PASSING NOTES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24481, 14 December 1940, Page 6

PASSING NOTES

Well might Mussolini complain, in the words of Ancient Pistol, his fellow in inglorious grandiloquence.

Furious Fortune’s fickle wheel, That goddess blind. That stands upon the rolling restless. stone.

A few more punctures in this inflated Plaza Toro balloon will produce a rent. And then—for ignominious flaccidity you cannot beat a collapsed balloon. Never pleasant is it thus to kick a man when he is down—unless the man be Mussolini. For what is he receiving but measure for measure? To struggling France he gave a final stab in the back, and then the ass’s kick. Throughout the winter and spring of the Axis war he observed a “ masterly inactivity,” doing little else but fulminate, whipping up his peaceful people into the requisite war-frenzy. Then came June 10, when German armies were a day’s march from Paris. He vociferated before a cheering Fascist crowd: The hour has come. A great people is ready to face its destiny and to make its future history. This is a struggle between a young and progressive people against the decadent, people, a conflict of one century against another century. The die is east! People of Italy, run to your arms!

Italian regiments decorated for valour in Abyssinia and Spain are now ruminating jn the prison camps of Greece. And an Allen by lightning spring by Allenby’s Lieutenant Waved of the- First Desert war, is filling Egyptian prison-camps with scourings from the Second. By whom and by what is democracy governed? Many and varied are the answers to this question. By Parliament, say some. By Orders-in-Council and departmental regulations, say others. By town clerks, say a third opinion. Quoted in a Spectator is the statement of a foreign student of English institutions that “ No one seems to realise that England is in effect governed by about 89 town clerks.” Yet anpther answer is suggested by Buckle in his “History of Civilisation in England,” that “freedom and civilisation in England have been retarded by the excessive interference of organised minorities with the people’s affairs.” About the, Orders-in-Council and the departmental regulations which so often do the work of Parliament all New Zealand is talking and its Parliament has debated. But elsewhere the case is no better. A decade ago in Britain the then Chief Justice, Lord Hewart, wrote a book about it, most injiidicially prejudging his case by entitling his book “ The New Despotism.” In it he says: Public departments have contracted the pernicious habit of more or less secretly arrogating to themselves the powers of Parliament and the duties of., the Law Courts. This is accomplished by inserting in parliamentary Bills subtle clauses empowering the departments concerned to make regulations that have the force of statutes and oust the: jurisdiction, of the judges. Ineradicable is the instinct of public service departments for autocratic control. And almost universal among them is a lust for power, a passion for reform, and what Bismarck once called “ a departmental patriotism.” Public service departments mean well, But, says Lord Hewart, they suffer from too much zeal. They resemble the famous statesman of whom his daughter relates in his biography:*“He was ; always trying to make us happy byletting us do what he liked.”

The advance of science has brought its changes; even in the technique of international spying. The stock-in-trade of the two Nazi spies executed in Pentonville Prison last week was a radio transmitter, to be used in the fields at night. In the ‘Great War days when the beautiful amber-tinted Dutch-Javanese-Jewess Mata Had—H2l—-came to her merited end under a tree in the Bois de Vincennes, every spy carried his invisible ink. How the two Nazi spies hoped to conceal their radiomachine heaven alone.knows. But the concealment of invisible ink was v easy. Ingenious were the many devices by which the Kaiser’s agents hoped to elude the British Intelligence men. Spies there were who carried bottles of “ scent,” yet never smelt of it. One wore a sock impregnated with an alkaline solution which, soaked in cold water, gave all the invisible ink he needed. At other times a tie was used, at others a pocket handkerchief.. Lizzie Wertheim carried the raw-material of her ink in a feather of her hat. One spy carried a tube of nail polish in a manicure set. But his unwashed hands and his untended nails gave him away. Not so ingenious was the code sometimes used. A woman spy wrote letters to a Dutch friend in which she said that

“the birds were endangering the pike in the pond of a London park, and that the attempt to keep down the carp by introducing the pike was a failure.”

For the deciphering of this code no mathemagician was required. “ Pike ” meant “ submarines “carp” meant “ merchantmen ” and “ birds ” were the Allied “ aeroplanes.” In other words, the German submarine campaign was a failure.

Many pleasant hours must have been spent by the- special branch of Scotland Yard in this greatest of all games—playing with foreign spies. The sport of a cat with a mouse is a close analogy. There is humour in a story told by an ex-detective inspector of this branch of Scotland Yard. Steinhauer, the Kaiser’s master spy, came to England in 1912, and was trailed from the moment he landed at Harwich. He travelled to London under the name “ Westhaus,” and went to meet a subordinate at a Piccadilly club. The subordinate was also followed as he made his way to the appointment by taxi.

The taxi “ broke down.” He tried to walk to pick up another without having paid the part of his fare still owing. The taxi-man, who corresponded singularly with the official police measurements, promptly ran him back into the taxi again, warning him not to get out at his peril. Offers of payment were useless now, for the driver’s dignity was aroused. It took 15 minutes to put that engine right.' Then the driver, in an excess of misguided haste, nearly ran down a policeman on point duty. Result—a five minutes’ curtainlecture. After threading his way through a block-of thick traffic, a fuming German was deposited at the door of the club 25 minutes late for his appointment. “Mr Westhaus” had gone.

“Mr Westhaus ” in London had a truly trying time. Everything went amiss. His German gift for organisation was of no avail. Whenever he tried to meet an acquaintance, something < went wrong. His letters were delayed and misdelivered. Telephones broke down at his touch, or else gave innumerable wrong numbers. Public clocks in buildings where their correctness was usually sacred were either fast or slow. His own watch disappeared on the

first morning of his stay at th« hotel, but was miraculously discovered behind a dressing table on the day he was departing, and was returned with profuse apologies. This was in 1912. In 1914 the quarry was well known to the hunter. n

Well known is the unhappy fate of the printer who, in linotyping the report of an annual meeting, inserted a comma where no comma should be. According to the statement he produced, “ The chairman’s speech ended, happily.” Just as bad would f the printer’s case have been had he listed the various members of the Smith household as follows:—“Mr Smith, Mrs Smith the pet canary, the dog and the cat.” The right use and the right omission of a comma may thus be a matter of suulime importance. ,Not, of course, so momentous as the above grievous mistakes are two cases of comma-ambiguity quoted by Fowler. To the expanded “ Life of Shakespeare,” first published In 1915, and to be issued shortly in a third edition by Mr Murray, the author, Sir Sidney Lee, besides bringing the text up to date, has contributed a new preface.

Fowler asks, “ Who is the author? ” Some high officials of the Headquarter Staff, including the officer who is primus inter pares, the Directer of Military Operations, and the Director of Staff duties. ...

“ How many were there going to Et. Ives? ” asks Fowler. But one of the most common of comma-errors is one which strikes the ear or eye at every Christmas time. An old Carol, of unknown origin, runs thus:

God rest you merry, gentlemen, Let nothing you dismay, For Jesus Christ, our Saviour, Was born upon this day. As often as not, the first line is read or sung with a comma before merry, as if the line ran: “God rest you, merry gentlemen.” “Rest you merry,” “ rest you happy,” “ rest you fair ” were regular Middle English and Early Modern English forms of greeting. The opposition is between “ rest you merry” and “ let nothing you dismay.” *

In a Note last week, in describing how impressive a Scot may be when his back is, against a wall of rock, I erroneously placed in the mouth of a Gael what was actually spoken by a Saxon:

Come one, come all? this rock shall fly From its firm base as soon as I.

Not by Roderick Dhu were these stout words uttered, but by James Fitz-James, of Scotland’s royal house, generally thought to be James V “ Verify your quotations ” is a counsel of perfection which every penman should, but does not always, follow. When, in the circumstances, Macaulay felt unable to trust his prodigious memory, he guarded himself by the remark that he was writing “ far from books.” Far from this one book was I—a whole generation away. But through the mist of years still comes the schoolboy’s thrill set agoing by Scott’s “Lady of the Lake,” which no one can recite sitting quietly in a chair. The mistake is the less regrettable because it has brought two letters of mild correction from Scott enthusiasts.

Writes one correspondent: Was It not James Fitz-James. the' i.j Knight of Snowdoun (In ■; other r;’ words, the’King), who gave vbice> to the words quoted by you in Saturday’s Times:-—" Come one, come all, etc.”? I think you are mistaken in crediting them to Black Roderick. ■ ' The second correspondent writes at greater length. Procustes’ bed, alas, is limited, arid the contribution* unhappily, has to be truncated to fit it. Your reference to Roderick Dhu in Saturday’s issue made ing reading: . I have always 1 had a sneaking idea that another bloke squeezed up against the rock, and that Sir Roderick was duly an interested spectator. If I remember , right, Sir Roderick carried two weapons; first, a thing like a dinner-plate on which was stretched a piece of , calf-skin (the skin taken from a .* calf many years old was prefer,- . able). The other weapon was a bar of iron sharpened on two sides. •The only way this weapon could be used was to try and split your opponent’s skull by swirling' it round. The more often you swirled,'the better chance you had , of success. Fitz-James, who had not long before been sleeping in double bunk with Sir Roderick, . Carried a weapon like a very much magnified knitting needle; and his idea naturally was to skewer his opponent. The tragedy of the whole .thing was that poor old Sir Roderick discarded his calf-skin dinner-plate, thinking his bar of iron quite equal to Fitz-James’s skewer. During the combat Roderick became punctured in so many places that he got quite anxious. As the poet says, “ He showered his blows like wintry rain.” The ultimate result of the fight was, as anyone might have foreseen. Roderick was carried away, on a shutter. . . . It was, of course, Fitz-James of whom the poet writes: His back against a rock he bore, And firmly placed one foot before. Well might he have felt disturbed. For—at the beginning of the fight this was—at Roderick’s whistle the whole mountain side became alive with Clan-Alpine’s warriors, who appeared and then vanished in the twinkling of a sporran. Civis.