PASSING NOTES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23512, 28 May 1938, Page 6

PASSING NOTES

Unsatisfying in the meagreness of their rationing, bewildering in their disjointedness, and irritating in their incompleteness, our London cables during the week have become as tantalising as the rattling of dice to a penniless man. In the present crisis of war and peace, when the fate of civilisation trembles in the balance, even Bradman's centuries might be taken for granted, and the discovery of a "filterable virus of measles" might be left till the promised " years of research '* bring forth the appropriate vaccine. Granted let it be that 'tastes in news vary as widely as the weatherdesires of hard-pressed farmers, or the programme preferences of radio listeners. But there are times when anxiety speaks with a single voice. With the callousness of a machine the cable service works us up and lets us down. With Monday's cables it raised us to the toes of excitement, telling us of the ' mobilisation of Czechoslovakian reserves and the rush in Prague for the purchase of gasmasks, reporting 'the widespread opinion in Germany that the time is favourable for forcing an immediate settlement,'' and the words of President Benes, of Czechoslovakia, that " no more critical time has there been since the Great World War."

Thus, on Monday and Tuesday last, a second World War seemed to be just over the hill. France and Russia would spring to arms if one German foot crossed the Czech frontier, and Britain would ndhere to her obligations. As our excitement flamed higher, the cables grew colder. Not that the crisis was over for "the situation is still dangerous," and "anxiety is still undiminished." But " news is but the manna of a day." " What is news? asked Lord Northcliffe. He himself answered his own question. " When a dog bites a man, that is not news: but when a man bites a dog, that is news." Once more we are back in our isolation, as in Goldsmith's village inn, Where village statesmen talked with looks profound, And news much older than their ale went round It may comfort us that no news is good news. "11l news hath wings, and good news no legs." A new labour of Hercules must necessarily be the dissemination of the news of a world Empire And we must take what we get, and make of it what we can. In the London Times of January „ 22, 1878, appeared the famous cable, "The Akhoond of Swat is dead." On which item of world news appeared the comment: What, what, what, . What's the news from Swat? Sad news, Bad news, Comes by the cable: led Through the Indian Ocean's bed. Through the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea, and the Mediterranean—he's dead; The Akhoond is dead. And a further comment by Edward Lear: Who, or why, or which, or what, Is this Akhoond of Swat?

Democracy is not without a sense of humour. A keen relish it has too for the humour of its own jests—for it reoeats them. The pre-election constitution of the Dunedin City Council was six on one side and half a dozen on the other, with a mayoral chairman to make things all sixes and sevens. As says Will Rogers, in the " Illiterate Digest." everything is funnier when it happens to somebody else. A similar deadlock in Wellington, therefore, grows in humour with everv thought. The first count of the Wellington Hospital Board election votes gave Labour a majority of one. The official recount reduced this inequality to equality 9 to 9. And this at a time when this evenlybalanced Hospital Board must totter and stumble for three years before a staggering expenditure upon a new hospital, at the blinding cost of £750,000. Out of the very bosom of democracy will come in this case a dictatorial double-voting chairman. The best humour always contains a dash of pathos. And pathetic will be the trials of this appointed chairman faced with the colossal responsibility of his decisions. Ominous at all times is this mystic number 9 On either side of the board there may be nine musers or nine tailors making up one man. or nine men setting themselves un as the nine gods by which Lars Porsena swore, or nine magpies—which is proverbially unlucky—or nine men who " look nine ways " —which means to squint. Worse than all is the presumption that the majority Dartv of nine, beina now in legal possession, will be for three years nine points of the law. And these nine points, according to the authorities are:

(1) A good deal of money to spend, (2) A good deal of patience, (3) A good cause (4) A good lawyer (5) A good counsel, (6) Good witnesses. (7) A good jury, (8) A good judge (9) Good luck

Said Pitt, in December. 1805, on receiving the news of the Battle of Austerlitz. by which Napoleoh beat Austria to her knees. ' Roll up that map of Europe on the wall: it will not be wanted for these 10 years'' Something of this doom pervades the comments of European democratic opinion on the vanishing of Austria from the community of nations It is presented as a universal catastroDhe. from the shock of which Europe is still reeling It is an historical disaster, recalling the disappearance of Polnnd from the European map. and destroying the traditions of a thousand years It is a oolitical catastrophe establishing a Nazi hegemony over Danubian and Eastern Europe A human catastrophe it is too for Austria and Vienna for centuries have incarnated a spiritual and moral value now levelled under the alien heel of the Prussian It is a German catastrophe for an independent Austria represented that form of Germanism which played so great a part in the history of European civilisation a Germanism tempered by southern eastern and Slav influences, easv-going and gay polished and cultured literary and artistic, which made Vienna a centre of art, music and science and presented to Eurooe and the world a side of Germanism <vhich Germany cannot do without Morally and spiritually Gcrmanv loses more than she gains.

According to Bacon, 'it is the nature of the mind of man, to the extreme prejudice of knowledge, to delight in the spacious liberty of generalities." Spacious liberties of this kind have been taken by Dr Boyd, of the University of Glasgow From his visit to New Zealand a year ago, as one of the New Education Fellowship inspectors he has given in the Scottish Educational Journal a few free generalities Of New Zealanders he writes: Likt the New Zealand speech, there was a certain flatness about them: not enough ' pep." an American acquaintance .said to me later. . . Even the children in the schools did not ico.m to have enough devil in them. . . .

Also quoted is his wife's comment on New Zealand women: "They have quiet eyes and quiet minds." Now, Dr Boyd on his visit to New Zealand did not cross the Waitaki. Of Dunedin and Otago he knew nothing. His comments are therefore directed mostly against the weaklings north of Cook Strait, and are merely an incident of the Scottish national sport of depreciating the pepless inhabitants of the subject lands south of the Tweed A later visitor to New Zealand, Dr F. H. Spencei, formerly chief inspector of City of London schools, said of us the other day: "The country is beautiful, and the people are a very fine type; it is almost impossible to tell them from Englishmen." In his reference to the flatness of New Zealand speech, Dr Boyd was merely, in his Glasgow accent, a pot calling the kettle white Cures for obesity are almost as plentiful as blackberries Latest in date is the cure quoted from the New England Journal of Medicine: ' Obesity is the result of mere mood; change the mood and vou remove the obesity." People who are restless because their lives are unsatisfied may be seen nibbling candy nuts crackers, and the like . Anne, donic obesity is the technical name for this method of laying on fat. (Anhedonia being the absence of joy in doing things thai bring joy to normal nersons.) Thus nibbling fattens If nibbling fattens, thinking thins. So implied Julius Caesar. ' Yond Cassius has a lean and nungo look; He thinks too much: such men art dangerous. Had the tenuous and emaciated Cassius been a Falstaff, and Falstaff a Cassius—had Cassius done less thinking and more nibbling and Falstaff more thinking and less nibbling—who knows what a different story the modern world would tell to-day? A Roman Falstaff would have tasen Cassius down co the purlieus of a Roman Eastcheap and made a man of him. There he would have nibbled the good things of life, and fattened up on them Caesar also said Let me have men about me that are fat, Sleek-headed men. men that sleep o nights. But Falstaff making merry with the sober-sided Julius Cassar is unthinkable—the fat would soon be in the fire Yet, in the diagnosis of fatness there is something in this psychoanalysis business. All the worlds literature, with impressive unanimity, associates with the fat man all the divine qualities credited to the sandboy and the cricket, the kitten and the spring morning. In our own folklore we have: Fair and foolish, little and loud. Lonj and lazy, black and proud. Fat and merry, lean. and sad, Pale nd pettish, red and bad Falstaff was the king of merry wits. But was Falstaff merry because he was fat or fat because he was merry? This old problem is now as antiquated as the debate on the precedence of the hen and the egg. Working on the usual psychoanalytical methods, a Falstaff or a Chesterton may become a Cassius by dragging his subconsciousness up ' over the threshold " and laughing at it In this way even Hamlets prayer is answered: O that this too. too solid flesn would Thaw arid dissolve itself into & dewu Another career is thus made available to the psycho-analyst He can set up as an obesity specialist—and live on the fat of the land. Civis.