PASSING NOTES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25173, 13 March 1943, Page 3

PASSING NOTES

Within the limits of his appointed functions Mr Speaker is the greatest of all dictators. He exercises absolute sway over the Order of the Day and the disorder of the night. But in no sphere of life does he rule more despotically than in the English language. The Prime Minister may be master of his country, and even of his party; but the Speaker may lay on him the heavy hand of a ruling and make him unsay his words. The Speaker may exclude from a debate the tongue that Shakespeare spake or that Milton sang. For no member would be allowed to use the language of Ancient Pistol and say to his opponent, “O braggart vile and damned furious wight” But the Speaker’s task is by no means easy. The dictionary is of small help to him, tor it is not the meanings of words that concern him, but their smell, the aroma that has gathered round them. Precedent, therefore, is the Speaker’s legal code—the precedent of Parliament, the precedent set up by previous Speakers, and he establishes his own precedents. Thus last week the word “unintelligent” was challenged in the House. The Speaker passed it, saying “I have allowed worse.” On the same day he condemned as objectionable the words “a barefaced steal,” but approved the term “robbery”! “The term ‘robbery,’”• said he, "now had a softer meaning." Why? Has the frequent ideological use of "robbery of the people" suffered the usual effect of familiarity?

It may be remembered that the present Speaker, in the second year of his Speakership, issued an index expurgatorius, compiled from the condemnations of four previous New Zealand Speakers, Among these condemnations were many which bore their disrepute on their very faces,, being terms that no wife, for example, would ever use to her husband. Some of these were: “Giggling monkey,” “callous cad,” “miserable dodger,” “dirty little rat,” “your face is like a great cheese out of which a yokel has taken a bite,” “your heart is the size of a peanut and much harder." Quite over the edge are these, however sharpedged the tongue might be. But many of the condemnations listed were as harmless as the bray of Sancho Panza’s ass, such as “ hardened sinner,” “ shrewd old bird," " financial Frankenstein,” "afraid,” "ashamed,” “slippery member,” "poodle;” Why condemn “poodle,” and accept spaniel and mastiff? Of extreme complexity is this hierarchy of animals. A “poodle” is a dog, and may even be a spaniel itself. A dog may not always ba condemnablc. Call a member a "dog,” and he will snarl at you like a wolf. But call him a “gay old dog,” and he will strut" like a peacock and grin like a Cheshire cat.

The Prime Minister’s pronouncement on Wednesday last on the firm determination of the Government to be master in its own radio-house was surely a purple passage. It wallowed in a plethora of adjectives, tittivated by unnecessary but highly ornamental adverbs. And especially it showed a fondness for that trick of English style known as “the triple adjective.” Now, the English adjective may be an excellent embellishment to a sentence. But it must not be overdone. When used singly, or even when it hunts in couples, it may supply a vital addition to the meaning, or may add a touch of colour where colour is needed. But when it r perpetually. sings in trios, piling Pelion on Ossa and Olympus on top of both, the style becomes turgid like a swollen torrent. Count the adjectives in the following galaxy of adjectives:— If anyone thinks that resolutions, whether spontaneous or specially organised, containing unthinking, absurd and clamorous demands for abdicating Government authority over any department and embodying unfair, unjust and totally unwarranted attacks on Ministers ... . The attacks made on the Minister of Broadcasting were particularly unjust, unfair and altogether regrettable. I and my Cabinet colleagues have always found Mr Wilson to be a thoroughly reliable, trustworthy and efficient Minister. ■ The Government will not be influenced in the slightest degree by, and far less spinelessly yield to, uninformed and prejudiced clamour. Among the nouns, also, unnecessary synonyms play together like twins. Thus “reliable” and “trustworthy, “unfair" and “unjust.” Hats off to the man who can distinguish them.

How well those old Romans knew the world! A well-known Latin proverb sums up in the epigrammatic Latin way the theory and practice of a good administrator—“ Fortiter in re, suaviter in modo” —usually translated as “be resolute in action, but gentle in manner.” More terrifying would the Government be to its critics had not previous gdvernmental threats confirmed the general impression that a threat not followed by action is like powder without ball, and that threatened men sometimes live long._ Stern words were used by the Minister of Mines when he warned the Auckland striking miners what the Government was determined to do. The miners replied—in effect—in the words of Brutus: There is no terror, Cassius, in your threats, They pass by as the idle wind Which we respect not. The Government yielded. Said the Minister in the house last week: “It was a drastic step to take over a million’s worth of property, but events have justified it. There are some stoppages owing to a shortage of trucks. Then came the interjection: Mr Holland: How many stop-work meetings? The Minister: Only at one mine. The Government is still defied. Having abandoned the “fortiter in re,” it finds the result in “fortiter in rear.”

Customary, nay, fashionable is it in these days to decry the status of the pun as a species of the genus joke. The self-conscious accompany it with an apologetic cough in speaking and a phrase of excuse in writing. “A pun is a paltry humdrum jest," someone has said. Yet, like other things of fashion, the pun has had its days and its periods. Shakespeare’s puns are legion, now humorously obvious and blatant, now obscure and oblique. For us the number of his puns would be doubled if we had the scholarship to penetrate the changes in English pronunciation since his day. There are, of course, puns and puns. Those that leave the easy ground of mere play on words and rise into the more airy realm of a play of ideas may fairly be ranked as wit or humour. Merely the faintest shadow of wit is visible in the statement that “a hotelkeeper goes to an iron foundry to get a barmaid." There is more in the justification of Benjamin’s marriage to Annie: “She would be bennie-fitted and he would be Annie-mated.” Dear Civis, Discussions throughout the world on the New Social Order sometimes mention the subject of the abolition of Capitalism. But few, if any, reach its natural corollary of the equalisation of wealth. Why is this? Are people frightened of it? Is it Impossible?—l am, etc., Curious. If this column thus trailed its coat it would find many tramplers on it. But needs must. Now, equality of wealth means what it says—equality of wealth. None of your approximations can enter into such a question. The making of a bob or two on the side will be a crime—it will be stealing a march on ypur neighbour unless he receives* his sixpence of it. And how many neighbours have you? He who goes to Wingatui for an outing in the fresh air to raise the wind will reap the whirlwind. Confidences with the horse’s mouth will be ot no avail, for you must leave the dividend behind you. Abolished for ever, too, must be that greatest of all laboursaving devices— marriage with an heiress, for heiresses will be as dead as the moa. And what will remain of the much-desired trio—liberty, equality, and maternity—when an unmotherly State will examine every penny you make and every glass you take? No. Absolute equality of wealth would take years to secure, but 'only a month to be lost. • Clvl*.