PASSING NOTES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24627, 7 June 1941, Page 6

PASSING NOTES

I Once again, as if by the will of an exorable fate, the Anzacs are fighting amid the dust and stones of an ancient civilisation—in lands whose epics and tragedies first gave to the world that theme of the heroic failure which has been the inspiration of men for thousands of years. Significant is it of the inherent greatness of human nature that the glorious failure lives longer in human memory, and leaves a deeper impression behind it, than the history of triumphs and victories. This greatness of theme made Addison write that "perfect tragedy is the noblest production of the human mind." What is the real theme of the Tale of Troy? Not the taking of Troy, but the dread fate of Achilles, who left his bones on Trojan sands, the death of Hector, of Patroclus, of this hero and of that, and the heroism of men even against the angry gods. Thermopylae, the failure, has resounded more loudly throughout all the centuries than the victory of Marathon. The failure of Scott is greater than the triumph of Amundsen. Gallipoli and Greece and Crete will outlive the memory of numberless jubilant Mafekings.

This the poet Masefield saw, when, taking up the historian's pen, he wrote the story of Gallipoli. He prefaced to each chapter, as a running parallel, episodes from the epic of Roland and Roncevaux. With a clearer vision than that of the historian, he thus linked the disaster of Gallipoli to the long series of the world's glorious defeats. It is as a tale of an heroic failure that the "Song of Roland" has echoed throughout every land of Europe for a thousand years, till to-day legend sees the ghostly figure of Roland riding at dusk through the forests of Iceland and over the sands of Syria. From the fate of Roland and his paladins has sprung a greater bodv of legend and romance and ■poetical masterpieces than'from the " Tale of Troy Divine." Think not that this is " parva comnonere magnis." For compared with Gallipoli and Crete Roncevaux was only a skirmish, and the Trojan war a leisurely excursion. Charlemagne's 50 years of victories and triumphs are now almost forgotten: buried they lie beneath the glory of one great defeat—a mere rearguard action in the Roncpvaux gateway to Spain. A second Masefield—or perhaps the first—may tell the story of Greece and the modern Thermopylae, and r>f the modern eoisode of Crete and" Canea. If so. he will link his account not with some ~asy triumph hut with some Hnginf tnl* of a resolute fight against appalling odds. Then we who look on will say, in the words of Drinkwater. We have the challenge of the mighty line— , , .. God grant us grace to give the countersign.

Contrary to precedent, the spirit of ex-Kaiser Wilhelm will not, like that of Julius Caesar, " walk abroad, greater in death than in life Probably his voluntary scuttle abroad is responsible for the obscurity ofhis latter days. It should not be forgotten that he it was who set the jibe of " Hun " running through the British armies of the Great War. Even Hitler said nothing worse in Schrechlichkeit than he. Addressing his troops on their departure in 1900 to join the allied armies on the occasion of the Boxer rising in China, the Kaiser said: Quarter will not be given. Whoever falls into your hands is forfeit to you, just as a thousand years ago the Huns under Attila made a name for themselves which is still

mighty in tradition and story. He also it was who gave the name of the "Old Contemptibles*" to the first British Expeditionary Force in 1914. In an Army Order he said: It is my royal and .imperial command that vou address all your skill, and all the valour of my soldiers, to exterminate the treacherous English, and to walk over General French's contemptible

little army. Later he denied having used such a phrase. But in using it he was merely following in the steps of Bismarck years before. In answer to a question "What would you do if England landed an army on the coast of Germany? " Bismarck replied: " I would call out the police to arrest them."

The New Zealand citizen who entered his Post Office on Saturday last to transact some normal postal business must have ejaculated: " Great Caesar's ghost! Is the whole of New Zealand being taxed? " For in smaller offices the press was as impenetrable as are sheep in a railway sheep truck, and in the larger an official shepherd had to shepherd the sheep into patient queues. And all were prepared to pay something or to sign something. Though the citizen in question did not know it, the Caesar whose ghost he thus invoked was Caesar Augustus, for Caasar Fraser and Augustus Nash are still alive, and have not yet a ghost of their own. Says the gospel of St. Luke, in that most impressive picture of Roman fax-making:

And it came to pass in those days that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed. . . And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city

Behind this imperial decree was no troublesome parliamentary Bill, no long and windy debate. The Governor's assent was affixed first, not last. No worm ever turned. If it did, there were hard-treading legionary feet to extinguish it. Not an insect throughout the Roman Empire dared to buzz an angry complaint. If it did, a rude finger was there to press it—to push it home as one pushes home the door-bell of an empty house. There would be no answer.

Our own tax-making Government need cast no eyes of envy on the days and methods of the Roman Emperors. A comfortable and safe majority—dependant, acquiescent—confers on it for the time-being powers almost as imperial. The official Opposition under its leaders, and the Democratic Labour Bloc under its bloc-heads need cause it no more alarm than would be felt by a Roman Caesar at the mutterings of a Gaulish or Cappadocian peasant. The tax-maker of long ago gave a fine, lordly, gigantic sweep to his net. gathering in " all the world.'" Pres-ent-day tax-makers, doing the best they can, gather in " all New Zealand." But their upward limit is the sky. So we all "go to be taxed." as if obedient to an Act of Godnaturally, automatically, as a matter of routine, and almost without question. Blind to the poetry of St. Luke's Authorised Version state ment, the Revised Version changes " taxed " to " enrolled." This is h mere distinction without a difference, in no wise obscuring the grandeur of imperial impartiality In New Zealand " enrolled" may be taken to be " registered." So from North Cape to Stewart Island, just as men of olden time did from the Pontus Euxinus to the Pillars

of Hercules, people have enrolled up as one man. The tax followed the registration as inevitably as. black night follows dav.

Many and varied lessons may be learnt from a visit to our Winter and Summer Shows. Twice a year in order to lift the wall-eyed citizen from his environment of street and masonry, Dame Nature comes to town and holds her Winter and Summer Schools. Before our eyes she displays the triumphs of her most ecstatic moods—the most golden of her apples, the hugest of her turnips the most gigantic of her mangels, the most superb of her bullocks and heifers, wethers and rams. To her may be applied the words spoken by Steele of Lady Hastings "To love her is a liberal education." Which, by the by, in the words of Swinburnei is " the most exquisite tribute ever paid to a noble lady." But not merely economic are the lessons taught by a Winter or Summer Show. Moral also they are, social, and even political. Nature brings home to us through the irrefutable evidence of our senses, confirmed by the red and blue and yellow labels to this or that exhibit, that she is no egalitarian, no furious Communist, no soap-box orator beating the air to establish the divinity of equality. Nay, Nature is not even a Democrat. Her instincts are austocratic. She worships the "quality," and, like a true Englishman, she dearly loves a lord. And not even Thackeray's Lord No Zoo has more gentlemanly arrogance than a First Prize Bull. Any other lessons? Yes, one—economic and moral—that the " pen " is mightier than the sword.

Pleasant memories of bygone days flood the mind of many a laudator temporis acti when, from time to time, passenger lists of North-bound travellers by air appear in the daily press. A last lingering relic of an old-time custom is this. A time there was when a traveller by train on the momentous exploit of an allday journey to Invercargill or Christchurch had his name presslisted, and became tolerably famous overnight. For his expedition was news—news as impressive to his own home-town as was, to the world at large, the departure of Stanley to Darkest Africa, or of Franklin to find the North-West Passage. At first the Invercargill list was run by the private enterprise of a wellknown itinerant newsvendor—the most travelled man of his time. Long vears of use and wont had made him feel commander-in-chief of the whole caboodle, from front enginebuffer to guard's van tail. And he took our names as if conferring upon us" a licence to travel. Beguiled to over-confidence by his contact with the moving world, and convinced that the guard's van was also the van of progress, he plunged into politics and mounted the hustings. His political meetings were bear gardens, Donnybrook Fairs; Babels, Bedlams. And now all that is left is the Woman's Page for the women and a Personal note for the men. The women are always on pleasure bent, the men—presumably—on business. But who knows? Civis.