PASSING NOTES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23044, 21 November 1936, Page 6

PASSING NOTES

Political parties the world over, like some other forms of bacterial life, reproduce themselves by subdivision. They multiply by splitting up. Fission is the law of Nature to which they are born. All alike in this are the pneumococcus, the streptococcus, the politicococcus—each coccus swells, outgrows its strength, splits up—and, hey presto! there are two of them. This scientific basis of political divisions links them with the primitive past, makes them an incident! in the grandiose march of Evolution, and explains all about them. They split up right and left because they cannot help it. Why right and left? In the old royal councils his Majesty’s trusted advisers sat on his right; the others on his left. No other explanation is available for the universal name of the “Right” bestowed upon the more conservative and coolerheaded section of any political assembly or party. And what is not Right must -be Left. Hence arose the well-established rule of the political road: If you keep to the Right, you can’t help being right; If you keep to the Left you 11 be wrong. In Continental legislatures, therefore, there are Right and Left Republicans, Right and Left Socialists, a Right and Left Centre—and, strangest of all, Right and Left Communists. Our own Labour Government, with its monstrous majority of four to one, is doomed to a like fissility. It is born unto trouble as the sparks—the hot young sparks—fly upward. The Right Labour will soon leave the Left, and join the Left of the Opposition to the right of them. And the Left of the Government party will attach itself to the Communist Right. With this convenient explanation at hand of the fissility of political parties, the Cimmerian darkness enshrouding the mysterious Moscow trials is obscure no longer. It was merely a scission of the Bolshevist Right from the Bolshevist Left, Authoritative support for this view comes from the Manchester Guardian, from the pen of Anton Ciliga, editor of the chief Communist paper in Jugoslavia, member of the Politburo, nine years resident in Russia, oartly in prison and exile. Evidently he was Right. He explains the Moscow trials thus: At the beginning of 1928 Stalin began his Leftward course—the Five Year Plan of industrialisation and collectivism. The majority of the Politburo, led by Bukharin Rykov and Tomsky, disapproved of this new political course and charged Stalin with having entered on Trotskyist paths. In April, 1928, the Right wing majority actually discussed the question of removing Stalin from the post of secretary of the party. Then began a combat a outrance between the Rightists and Leftists, with the Five Year Plan as the bone of contention. Was it all a gruesome epic of heroism or a course of political insanity? The lowering of the workers’ standard of living, the unrestrained rrorism against the peasants, the destruction of the last vestiges of liberty within the party, had overwhelmed the nation with panic and despair. Stalin had to retreat, but his retreat was str tegic. He eliminated his opponents on charges of terrorism, changed his policy and coll .red the kudos. Stalin is now a Rightist.

Quite mistaken is the harassed family man who seeks refuge "from explosive international topics by reading in our daily press the “ London Fashion Notes.” Then it is that “ the fear of change which perplexes monarchs ” falls even upon this little ruler of a little domain. The mere vagaries in women’s hats are in themselves enough to send this sovereign of the household into convulsions of foreboding. Ardent Tattersallist and art unionist he may be; but even these would be careless flutterings compared with a wager on what shape of hat will cover the feminine head a year hence. For no one knows. No information can come straight from the horse’s mouth. No venturesome bookmaker, himself in equal ignorance, would attempt in this case to get the better of the better, A time there was when an untrimmed felt hat or a knitted cap was sufficient for all ■occasions —and a hat could then be bought, or should have been bought, for sixpence or a shilling. Now all is changed. According to the latest news from London “ a spasm of activity” is visible in smart circles, where Nature’s beauty shop has gone bankrupt. High hats are growing higher, and “the achievement .of graceful height” is'the aim of every wife and daughter. Clock-springs and toasting forks are used for trimming. High-pointed crowns are aureoled with a halo brim. From the out-of-date pancake hat we are falling into the frying-pan hat, and the feather tuft down the handle is enough to make every man fly off it. Also appearing in the designers’ shop windows are real flower pots, each with a couple of dish mop heads for pompons! With these capital superstructures women are groping blindly towards the days of those incentives to chivalry that once fluttered handkerchiefs from castle walls. But chivalry escapes the grasp of the man with a wife and a phalanx of daughters. He will open his morning mail with the reluctance and distaste characteristic of one who fears to find a wish-bone in his breakfast egg. And too often he firtds it, and the bill as well. If science pursues much further her tempestuous course, we shall all be reduced to the same dead and uninteresting level—materially, mentally, spiritually. The vicious will become virtuous, and we who belong to the latter will in 'the end be no great shakes. Truculence and bad temper are :he next corpora vilia to be analysed, dissected, and removed by treatment. Said Lord Horder before the recent meeting of the British Association: Hygiene of the body—the idea does seem at long last to have been grasped. Mental hygiene, after a long and painful labour, is. I think, being born. What of sniritual hygiene? What of the hygiene of the temperament? I believe the spirit of man is as fundamentally amenable to scientific investigation and control as are his mind and body. There are reasons why one man is sweet-tempered and another is truculent, why one preserves his morale and another loses it. We want to know the reasons for these things, and science can tell us. Even if there be design it is unlikely that the pattern would be perceived by the scientist, however humble-minded. It might be perceived by the poet. Charles Lamb already saw something of this. In his “ Grace Before Meat” he says: “I stick to asparagus, which seems to inspire gentle thoughts.” For this new crusade of science there are many promised lands to be conquered. What relation has diet to temper? Why should a feeling of divine despair ensue from a hearty eating of lobster salad? Why should the mortal liver affect the immortal soul? Why did Jeshurun wax fat and kick? When all these questions are answered, and all these ’ spiritual defects are brought to the light of day and re-

moved, the world will, as Charles Lamb puts it, “Pile honey upon sugar, and sugar upon honey, in an interminable tedious sweetness.”

“Plain Speaking by Layman” is the heading of a Press Association telegram from Wellington on Thursday last. The plain-speaking layman attacked, inter alia, the clergyman’s collar: Even the distinctive attire of the minister is a barrier to his free and effective mingling among men. Wearing his collar back to front marks him out as someone who is to be regarded as on a different plane from other men. A nice debate is here foreshadowed, opening out and taking in many important questions of life and conduct, But the so-called clergyman’s “ dog collar ” is not exclusively clerical. It is worn by the Lord Mayor and Sheriffs of the City of London, and maybe by other officials throughout the Empire. Like most other details of clerical attire it is simply a survival of once universal fashions. A century or more ago every gentleman wore a white cravat twisted round a single collar When the laity took to finishing off the cravat in a bow, and later with a knot, the clergy kept to the old fashion. All honour be to them for scorning to follow the changing moods of mundane fashion. Apparently, in the fifties of last century, some genius hit on the expedient of making the collar continuous to represent the cravat. ,The evidence of photographs suggests that the practice of starching the collar came somewhat later. When the laity folded down their coat collars, too, and altered the shape of their hats, the clergy kept to the older custom. The photograph of your farmer-looking grandfather, taken in his best clothes, and proudly displaying in your old family album his black coat, white cravat and round hat, has often made your friends say, “I did not know that your grandfather was a clergyman! ” And no doubt your silence left the impression that at least he was a D.D. He may, of course, have been a drawer of dividends, or a driver of drays, or a designer of dresses. Dia the defendant steal a “propeller,” or a “ propeller,” or a “ propellar ”? Or was he guiltless of any of these thefts, triple or single? In other words, how should the word in question be spelt in the best launch circles? Before the Wellington Magistrate’s Court last week came a fisherman charged with having stolen a launch “ propeller.” The defendant pleaded not guilty, stated that he had purchased the thing, and produced a receipt with the spelt “ propeller.” Was the receipt genuine? The detective tried the man out, asking him to write a copy of the receipt. When he came to the word “propeller.” the defendant asked how it was spelt. “ Some spell it ‘ or,’ and some spell it ‘ ar,’ ” replied the wily sleuth. Whereupon the defendant spelt it “ ar.” He might have based his case on the words of one of Dick "Steele’s characters, who, reproached for his bad spelling, said loftily, “ My critic may spell like a scholar, but I. for my part, am satisfied if I spell like a gentleman." Quite modern is this insistence on correctness of spelling. Shakespeare wrote his own name anyhow—in 18 different ways —not because he did not know, but because it did not matter. With what misplaced glee have the Baconians revelled in the spelling of his name as “Shakspe” by the “ illiterate clown of Stratford-on-Avon ” At the end of the seventeenth century the learned Dr Crown, author of several books, spelt his name indifferently as Cron, Croon, Croun, Crone, Croone, Croune. Is correctness of spelling after all a purely intellectual matter? Says a recent writer: I have known a “double gold” in mathematics whose wife had to read his letters to correct misspelling. This would seem to prove that the source of the difficulty is not the intellectual faculty. Is it, then, a defect in vision? Or something in brain formation, for which only a partial remedy can be found? Is the difficulty psychic? Visual memory seems to be blame. I have heard a clergyman in the pulpit speaking of “ stastistics.” Common is the pronunciation of “ dais ” as if written “ dias.” The golden rule is therefore, “ Spell to me only with thine eyes.” Sent from North Otago comes a cutting containing the • advertisement of a sale of farm stock. PALMERSTOON SALE Friday, November 20, 1936 Then follows an impressive tale of bi-dental and quadri-dental ewes— Romney-cross and others —multidental harrows, heifers and cows, discs and scufflers and sod crushers. But these details are by the way. What arrests is the heading. My correspondent comments: This appeals to me as a favourable opportunity to stress the fact of “ Palmerstoon ” —being the “Auld Toon ” —having no need of any distinguishing addition of “ South.” The snake needs Scotching. The “Toon” is quite merston being “ gey Scottish.” The all-powerful press, before which Premiers tremble and duchesses stand to attention, has unconsciously suggested a solution of a long-debated problem. The contest for possession of the valued name of Palmerston, the town of Palmer, has raged for years between the old Palmerston and the new, between the first comer and the upstart, between the old family and the nouveau riche, between the historical and the accidental, between the prototype and the counterpart, between the old block and a chip from it, between the poem and the mere paraphrase. An easy and quick solution might be “ Palmerstoon ” for one, and “ Palmerst’n ” for the other. Intrinsically Scottish is this fine sonorous old vowel “ oo.” How often it strikes straight to the root of a matter! As when the Scottish member of a quorum-less committee says, “We must postpone this matter till we get a fool meeting.” Civis.