PASSING NOTES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23221, 19 June 1937, Page 6

PASSING NOTES

While Mr Savage at the Imperial Conference was doing his best to place New Zealand more prominently on the map, to enlarge it in the eyes of the world to the dimensions of a continent —in fact, to present it to its outlying Pacific neighbours as the real Pacific mainland—a locomotive engine and some trucks at Oamaru must needs go and topple over the edge into the sea. To estab lish any connection whatever between these two widely sundered happenings may seem at first thought to be an infantile attempt at humour No humour is there about it. The matter is too serious for jest, for such tragic inconsistencies are more frequently themes for tears than for laughter, In many flippant English speaking homes last week, from tire North Sea to Vancouver Island, the reported words of Mr Savage and the reported actions of his locomotive will be read side by side And the Eatanswill Gazette and the Oklahoma Star will view the double occurrence as the natural effect of geographical limitations. Often have men from more bulky ' countries jested about the size of New Zealand! “ How do you keep yourselves from falling off? ” is an oft-repeated American question And another is “ Where do you go when the tide comes in? ” The world’s answer to the first question must now be “ They don’t,” and to the second. “ Where can they go? ”

Why are such jibes as these reserved for New Zealand? Smaller States than she excite no such raillery. What other reason is there but the contrast between her size and her self-esteem, her services and her demands? And now that the Imperial Conference has brought New Zealand before the footlights of the press, Mr Savage will lead by the hand a locomotive engine. As sure as eggs are eggs, the report of the Oamaru occurrence in the world’s news will be touched up to make it a better story. “The engine has fallen into the embrace of the Pacific,” says a romanticising report in a local contemporary, With this inspiring cue in the hands of an Australian. British or American journalist the humble engine and its one or two ballast trucks will easily become a full-blown express train which got up too much speed and ran over the edge of the island into the rnid-Pacific Ocean. It will be said, too, “ You won’t find such a thing happening in America or in Australia, or in Canada or in South Africa, where the outlook is as wide as the horizon, and the railway horizon is a week away.” And so on. What applies to engine-driving applies to Imperial politics. It is easy for a man accustomed to “ driving short ” to go over the edge and slip into deep water.

To what has been unjustly called “ th® sombre history of blasphemy ” another chapter has been added. General Pariani, the Fascist Undersecretary for War, inspired no doubt by his chief, is “ determined to stamp out the habit of swearing among the Italian troops.” And a fine and an arrest for every swear are the method he has threatened. What Italian soldiers are accustomed to say in moments of provocation or exasperation may not be known to us. But if the authority of a totalitarian State can say, “ Swearing must cease,” and it does cease, unlimited is the power of Fascism. A recent English writer on the subject, in some far from “ sombre ” chapters, states that swearing has “ a definite psychological function it is “ a Saturnalian defiance of destiny; ” “it is the sublimation in fantasia of a practical anti-social impulse.” Much preferable to any of these high-brow definitions is that given by some writer or other that “ swearing is the poor man’s poetry.” Which may explain our friend Pariani’s dictum that swearing is “ a Communistic mstorn and a sign of lack of self-discipline.” Supreme as a symbol of ineffectiveness is old Mrs Partington’s broom. For the Fascist edict will not do what the early Church failed to do. And the ingenious Italian soldier will use the various devices of disguise which have produced in English the obscuration of the name of the Deity in “ Gad,” “ Egad,” “ Dod,” “ ’Scush ” (God’s curse), “’Slight” (God’s light), “Zounds” (God’s wounds), and Charles IPs favourite, “ Od’s fish.”

In point of chronology the origin of oaths is lost in the night of time. Oaths, alas, are co-eval with humanity. Prehistoric ships’ mates and boatswains swore to prehistoric oath-hardened crews. The Chaldean ox-driver on the banks of the Tigris drove his beasts with a goad and a vocabulary. No ancient nation was without such vents to superheated feelings. Pythagoras, for some mysterious reason, swore by the number four. Socrates swore by • the dog. According to Aristophanes, there had been a time when men swore not by the gods but by birds. Truly, a pretty custom, this! The Romans used Mehercule, Edepol, Ecastor, Mecastor. But “ the infamous custom of swearing ” is, by a special privilege, notoriously English. Don Juan in Byron’s poem innocently believed that the universal English shibboleth was “ Goddam.” The French writer Beaumarchais, at the end of the eighteenth century, said: With “Goddam” in England you need want for nothing. The English, it is true, use other words: but it is easy to see that “Goddam ” is the foundation of their language. Even Joan of Arc believed that “ Goddam ” was a synonym for Englishman. And in modern times the West African native servant proudly boasts: “Me spik English; me say Goddam.”

But a greater power than Fascism is at work among English oaths. The tendency towards greater “ gentility ” is gradually driving swearing out. Nice people now say, “ Bother,” “ Blow,” “ Dash,” or nothing at all when they probably mean. “ Blast.” “ Curse,” or “ Damn ” An Edwardian Punch cartoon on the subject could not have out it better A dear old lady on the underground has the platform gate banged against her. A neighbour mutters “Damn.” “Oh, thank you.” she whispers Queen Victoria, it is said, occasionally rapped out a “ Zounds! ” The “groat Australian adjective” is ineradicable. spreading into such odd various interruptive forms as “ abso lately ” Of which, of course, the locus classicus is the Oxford bargee’s boat-race cry, as he panted along the tow-path, “ Hoo ray.” But the golden age of English oaths is cone. Compared with the freedom of language of both men and women in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the language of present-day social intercourse is as mild as “ the kind of conversation that goes on at the meat-tea in the house of a serious Nonconformist family "

Already quoted in the local press is Kipling’s confession, made in his “ Something uX Myself,” apropos uX

his yearning for exactitude in all matters: 1 have had miraculous mistakes in. technical matters which still make me blush. Luckily the men of the seas and of the engine room do not write to the press, and mv worst slip is still underided

Every Kipling reader is now hunting for this worst slip And the correspondence columns of English weeklies will be occupied with the spoils of successful huntsmen fqr months to come Enthusiastic in such a chase are retired half-pay admirals now busy doing nothing, and wishing they were less busy. Two Kipling howlers has one of these hunting admirals so far found. Kipling, in “An Error in the Fourth Dimension,’' writes of a yacht’s speed being “17 knots an hour.” And in his short story “ Bread Upon the Waters ” he refers three times to a ship's accommodation ladder as a gangway Doubtless more howlers may follow, and poor Kipling’s one worst underided slip may grow into an army corps.

As every schoolboy knows, “ dog Latin ” is bad Latin, the wellknown Latin of the dear old 100 lines and one or two across the palm of the hand. The French for “dog Latin ” is given as “ kitchen Latin ” —for reasons unexplained, If the French for “ dog French ” be similarly “ kitchen French,” much would be clear that is now obscure. For the so-called French of the menu card is often not merely bad, but vile. Forwarded to this column for comment is the Coronation Day dinner menu card of a Wellington hotel, in which the dog French or kitchen French has evidently come from further back —from the scullery. Appended is an aptly-asked question by the sender: “ Is this a doubtful compliment the Wellington chef pays to the King? ” Following are some items of it. sufficient to judge of the language and, apart from the language, the sentiments: Hors Doeuvres Varies. Oyster Glamrnis. Toheroa Dominion. Consomme Royal. Grilled sole a la Alexandra. Grilled flounder a la Anglaise. Tourneadoes de Boeuf Sussex... Roast Young Capon. George Sixth Steamed Spring Chicken Elizabeth Asparagus au Kent. Queen Mary Pudding, Brandy Sauce.... Baked Custard a la Marina. Glace Margaret Rose. Devilled Chicken Livers a la Baldwin. Is this intended to be humorous, or is it not? Is it a Coronation compliment, or is it not? Is it sensible, or is it just plain foolery? I don’t know. Civis.