PASSING NOTES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23885, 12 August 1939, Page 6

PASSING NOTES

Aptly worded and well-timed is the statement in which the newlyestablished British publicity and counter-propaganda service announces its aims and objects. Especially appropriate to the needs of the occasion is the following: “That the world should know about the greatest experiment of a constitutional character the world has ever known.” The happy suggestion is herein made of a new phenomenon in world history, of something young and vigorous, which history is not merely repeating. It implies a birth rather than approaching decrepitude and death. And to the prophets who have gloomily or gleefully foreseen a Britain in her old age going the way of Nineveh and Tyre it presents a picture of a new Empire now entering upon a robust youth—the youngest of the world’s great Powers. It replaces two small islands on the fringe of Europe with a great family of nations now growing up to manhood. For half a century and more, satirists and cartoonists, more skilled in satire and cartoonery , than in history, have worked to death Mark Twain’s gloomy jest about his own approaching dissolution: “ The great Persian Empire is dead, the Greek is dead, the Roman and the Spanish are dead, and Britain is not feeling very well herself." For history, they say. “always repeats herself.”

This old-time, well-worn adage concerning the inevitable repetitions of history sprang fully-fledged from ithe brain of Thucydides, four full centuries 8.C., when the world was the Mediterranean and history was simple, plain and easily repeatable He said: I shall be content it those shall pronounce my history useful who desire to obtain a review of events as they really happened, and as they are very likely, in accordance with human nature, to repeat themselves at some future time —if not exactly the same vet very similar. '

Not natural, but miraculous would be the repetition of history in the immense complexity of modern times. Since the days of Thucydides the world has expanded in three dimensions —maybe in four. The city has displaced the village, the continent the province. Montreal, Bombay and Capetown are now as close to the white cliffs of Dover as was the Greece of Thucydides or Virgil’s Rome. Measured by the speed of communication, which is all that matters, the world is smaller to-day than a Greek city under Pericles or an Italian State under the Medici. Science has encircled the world with an ever-tightening girdle. In fact, science, advancing like the whirlwind, has beaten Old Time himself. It sends out messages from one country to another—to arrive, maybe, the morning before. What applicability is possible between this world and the world of the Peloponnesian War? In the case of Britain what has history to repeat? At what previous period in the world’s annals existed a worldassociation of free, nations united by birth, language and ideals? Repetition of a situation which never before existed is as good a “bull” as the following:, ■ A theatrical manager, seeing only three persons in the audience. made the following announcement: " Ladies and gentlemen, as there is nobody present. I’ll dismiss you all. The performance of to-night will not be performed, but it will be repeated to-morrow evening.”

Verily certain brands of whisky, unlike some other things, are without honour save in their own country. A learned judge in our courts the other day had perforce to ask the meaning of u Hokonui.” Replied the chief detective, with admirable promptness and omniscience, '•' Hokonui ‘ is the name given to illicit whisky distilled in this district: it has a special taste of its own, and once tasted can never be mistaken again,” This is not all moonshine, but ” Hokonui ” is. Hokonui is a hiccup that cheers and soon inebriates. Where it comes from is a secret' still. It is a homebrew that can quickly produce the home bruiser Like shellac, it can give you a fine finish In vain has the Government endeavoured to impair its strength by increasing the price of petrol; it will still have as much kick in it as a mule and as, much bite as a rattlesnake It is our New Zealand “ Hok," and no one who has not tasted it can describe the difference between it and good Rhine wine Some plants thrive best in the warm sun, but this moonshine is just the thing for wild -oats The Hokonui Ranges were high and dry, all by the still waters of their fastnesses there was found a rich boot-legacy. Of all brands of similar spirits this New Zealand “ Hok ” is the cheapest—it brings the end most quickly. And then it will leave you pickled like an Egyptian mummy

The amazing pranks which fashion plays with clothes may be treated merely as light comedy But fashion gives rise to grim tragedy when she controls the Christian names given for all . time to the. nelpless babe in the cradle Thursday’s column on the naming of children reveals a state of affairs which, in the interests of the child itself, should at once be investigated. Stem warning is given somewhere in Scripture to the man who “ hangs a millstone about the neck of one of these little ones.” Why do parents do this very thing day by day and get away with it? And why does a man bestow more care on the naming of his racehorse than in the naming of his child? A hurried father, having to choose between his wife’s suggested Lionel or Nigel and his own John or James, either “ compromises ” on the Lionel or Nigel, or pounces on some “ far-babbled name ” as a way out. Thus we have Richard John Seddon Browns or Horatio Nelson Robinsons .now walking about among us, dated like pieces of period furniture. And Kitchener and Jellicoe still appear as the middle name of two, like jewels set in brass. Likewise there are Ivan Trotsky Ivolskis walking about Moscow who now wish their middle name was Stalin. Be not surprised, therefore, if on the register of births at this very moment, there be a Frederick Jones Jones or a Michael Savage Wolfe. No excuse has a Wolfe for any further distinguishing appellation. But . your Smiths and Browns and Joneses and Robinsons should either be numbered, or should bear a Christian name of such thumping distinctiveness that one of them will not receive another’s bill* or another’s summonses.

For this reason do parent Smiths, not possessed of the better part of valour, frequently brand for ever their helpless offspring with a Christian name that either is meaningless or cries to heaven. A certain Mr Smith in America is named Willie | Smith for purposes of absolute and unmistakable identity. Another is called Alpha Omega Smith. At

Fairview in Oklahoma, Mr and Mrs C. A. Carr named their new-born son Henry Ford—before they thought. In Blackpool, England, lives a man named Francis Stanhope Pitt Taylor. His father had despised the hyphen on the grounds that it merely meant “ minus.” In Holquiam, Washington, Mr and Mrs Meow named their boy Katz. There is the story of the proud father who, faced with naming his new-born son, and seeking inspiration from earth, sky, and air, happened to see on the closed half of a warehouse doubledoor the word “ Nosmo.” He took home the name “ Nosmo ” in triumph. Next day, passing the same warehouse he saw on the other door-leaf the word “ king." He named his boy “ Nosmo King.” The name became a millstone when both leaves of the door were closed Still more important is the naming of daughters. For fate here may take a hand in the game. Your charming Ivy may marry a Mr Grub, or your carefully named Meffie may wed a Mr Stoffles. On ihe subject of names in general there is a story: Lord Dewar (introduced at a receptic.. to a lady of haughty mien): I did not catch your'name, Madam. Lady (looking- through lorgnette): My name is SimpsonSimpson, with a hyphen. What is your name? Dewar; Mine is Dcwar-Dewar with a syphon.

Apparently the technique of taxation is to tax what cannot be done without. Hence beer is taxed to catch the man before the bar, petrol to draw in the man behind the windscreen, and an increase of income tax for the man beside the fireside. And if the same man be in all three categories, so much the worse for him. No wonder is it that our final hope is flat despair When will the Government observe the simple dictates of popular wisdom given to us in our proverbs? Proverbs are fossilised experience If they were not. they would not be proverbs, but merely the haphazard reports of what somebody once said, on an isolated and unrecorded occasion. They are pathetically simple rules of life which man has found useful in his stumbling journey along his via dolorosa Woe to the man who ignores them! In the first place, the Government is, of course, killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. A capital goose it is, too—a goose which the ruthless Philip Snowden himself was in favour of keening well fed and in good condition. For a few years ago he said, “ Trade revival is vitally , dependent on capitalsaving and capital-development.” Again the Government is forgetting the proverbial injunction against “ stealing the goose and giving away the giblets in alms.” He who runs may read the present-day applicability of this stored-up wisdom. When these goose-savings are placed in conjunction with Turgot’s famous maxim, that the aim of the taxmaker is to pluck the goose without making it squawk, a Government that taxes petrol and beer, and hears the present loud squawking of the goose, must feel goose-flesh creeping over it, lest some one should up and seize its own goose and cook it.

A querist in a London weekly asks, “Who first applied to the British Empire the statement,' ‘ the Empire on which the sun never sets ’? ” Centuries old is this phrase. Its first recorded use was by Alexander the Great, who said, “ The sun never sets on my realms.’’ It was repeated in Roman times by Latin writer^—Claudian Ovid, Virgil Tibullus. Then Spain took it up applying it to her far-flung American dominions. Says a German writer of 1660:

The King ol Spain is a great potentate, who stands with one foot in the East and the other in. the West; and the sun never ceases tc shine on some ol his dominions

Holland and Portugal each in their day claimed the same distinction. The first, man to apply the phrase to the British Empire was probably John Wilson, in his Noctes Ambrosianae,” in 1829; “His Majesty’s dominions. on which the sun never sets.” But no man ever put the idea into language more eloquent than did Daniel Webster, the American in a speech in 1834 A power which has dotted oyer the surface of the whole globe with her possessions and military posts, whose morning drum-beat, following the sun, and keeping company with the hours, circles the earth with one continuon- and unbroken . strain of the martial airs of England. Civis.