PASSING NOTES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23108, 6 February 1937, Page 6

PASSING NOTES

What should they know of Auckland who only Auckland know? This is the burden of the complaint that rises at each tourist season all the way from Pelorus Sound to Paterson's Inlet. And this present tourist season has been no exception to the rule. God grant us patience with these Philistines of the Government Tourist Offices! When overseas members of the Science Congress, seeking to know New Zealand, were fobbed off with some pools of hot water forlornly steaming, a few bubbling geysers, a few undistinguished lakes and firefly caves, something should be done about it. For, after all, what can hot springs do but steam, and what can boiling mud do but bubble? Nothing wonderful in this. The real lusus naturae would be if these things did neither. Our overseas visitors ask for bread and they are given a pumice stone. They come to a mansion and are entertained in the vestibule. They seek an audience with a sovereign, and they get no further than the antechamber. South of Cook Strait lies the real New Zealand, a Nature's paradise, where Nature and man offer an openarmed welcome. Here O'er the wild mountains and luxuriant Nature In all the pomp of beauty reigns. Within the bounds of Otago and Southland alone lies a compact little area which could be a world's playground, for it is the world's finest example of a geographical multum in parvo—much in a small and easily traversable space. Cast your eye over the whole habitable and inhabitable globe and find me a province which in this respect compares with it.

In this tight little province, all within a few days' journey and a poor man's purse, are the vaunted fiords of Norway, the charming lakes of Italy, the impressive glaciers of Switzerland, the impassable passes of the Rocky Mountains, the romantic glens and lochs of Scotland, the precipitous breath-catching tonga roads of India, the perilous snow-bound peaks of the European Alps, the sunshine of Southern California, the sky-blue waters of the Mediterranean, the gold mines of Alaska. In this little area is an impenetrable Far West where lie the whitening bones of intrepid ex : plorers, and where only the Maori hen treads. It has its old Santa Fe trail up the Molyneux Valley, where the tilt 'of the covered wagon, with sleeping driver, once crept along the unformed roads., Abandoned miners huts and dismal piles of tailings are its history. Lyric streams and epic mountains are its poetry. Due westward from Wakatipu and Te Anau lies a training ground for adventurous youth as they tramp with their knapsack on their backs and their lives in their hands. And for the unadventurous .there are the farm lands of England, the dairies of Denmark, the ranches of Texas, the orchards of France, with white ribbon-roads leading up to every horizon and down into every sunlit valley. What matters it if boiling springs and leaping geysers are absent? Far better is it to be where every inspiration comes from heaven than where at every step you feel yourself walking over hell.

What has happened to the British Secret Service? A time there was when this was supreme in the world, with the French a good second. Felix Oppenheim and Valentine Williams and film plays galore have misled us into thinking that P 5 or K 8 always got that secret document at midnight from the hidden drawer of the foreign chancellery, carried it off on the Orient express concealed in the heel of his boot or in the handle of his revolver, impervious to the wiles of a seductive Mata Hari or a sinister foreign Mephistopheles. And nothing was said or written or thought anywhere in Europe but it was read from an unreadable cypher next day in Whitehall. Events of last year call for a purge of the Intelligence Services of both Britain and France, for both allowed their Governments to be ignominiously bluffed. The meaning of "bluff" is quite clear—unknown though be the origin of the word itself. According to the 0.E.D., " to bluff " means "to hoodwink by assuming a fictitious bold front." Or, in poker, "to impose'upon an opponent as to the strength of one's hand by betting heavily upon it, in order to induce him to throw up the game.' Precisely in this way was Britain outrageously "bluffed" by the Italian poker-player last year, and now the Italians are bragging about it. Marshal de Bono in a recent book, prefaced by Mussolini himself, declares that the Ethiopian campaign was projected as early as 1932, and actually military plans were drawn up in 1934. An American review to hand says: Marshal de Bono in his book discloses receipt of a letter from Mussolini during the campaign. "He told me," writes de Bono, "that if we get into trouble with the English we would naturally be obliged to renounce our offensive action and content ourselves with keeping to a defence which would have insured the integrity of the colony (Eritrea)." So that Britain might have called the Italian bluff with the utmost ease —had she known. Perhaps she did, but was paralysed by military and naval weakness. In either case, not for generations has Britain passed through a darker hour.

Not a whit better has been the work of the French Secret Service. Hitler bluffed it on more than one occasion in 1936. This from a current American review: Informed circles to-day claim that the truth regarding the Rhine • land affair is now known to the initiated. It is reported that General von Fritsch. the German commander-in-chief, resolutely opposed the march into the Rhineland. He declared that the Reichswehr was not ready to wage war. If therefore Hitler insisted, he and every other general of the Reichswehr (with two exceptions, Blomberg and Reichenau) would resign. Hitler, so the story goes, told them that their fears were vain, that there would be no war. As a

guarantee of this Hitler is said to have handed the generals a written order to evacuate the Rhineland again without firing a shot if the

French should mobilise and cross the frontier. Hitler's " voices," it would seem, were better at the poker game than the French Intelligence Service. In France it was touch and go. At a fateful Cabinet meeting there would have been a sure majority for calling Hitler's bluff but for the presence of two men—M. Leger and General Gamelin (chief of staff), both Laval's men. And the tortuous policy of ex-Premier Laval had left behind it a tradition pro-Italian and pro-Ger-man. The bluff was triumphant. Bluff, once successful, feels appetite come with the eating, and the bolder the bluff becomes. The policy of surprises, of faits accomplis, has been established once and for all as a German technique. Wearing Jacobite white roses, fifty undergraduates assembled this week at the Martyr's Memorial, Oxford, and proclaimed the Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria the legitimate

heir to the throne of Britain as a descendant of the Stuarts. Verily there are university men to whom knowledge comes while wisdom lingers. Providentially the heroic fifty had disappeared before the police arrived. But the organisers boldly asserted that many Oxford students would willingly fight on behalf of the Stuarts and would not attend the Coronation celebrations. New Zealand Jacobitism was throughout the recent crisis discreetly silent. For all I know its quarterly review, The Jacobite, may still be circulating. Still in cherished memory is its first number, dated November, 1920, a much-needed foreword to which read as follows: With this issue we present the first number of our journal. . We believe our little paper will supply a need. The title may be taken as indicative of the character of its contents. Jacobitism is not dead. Notwithstanding the assaults which have been made upon it, the principles and spirit of the Jacobites of old are still a living force. Alas for the fate of this greatest of lost causes, of this most romantic and most tragic of historical chapters. Nemesis still dogs the Stuart footsteps. The heritage of the Stuarts has now passed to the outcast princely house of Bavaria, and it, too, has shared the ill-starred Stuart destiny. Interesting is this outburst of Jacobitism among university undergraduates. In this way does an inferiority complex attach to itself an individuality at all costs —be it Communism, Socialism, Sovietism, scepticism, Atheism, or any other —ism available. Fathered by the London Chamber of Commerce is a new proposal for the reform of the Calendar and the fixing of the date of Easter. Mothered by the Seventh Day Adventist Denomination appears a pamphlet approving of Easter fixation, but roundly condemning the Calendar reform. The essence of this reform is the reduction of the year to a uniform length' of 364 days, with four equal quarters of 91 days each. So far so good. But what is to become of the lost day? According to the proposal New Year's Day is to be a "blank day," undated, uncounted, and the following day is to be reckoned as Sunday. This means that as the last night of the year 1938 is reached (which will be Saturday night), we retire to our beds, and the next morning we awake to greet, not the usual day of rest and worship—Sunday, the first day of the week, the day that for centuries has been regarded and observed by Christendom as the memorial of. Christ's resurrection—no, that, day, though it is actually and truly the -first day of the week, and also the first day of the New Year, is to be a blank day, a day devoted to pleasure, but blotted from the count of the Calendar as effectually as if the day had never existed. Thus a day is to be juggled out of the count of time, and the first week of the new year 1939 will begin one day late, and with a fictitious date.

In a leap year a further day must be omitted—July 2.

Arguments too long for this column are hurled against this Calendar reform. One is " vital": Under the proposed new system, tha anniversaries of birthdays, marriages, deaths and events of all kinds would be disturbed and become fictitious in the very first year of its operation. To illustrate: A child is born, we will say, on the first day of January, 1938. As its birthday is celebrated one year later, the fact of the "real" first day of the year being made a blank day and uncounted, and the next day being reckoned as the first day of the new year, an extra day has actually been positively intervened by the time that the official first day of January, 1939, has been reached. Thus the child, instead of being 365 days old, would be actually 366 days old. The anniversary • would be fictitious and unreal. Thus we should all of us—even the men among us—be older than we really admit. Quoted also is a speech by Sir John Baldwin before the League of Nations in 1931: Surely there are other things in • life of greater importance than mere business, industry and statistics. I have an utter contempt for that type of mentality which thinks that the happiness of this world will be in the avenue of statistics. There are many irregularities in our present calendar. His Majesty's Government is not at this moment convinced that these irregularities are defects. We are open to learn, but if, in the effort to overthrow these irregularities, we destroy some of the greatest things in life, what have we gained? All of which goes to prove that you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs. Also that men will never agree on anything. Of the fixation of the date of Easter we may have some hope. Of the reform of the calendar we have none.

A query upon the origin, history and longevity of the Cockney ironical negative, "I don't think," appeared in an English weekly two months ago. So far no answer has been forthcoming. Well may the philologist stand bewildered before the rich resources of Cockney. " I don't think " is, of course, used after an ironical statement to indicate that the reverse is intended. Dickens in 1836 placed it in the mouth of Sam Weller: "You're an amiably disposed man, sir, I don't think," resumed Mr Weller." No earlier use than this is recorded. Some time later than Dickens's day it was in current usage among educated people. For Lord Clarendon, in a letter to his wife in 1853, wrote, " Mine is a charming existence just now, I don't think." Its syntactical origin affords no difficulty. It is merely elliptical, comparable with "I suppose, I dont suppose," " I am sure," used after an affirmative or negative statement, or with the expressive " Sez you. For the ironical content of the expression we need go no further than the unfailing wit or humour of the. Cockney himself. Shakespeare did not use it. This narrows down the date of its origin to some time between Shakespeare and Dickens. Milton did not know of it. Otherwise,.when Satan came to himself after his fall of nine days and nights into the lake of brimstone and looked around him, Milton would have made him say, as did Lord Clarendon much later, "Mine is a charming existence just now, I don't think." Thus we might continue with author after author, by elimination after elimination, till the requisite chronological precision was attained. The task would be an easy one, I don't think. Civis.