why don’t you look where you’re going? ” “ My dear sir.” retorted Spooner, with his rather deliberate enunciation, “ why don't you go where you’re looking? ” At a meeting in Oxford of a body concerned with the relief of the poor, one member asked, “ What is the nature of this institution to which we are asked to subscribe? ” Spooner, who was in the chair, replied, •“ It is an excellent institution for training nurses to become widows.” Butler’s intentional misquotation is thus the most genuine of “ spoonerisms.” Butler wrote his letter in 1901, and “ spoonerism ” as an accepted word dates from 1900. Spooner beat Butler only by a year, and Butler had not heard of him. Dictators, says Sir Thomas Inskip, are only possible as the result of the invention of the microphone. “ Formerly politicians could address only 6000 at the most; now 150,000 could be massed together, resulting in excitement and cheering which went to people’s heads and helped dictators.” Film-screen presentation

of Herr Hitler or Signor Mussolini addressing a brown or black landscape show how this is done. To the help of both of these loud speakers science has come along to invent a louder. And now no geographical or statistical limit can be set to the crowd which an orator can reach and move. What a boon to the mob-orator, whose perspiration used to trickle down to his soap-box to produce his froth! Now he can speak as quietly as a child at its evening prayer. But one of the puzzles of our pre-microphone school-days still remains unsolved. How did old-time kings and generals address their enthusing speeches to their assembled armies? Gravely and without comment do history text books report the physically impossible feat, leaving unrecorded whether the remote rear ranks were impressed by the view of a mutely gesticulating gentleman on a chariot or a gun-carriage or a restive charger in the far-off, windy distance. Hannibal before Cannm harangued in Punic his polyglot army—Numidian cavalry, Balearic slingers, elephants, and all And the elephants on the outskirts waved their trumcs as he waved his arms. But the Alexanders and the Tamurlanes, the Caesars and Napoleons of the past were not W J. Bryans or Horatio Bottomleys, born to make the welkin ring. Science has changed all that. Mussolini and Hitler can now bring their words and their gestures to the ear and eye of distant hilltop—nay. to the Dunedin picture theatre.

The good old-fashioned “ high tea ” is coming into its own. A writer in an English paper has been investigating the incidence and the causes of longevity, and where does he find them? In the farm bailiff and the Anglican clergyman he finds the longest lives upon the land w r hich heaven hath given them. To become a clergyman of the Church of England is to enter upon the second healthiest calling in the land. Farm bailiffs have the greatest expectation of a healthy life, and after them come the clergy of the Anglican Church, who are slightly more healthy than their Nonconformist brothers, and considerably more healthy than Roman Catholic priests, who, for some unexplained reason, stand in danger of strokes. To this supremacy of longevity of the Anglican clergy the causes assigned are many. He is, says the investigator, supremely his own master. “This freedom works cut, oddly enough, in most of them living a more regular and disciplined life than probably would be the case if they were not free.” Early rising contributes its share—up at 6, early morning service before 8. But the real root of the matter is simplicity of diet. “It is rarely possible for them to have heavy meals.” And the core and kernel of this simplicity of diet is the evening “ high tea,” It is plainly impossible for most parochial clergy to have a full dinner in the evening. Most of their evenings are taken up by the parish, and therefore the majority of clerical households have “ high tea.” And whatever may be thought about that compendious meal by superior people, I do not think it can be doubted that, as a way of diet, it is far healthier than a heavy meal taken at 8 o’clock at night. No mention is made of the comparative merits of a light dinner and a heavy “high tea." The mention of “ superior ” people who dine at -8 calls to mind the case of the man who, about to marry, insisted on inserting in the marriage settlement the clause; “If my wife ever gives me high tea, this gift of money is null and void.” To the protests of his lawyer he replied: “ I know she comes from a d d high tea-ing family.”

When our Government sets an example of.a flagrant flouting of the injunctions of Holy Writ—of one of the Ten Commandments, no less—what good can come of it? “Six days shait thou laboiir and do all thy work,” says the Bible. And no Higher Critic or rationalist philosopher can alter one jot or tittle of it. New Zealand’s dilemma is whether it should obey the Scriptural commandments or the Labour regulations. Adam in Eden worked less than his six days a week—in fact, loafed scandalously on his job. And what became of him? The. serpent worked on Saturday and got him. Other reflections on the same problem are contained in a cutting sent to me—author and source unknown: When Adam dug his garden plot, Though evil serpents lurked. There were no neighbours near the spot To watch how long he worked. But still the voice of conscience said, That leisure he should seek; “ Adam, look sharp. Hang up your spade: You’ve done five days this week.” When Shakespeare hammered out his plays, He watched the hour glass run, And thus was lost to later days Some stanza just begun. For well he knew the union rules. Nor cared to eat the leek, He rose and put away his tools Until another week. Into a ward all bare and clean, Where shone a blaze of light, Some broken mortal there had been. Brought in one Friday night. The surgeon sadly shook his head. And said in accents meek; "Just dump him on the nearest bed, We’ve done our whack this week.” From Invercargill all the way comes for solution the age-old problem: “ Sisters and brothers have I none, but that man’s father is my father’s son.” Who is “ that man? ” ■asks the correspondent. •Methought. this problem was long since dead. Has Invercargill no problems of its own upon which it can pore on Saturdays? Has it no mosquito problem in the Otatara scrub, no flood problem on the Otatara road, no colour problem in the Puni Creek, no hydro-electric problem, no wet-and-dry problem on the Waihopai frontier? Man and boy for 50 vears I haVe solved this genealogical problem. And always in the same way, so that the way must be right. The sisterless and brotherless father who gazes on the portrait of his own son and asks, “ What man is that? ” presents a serious case. In fact, there is a “ sinister ” ring about the problem. It is a wise father who knows his own son, and the father who doesn’t isn’t. Civis.