PASSING NOTES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23529, 18 June 1938, Page 6

PASSING NOTES

As we may gather from the blood and thunder spy novel and the thud and blunder spy film, the international spy pursues his nefarious trade even in the piping times of peace. In fact, he seems to show much of the longevity and übiquity which the Bible attributes to the poor. American film directors favour the rival armed camps of the Old World as the happy huntingground of the soy. But recent American cables, with their allegations of doctor spies skipping their bail, and nurse spies spying even in White House, suggest that the spy plague is as rampant in the United States of America as in the disunited States of Europe. Previous cabled hints of similar happenings confirm the conclusion, sometimes expressed, that the United States of America, though invulnerable and impregnable in one sense, is in another sense the most vulnerable country in the world. Geographically she is as immune from enemy attack as a planet sailing in the upper ether. Ethnologically she is as a heel' of Achilles. What physical weapons of earth, sea or sky can attack from the outside this mighty colossus, secure in the solidity of its shape, entrenched east and west behind the widest of ocean moats, rich in the materials of peace and war, and nearer to complete self-sufficiency than any other nation in the world?

The real vulnerability of America comes not from without, but from within. The “ melting pot ” has not yet completed its work. Not the first “ melting pot ’’ of history is this There is scarcely a nation in Europe or in Asia that has not been a melting pot of races at some period of its history. Britain has been a melting pot of Britons. Saxons. Angles Jutes, Danes, Normans. France has produced a fusion of Ilelts, Romans Franks, Burgundians, Visigoths Italy, Spain and Germany likewise But these old melting pots of the past had ages in which to simmer over the fire, and their work is now fairly complete. America has had to hustle, and is compressing the fusing process into a few generations. Previous melting pots, too, have been mere kitchen utensils compared with the mighty cauldron of the United States. Quoted from the 1931 census are the following impressive figures:— America’s foreign white stock is 38.700.000, exceeding the whole population of England.- The total population of Eire is 3,000.000; but Irish-born Americans and their children in America number 3.200.000. The New York City’s Jewish population is 1.765,000. America’s foreign-born whites number 13,350,000: her black population 12.000,000. In America still are European communities requiring a generation or two for perfect assimilation —huge German and Italian cities ranking high among the German and Italian cities of Europe, and more negroes than exist in the whole of British East Africa.

Thus Israel Zangwill could say in 1908, “America is God’s crucible, the great melting pot, where all the races of Europe are melting and reforming.” And Theodore Roosevelt said to the same effect in 1917, “ We Americans are the children of the crucible.” He continued: America is not to be made a polygot boarding house for money hunters of twenty different nationalities who have changed their former country merely as farmyard beasts change one feeding trough for another. . . We have room in this country for but one flag, the Stars and Stripes. We have room for but one loyalty, loyalty to the United States. We have room for but one language, the English language. “ Some Americans need hyphens *m their names because only part of them have come over,” said Woodrow Wilson in 1914. Far from negligible, therefore, is this internal vulnerability. The very liberty of America provides an open field for the play of divergent European loyalties and turbulent European ideologies, for Fascist and Nazi propaganda, and for what is mysteriously and cryptically called the “ Fifth Nazi Column." No rest from the labours of the day can one find in the fierce controversies that rage in the correspondence columns of the daily press. Fifty years hence the fate of “ Littlebourne House,” or “Mr Coates and the Depression,” or “ Profit-making Incentive ” may be of small concern, for Savage and Hamilton. Semple and Coates, Will then be merely historical notes But in the calm and soothing correspondence of an English weekly weariness may be removed from the aching flesh. Between the correspondence columns of a weekly newspaper and those of a daily there is a chasm that no mere week can bridge. They differ as does a zephyr from a cyclone, a Roman stylus from a fountain pen, a Hamlet from a Hercules. In a London weekly there are controversies enough—but the controversies are the long-range firing of rival reminiscences, debate? on the making of dew-ponds, or or the watering of horses before or after feeding. Not if you sweated blood could you in => weekly corre spondence column work up the “ father and brother of a row.” For what quick play of repartee is possible with a man standing seven whole days away? Angry feelings cool at an amazing speed when you sleep on them—not once, but seven times. And when you let the sun go down seven times on your wrath. In a daily, the correspond ence comes white hot from the con troversial 'pen, on grievances that came to light yesterday and are still burning bright to-day

Few poignant grievances, therefore. find their way into the quiet and gentlemanly leisured and stately correspondence of a weekly. One thing merely brings up another, and the retired Anglo-Indian colonel or the Cabinet Minister now in the wilderness gently the world that ne is still alive So the mere mention by a leisured correspondent of " Beginnings of Novels —how Dickens begins hit Christ mas Carol ” with ' Marley was dead to begin with-’’—has raised an ani mated but dignified controversy which is still raging quietly The best beginnings of novels are those which transport us at once in medias res. And. this Dickens did-right into the middle of Marley’s fate In this art the Bible has shown ? masterly hand with such begin nings as; There wao > man ii the land of Uz whose name was Job, and that man was perfect and upright, and one that feared God and eschewed evil (Book ol Job) In the beginning God created the heaven and thr earth (Bool:

of Genesis). From the scores ol examples quoted, a few may warn a budding novelist not to dilly-dally or shilly-shally when his reader is iumping mad to know what’s what. In short, ne should cut the cackle and get to the ’osses. Excellent novel beginnings are:

The human race to which many of my readers belong . . (G. K. Chesterton’s “The Napoleon of Notting Hill”). I had just finished breakfast and was filling my pipe when 1 got Bullivant’s telegram. (Buchan’s “ Greenmantle.”) You won’t be late. (Aldous Huxley’s “ Point Counter Point.”) In the year 1775 there stood on the border of Epping Forest (“Barnaby Rudge”). Thirty years ago Marseilles lay burning in the sun. .(“Little Dorrit.”) Call me Ishmail (“Moby Dick.") But for success in gripping the reader’s attention few beginnings can beat that of Bulwer Lytton’s “ Caxtons”: “ Sir—Sir, it’s a boy! ’ “A boy,” said my father, looking up from his book, and evidently much puzzled. “ What is a boy? ”

Authoritatively defined, the term “ parliamentary language ” has no other meaning than “ language that is accepted in Parliament; hence courteous, civil.' It follows, therefore, as naturally as night follows day, that unparliamentary language implies the use of words that are “uncivil and discourteous." A'veil of mystery therefore covers the sensational suspension of a Cabinet Min ister at Canberra for having per petrated the discourtesy and the incivility of calling Mr Wilson, an Independent Country Party member of the Commonwealth Lower House, a “ clean skin.” If the Minister had hurled at Mr Wilson across the floor the jibe “ dirty skin,” would Mr Wilson have risen and bowed his thanks? There must be more in the incident than meets the New Zealand eye. The intervening Tasman Sea, turbulent, disagreeable and even nasty though it be, cannot thus cover a clean and innocent New Zealand word with a film of dirt, and make the possession of “ a clean skin" something at which a selfrespecting man would blush with shame or fury. The whole subject of parliamentary and unparliamen tary language needs cleaning up At present even a politician who takes his daily bath will not know whether his skin is what it should be. There should be no colour line in politics—even behind the ears.

Dear “ Civis,”—May 1 have the privilege of requesting you to give a modern version of the punctuation of the words used by Christ to the thief on the Cross? The thief asks, “ Lord, remember me when Thou comest into Thy kingdom.” The answer is, “Verily, verily 1 say unto you. to-day shalt thou be with Me in Paradise.” Would the .words “ Will y6u " be a better version than “shalt thou”? Would a question mark after Paradise be correct pronunciation? I merely ask for a modern English version of the words “ shalt ) thou,” and what “ verily, verily ” could imply.—l am, etc., X. The query concerning '* Shalt thou is partly one of pure grammar and partly one of Old English order. In old English an adverb or an object placed before the subject caused inversion of the subject and verb. Survivals of this old fashion still occur in poetry and in elevated prose style, ,e.g., No dust have I to cover me, My grave no man may show; My tomb Is this unending sea, And T He far below. or Shakespeare’s Deeper than did ever plummet sound. And in the Bible passim. ‘’Shalt thou ” is therefore not an interrogation. The sentence might with less emphasis be put in the form, 1 I say unto you verily thou shalt to-day be with me in Paradise.” Since “ shalt thou ’ is not interrogative, its modern version would, of course, be “wilt thou.” In modern English “ shall you be at home this evening? ” denotes pure futurity “ Will you be at home this evening? ” is a request to stay at home. But when not interrogative, the future is expressed by “ shall ” with “ I,” and “ will ” with “ thou ” and “ you ” and “he.” A right distinction between the uses of “ shall ” and “ will ” is more frequently ignored than observed. As with the Irishman who. struggling in 12 feet of water, exclaimed, “I will be drowned, and no one shall save me.” “Verily” simply means “ truly ” Civis.