PASSING NOTES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24633, 14 June 1941, Page 6

PASSING NOTES

A man who bases his claim for exemption from military service on an advocacy of appeasement with Germany—as did one appellant last week—must have lived the last few years in a hermit’s cell. Or else he has been moving through the world as blind as a Cyclops and as simple as Simple Simon. What he knows, or has read, of recent pactbreaking conquests, from Austria and Czechoslovakia to Belgium and Jugoslavia, would not fill a child’s thimble. “Appeasement ” presupposes the signing of a treaty. But an Axis treaty, however solemnly phrased and signed and guaranteed, might be set down in an Axis military text-book as an excellent technique for gaining time. Referring to the utility of appeasement, Sir Evelyn Wrench appropriately quotes the words of a German immediately after the rape of Czechoslovakia. Said the German: “ Would you have our Fuhrer abide by a pledge given six months ago, now that conditions have changed? ” Implied and understood in all pacts of a totalitarian State is the proviso, “ rebus hie stantibus” “provided circumstances remain as they are.” In order that all the world—except the aforesaid appellant—may know, official Germany makes no bones aoout it. The implication is an accepted policy. Said the official Volkischer Beobachter three years ago when the Concordat with the Holy See was thrown into the waste paper basket: Fidelity to a treaty cannot always, and in all circumstances, be considered as creating a binding obligation. National Socialism knows higher values, which should not be ignored, and which for this reason do not permit a literal obligation to the Concordat.

Happily the world at large, once bitten, is now twice' shy. Or, as another proverb puts it, “ If a man deceives me once, shame on him; if twice, shame on me.”

There was a race for “ gentlemen ” at Wingatui last week. Presumably it was confined to owners—owners being for the occasion classed as “ gentlemen.” When “ Gentlemen ” meet “ Players ” in the English cricket season, “players” are, of course, those who play for money and glory, while “ gentlemen ” play for “ glory ” only. It is for “ glory ” only that gentlemen race at Winga,tui, though the winner may receive a cup in which to carry his glory home. What, after all, does “gentleman” mean? A time there was when the New Zealand census paper, in the space assigned to “occupation,” bore the instruction, “ if of no occupation, write * gentleman.* ” For a judicial pronouncement upon the meaning of this much-debated word we must go to the King’s Bench judges. Three of them —Lord Hewart (Lord Chief Justice), Sir Horace Avory, and .Sir Montague Shearman—have already given their ex cathedra definition —at a golf dinner:

Lord Hewart; “ Something has been said in one of the newspapers about the word gentleman." Avory: What is a gentleman? Lord Hewart: I rather think he is a man who is never rude unless he means to be. Avory: That is not so bad, but 1 think I can go one better. A "gentleman” is one who never uses the word. Shearman: Can I define a gentleman? Well, yes, I think I can. He is as gentle as a woman and as manly as a man. , Lord Hewart’s definition is much the same as that expressed in a more common form: ,“A gentleman is a man who never unconsciously hurts anybody’s feelings.”

In support of Lord Hewart’s definition of gentleman we may cite the story of Kicky du Maurier’s adventure in the White Stone Pond: A dog had fallen into the pond, which was frozen with ar. inch thickness of ice. Du Maurier, shortsighted without his glasses, stripped himself dramatically of his coat, and with eyes flashing, took an enormous header on to a thin layer of ice that merely covered two feet of water. He rescued the dog. The owner came to him. tapped him on the shoulder, and said: “You are a brave man. Here’s half a crown: go and get yourself something hot.” Du Maurier. very red in the face, thanked the man politely, but belittled his exploit. The man liaised his half-crown to five shillings Whereupon Du Maurier lost his temper, exclaiming: “Oh go to hell, you damned fool." The man immediately became very apolo- • getic. took off his hat. bowed low, and said,. “ I beg your pardon, sir. I didn’t know vou were a gentleman ” But gentlemanliness, like liberty, is broadening down from precedent to precedent. That is, it is going to the dogs. In an 80-years-old work on the “ Habits of Good Society ” the fine old name of gentleman had a stricter and better meaning: A gentleman never smokes, nor even asks to smoke, in the company of the fair. . Qne must never smoke in a room inhabited at times by ladies. . . . One may smoke in a railway carriage in spite of bylaws. if one has obtained the consent of everyone present. But if there be a lady present, even if she give her consent, smoke not He also is a gentleman who makes no protest when non-smoking women crowd out a men’s smoking carriage

But to definitions of the word “ gentleman ” there is no end. According to a passage in “Noctes Ambrosianae,” a no less august person than his Majesty King George IV—the “First Gentleman in Europe ” —once remarked that “ Scotland is a nation of gentlemen.” A gentleman might thus be succinctly and adequately defined as a Scotsman. But from Shakespeare we learn that “the Prince of Darkness is a gentleman.” A definition of “ gentleman ” may therefore vary between a Scotsman and the devil. A gentleman cannot well be both, and you must take your choice. In the seventeenth century the word “ gentleman ” had still other connotations. These are given in a work entitled “ Rules of CivilityCertain Ways of Deportment Observed Among All Persons of Quality.” Here are a few: If his Lordship be set near the fire, you must be careful how you spit into the chimne-. If his Lordship chances to interrupt the. conversation with a sneeze, do not bawl out, “God bless you, sir,”—but pull off your hat. bow handsomely, and invoke the blessing sotto -oce To blow your nose publicly at table without holding your napkin before your face; to claw your head, etc.: to belch, hawk, and tear anything up from the bottom of your stomach these are things sordid. What is the young man’s world coming to? According to a last week’s press report, a promise of marriage may be breached even though no promise has been made. Recently a judge of his Majesty’s Bench ruled at the Newcastle Assizes: “A guide should be written for young men warning them that they are not safe from a breach of

promise action solely because they have never proposed to a woman; she may have taken something else for a proposal.” Cruel is this unknown “ something else ” to the absent-minded young man. or to the hard-to-make-up-his-mind young man. For he may have proposed before he knows it. He must feST the terror that walketh by night and the arrow that flyeth by day. The mere posing of the girl may be a proof of his own proposing. When he helpfully guides the fluttering hand holding the billiard cue, or grasping the steering wheel or gripping the golf club, or wielding the cocktail shaker —when he shares the intimate umbrella, or lights the trembling close-up cigarette, he is out-manoeuvred and must surrender at discretion. For the Bench may decide that these simple acts of helpfulness were the unknown “something else.” Several young men lived in a boarding-house kept by a landlady who bore the name of Mrs Pluck. Disliking the landlady s name, the boarders deputed one of their number, a young policeman, to interview her and to request that she should allow them to call her by her Christian name. The delegate proceeded to the kitchen. “ Mrs Pluck,” said he. “ may I call you Bella? ” “ Oh, George,” she cried, “ this is so sudden. I was sure the police would get me in the end.”

If love be one sweet song, any girl will now be able easily to pick up the heir

“ Taxation, the Universal Squeeze.” Thus was headed a press article the other day on this rocket that never comes down. On at least one subject is this many-voiced New Zealand of ours quite unanimous. This is in its opinion of the Income Tax. From North Cape to Stewart Island the cry goes up from legions of halfthrottled throats: “ Well, this is the limit! ” As an exclamation of justifiable disgust the words are true. As a pious hope they merely express the vanity of human wishes For what limit can there be to a thing that scoffs at the laws of nature. Though a heavy body it defies the law 6f gravitation, rises and never descends. What is more it becomes heavier as it rises. It is indeed hard to. tell what or where or when the world is coming to. You meet a friend on the street and greet him with “ How do you do? ” He replied “ I don’t! ” The only way to make our income tax decline is to decline it. But this would impose no cheque on it, and the Post Office clerk would say to us,/“ Ho! Ho! This is a counter revolution! ’’ Most immorally does this tax give a man a dual personality. In his office, over his ledger he is a furious income expander—meticulously c6unting the pennies that may swell his yearly revenue. The same man, scowling and sweating over his in-come-tax return, becomes a raging income-reduder, fanatically striking out the shillings that may swell his tax. True it is that when the meek come to inherit the earth, taxes will be so heavy that the meek won’t want it.

Aphorisms on life and manners are usually the overflowing thoughts of a playful wit or a gentle humorist. One greets them with some surprise when they issue from the pen of a grave philosopher like Herbert Spencer. Found by his trustees‘after his death was a memorandum in his own hand writing entitled “Definitions.” Here are some: Talking: A race run by the tongue against time, in which, generally, the smaller the weight carried, the greater the speed. / Curiosity: A thief which uses the intellect as a golden key. Fire: An illumination in honour of the marriage of some atoms of matter. Time; That which man is always trying to kill, but which ends in killing him. Marriage: A word which, if some people are to be believed, should be pronounced “mirage.'* Marriage: A ceremony in which a ring is put on the finger of the lady and a ring through the nose of the gentleman. Strikingly prophetic were the words written by Herbert Spencer in 1903, four months before his death: There is coming a reign of. force in the “world, and there will be again a general war of mastery, when every kind of brutality will be practised. . Civis.