PASSING NOTES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23161, 10 April 1937, Page 6

PASSING NOTES

The silence deep almost as death that has fallen of late upon the English Fascists may be but a presssilence. And the silence may be the calm before the storm-trooping. Storm troopers to the number of 400 are promised, or threatened, by Sir Oswald Mosley as candidates for the next British elections. With this announcement, says the Spectator, “ a new force has entered British politics.” Five years ago Sir Oswald Mosley was a discredited Labour Party politician who had singularly failed. . . To-day he is the most formidable mob orator in Great Britain. He is the only politician with the exception of the Prime Minister who can attract large audiences. He does it without any of the adventitious aids of the politicians of the established parties. “ Mosley is coming,” announce the posters. That is all. , But it is enough to fill the largest halls. Will the result be a row of Cabinet front benches or a line of lost deposits? Will party be a danger, or merely a confounded nuisance? All the traditional technique of mob oratory is at Mosley’s disposal. He will capitalise hate —and next to fear hate is the best recruiting agent in politics. He will canalise popular discontents, and discontents are always with us. He will personalise popular grievances, and, as Don Quixote said, “ a good grievance is worth more than bad pay.” Which means that it will break more windows In the next electoral campaign, therefore, the British elector will hear ad nauseam the iniquities of “ the international banker,” “ the sweating Jewish employer ” and “ the crafty politician on the make.” But with Sir Oswald Mosley the course of true love will not run smooth, even if it be love of the limelight. Stripped of his uniform by the Public Order Act, he loses his most powerful advertisement. Would Mussolini have marched in triumph on Rome without a uniform? And without a uniform would Hitler have stormed his way into the Wilhelmstrasse? The ycmng British Black Shirts swaggering round the purlieus of Westminster and Chelsea, who once were walking Fascist posters, are now curtailed of their fair proportions and pass unnoticed in the crowd. Fatal to his chances, too, is the singlemember constituency. Proportional representation, it is said, had more to do than the Versailles Treaty with giving the Nazis their first footing in Germany—allowing them to pose as a young and rising party. When each electorate enjoys but one member British Fascists might poll a million votes and yet lose every deposit. But Mosley has both enemies and friends. His friends are his enemies, and his worst enemies are his best friends. Without his friends he could do little. Who are they? At their head walk Cripps and Maxton, Stalin and Trotsky, the O.G.P.U. and the Russian trials. Not a day passes but these add a new recruit to the Mosleyite army. Who are his enemies? Mussolini, Hitler and Mosley. May all three be prodigal of their words, and be fully reported.

When cricket is out and football almost in, where are the poets that used to write the poetry of our national games? Well worthy of the muse of poetry is the game of cricket, whether played on the vacant section next door, or on our Dunedin Lord’s or Oval: Lord’s and the Oval truly mean Zenith of hard-bought fame; But It was Just a village green Mothered and made the game. E. E. Bowen’s song, "Willow the King,” is still sung at Harrow: Willow the king Is a monarch great: Three in a row his courtiers stand; Everyday, when the sun shines bright, The doors of his palace are painted white, And all the company bow their backs To the king with his collar of cobbler’s wax. l By E. V. Lucas is the “ Song of a Cricket Ball ”: Give me the batsman who squanders his force on me, Crowding the strength of his soul In a stroke: Perish the mull and the little tin Shrewsbury, Meanly contented to potter and poke. Of village cricket we have G. D. Martineau’s “Luck of the Toss”: It was long years back. In t’ blacksmith’s croft. As Jim and 1 played cricket, We’d a bat an’ a ball atwixt us both, An’ a tree as stood for wicket. We’d never a penny to toss for choice. So we’d chuck up th’ bat, would we; “ 'Umpl ” says Jim, ” 'Oiler! ’’ says I, An’ ’’ 'Ump it is,” says ’e. And for the ex-cricketer there is Frances Thompson: For the field is full of shades as I near the shadowy coast, And a ghostly batsman plays to the bowling of a ghost, And I look through my tears on the soundless clapping host, As the run-stealers (ticket to and fro. To and fro; , O my Hornby and my Barlow long ago! With the opening of the new Post Office the civic game of musical chairs is set once more a-going. For generations Dunedin has been playing it. Years ago, when the old High School buildings in Dowling street became unfit for the use of boys, a new structure was erected for them in Arthur street, and the old wooden pile was left to the girls. Anything is good enough for girls! Years later, the suggestion came that a new High School for boys should be built to replace the old one then overcrowded, and that the schooj thus vacated Should be handed over to the girls The girls were thus to chase the boys, and never to overtake them Again, there was a time when communal justice used to place prisoners in the Stuart street gaol, till retributive justice evicted them and placed the police there instead. A few alterations were made. The windows were enlarged to let more light in on the police. The police still, no doubt, use the prisoners’ billiard table, and in return confer on the prisoners the privilege of cropping their front lawn. The postal officials threw the military out of the old Garrison Hall, and the staccato notes of the tetter stamps replaced the rapping of the sergeant-major. So the policy of shift and make-shift goes on, and the parents’ old clothes are cut down for the children.

Beginning with an Age of Gold the history of mankind progressed in time through various metals to the Iron Age, then to the Age of Ferroconcrete, and now we are at the Age of Oil and Speed and Movement To the Gothic Cathedral has succeeded the Motor Cathedral, with altar, library, kinema loud-speaker all complete and within convenient reach. So says a New York message of Wednesday last Other American reports record the appearance of a new race of gipsies, whose caravans may jostle the old-time gipsies off the country roads. Savs an American journal: We are even now by way of becoming a nation of nomads, living in automobile trailers. As an institution they are less than six years old. but more than 300 firms are now building them, and more than 100.000 have been sold. At a conservative estimate some

300,000 Americans live in them year in year out. . . . Each trailer-house contains comfortable sleeping quarters for four, a kitchen sink, range, a stove for heating, a washstand and a chemical toilet. A new meaning is this for “ a rolling home.” In such a dwelling the whole countryside is your private estate. Every country lane is your parking area. The blue sky is your canopy—and you can change your neighbours at will. If Ravensbourne becomes too hot to hold you, “you can fold up your tent like the Arabs and silently steal away.” In less than half an hour you can set up house in Mornington, moving like the wind where you list. Once taken with the freedom of such a life, never again will these modern gipsies resume the normal house-existence of their fellows Like their ancient prototypes they will cling to their rolling caravans with intense passion. They will shrink from the buildings of men because they are “full of ghosts.” Their picturesque caravans will be a symbol of nomadic restlessness, and men will ask what crime was committed in the twentieth cen tury which has demanded this agelong expiation. To the ancient gipsies crimes innumerable and varied were attributed to explain the curse laid upon them. Gipsies, it was said, refused hospitality to the Holy Family in its "toilsome road towards Egypt. Gipsies, again, forged the nails that fastened Christ to the Cross, Gipsies stole one of the four nails—which accounted for the hitherto unexplained transition from four nails to three in the mediaeval crucifixes. Gipsies were regarded as the lineal descendants of Ishmael and the inheritors of his dread inheritance. Others gave them Esau as their ancestor—Esau whom Jacob cheated of his birthright:— O canny sons of Jacob, to fret and toiling tied, We grudge you not the birthright for which your father lied; We own the right of roaming, and the world is wide. Not many years ago the Central European Powers were about to petition the League of Nations on the subject of the gipsies, suggesting that Europe “ colonise the gipsies on an uninhabited island.” Just as easy would it have been to establish a reservation for the wandering breezes. When the modern gipsies have outlived knowledge of their beginnings, when citizens resent their litter, when city councils miss their rates, then will every man’s hand be against them. And easy theories will arise to account for the curse that has sent them roaming. An Auckland visitor who came to Dunedin to scoff and who remained to pray clothed his enraptured feelings in a letter to the press on. Tuesday last. St. Clair and the rollers of the long white beach took his breath away. Tomahawk and the Peninsula. Mount Cargill and the northern high road, the harbour and Port Chalmers, “revealed pictures of artistic heautv at every bend and turn.” “One of the world’s best.” he cries. Continuing, in a magnificent crescendo, he wrote: The Dunedin people, too, how hospitable! They make the stranger feel at home all the time, especially the women folk, with their Scotch accent and their fresh complexions, very few of whom resort to rouge and lipstick. The weather, too, was as kind as the women—mild, and soft, and warm, and fresh. Above this climax our visitor could not go, and he automatically sprang to the poets for help: Yet your people do not seem to take the same civic pride as we in the north do. As Burns says. “Be there a man,” etc. A blessed word is this “ etc.” Would tha| I had known of its utilities in my forgetful youth, when I stood inarticulate before a frowning master, and “ all the rest forgot for which I toiled.” As a very present help in time of trouble you can’t beat this “ etc.” With it the quoter becomes omniscient, and not even his best friend can trip him up. As the Bible eloquently says, “ Even a fool,” etc. Or as Shakespeare says in his immortal line. “ Oh.” etc. To Burns’s thrilling line “ Be there a man' etc.,” I much prefer Scott’s “ Breathes there a man with soul, etc.” But Burns and Scott may fight it out together, wherever they may he. Civis.