PASSING NOTES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25304, 14 August 1943, Page 3

PASSING NOTES

This year of grace, 1943, may be destined to make New Zealand history. Never before in the annals of parliamentary elections in the Dominion have so many aspiring parties, sublimely reckless of deposits, ventured to put their wayward aspirations to the test of the ballot-box. And to the naked eye some of them are as indistinguishable from their neighbours as one potato is from another. From 1943 may date the introduction to New Zealand of the group system which emasculated French democracy. As Mr Downie Stewart said in the press the other day, “ It was impossible in France to form a stable Government out of the changing groups or factions, and this was the cause of her downfall.” Except for their titles, the French political parties were quite as indistinguishable as our own eight. They were Royalists, Nationalists, Republican Catholics, Progressive Republicans, Democratic Republicans, Radical Socialists, Republican Socialists, Unified Socialists. And, of course, Communists —one over the eight. Many of the demarcation lines between these grandiosely entitled groups must have been imaginary or psychological or personal, or vague as the wind blowing where it listeth. So with our own eight: Labour, National, Independent Labour, Independent National, Democratic Labour, Real Democracy, People s Party, Fighting Forces League. What stable majority or legislative progress can be based on the varying approvals and temporary adherences of these rutting butterflies?

The possible result of this smallgroup system may well be imagined. In pre-war France it happened many a time. In a no-confidence division Prime' Minister Rochefort might bebeaten by the adverse vote of some party-grouplet. He hastens to surrender his keys of office. Is he now down and out? Down he may be, but not out. His henchman of Finance or of Education, M. Chautemps, is commissioned to form a new Cabinet. For a hectic week Chautemps has a hot time, bargaining with a baker s half-dozen of other groups—with promises, concessions, compromises, cajolements, quid pro quo-ings—till by sheer hard work ne has gathered round him a majority large enough to form a new Cabinet. His erstwhile chief, M. Rochefort, becomes his Minister for Foreign Affairs, and other colleagues join him. Hey presto! A new Government ot France is announced to the world. It carries on till the next crisis. So in French politics it was often said, “ plus ca change, plus c’est la meme “How changeable your politics are! says the Englishman to' the Frenchman. “No,” replies the Frenchman, it is English politics that .are changeable. When your Government falls, everything reverses from black to white, from Right to Left. The old Cabinet goes in a body into what you call the desert.” French pre-war legislation was remarkable for its mastqrly inactivity.

A fortnight ago the trades unions of Sydney, dreaming in the peaceful past of decades ago, thought to show us what the voiceless woe of a press-less world might be. In an attempt to dictate to the Sydney press the type ot political comment it should or should not publish, it issued an ultimatum—which, of course, was intended to cast before it the dark shadow of a strike. But in these radioed days a press strike, though a painful inconvenience, would not be the cataclysmic disaster of even a decade ago. In most cases the press saves the radio. In this case the radio saved the press, and saner counsels prevailed. What a press strike was before the radio came is well illustrated by the well-known Dublin strike of August, 1935. For nine long weeks no newspapers flaunted its headlines and no newsboy bawled his wares. The only news the Dubliner had was rumour, and rumour ran riot. Newspaper staffs in their silent offices kept themselves idly busy bawling into telephones “No! No!" to inquiries such as these:

Is It true that a young girl was murderd by French sailors in Phcenix Park last night? Have shiploads of machine guns and ammunition been intercepted by the authorities off the Kerry coast? Have bands of German Nazis, sent by Herr Hitler, clashed with Mussolini's Blackshirts, and does this mean the beginning of another

European War? A week or two of, this pungent diet, in which every dish was of blistering curry, ihad the inevitable effect. The Dubliners became fed up. From swallowing everything they ended by swallowing nothing.

Dear " Civis, ’ , Vour reference last week to the fact that the word " month - was once considered rhymeless recalls that Professor Jowett was not the only person who proved this supposition to be without basis. There is a story that someone, whose name I regret I am unable to give, when challenged to produce a rhyme to ” month, ’ responded: The boy who had had no food for a month Said, “Pleathe will you give me three penny bunth.” I believe it was Kipling who, in response to a suggestion that a rhyme to the word “ is ” presented a problem, was inspired to write: There was a young man of Quebec Who was buried in snow to his neck. When asked, “Are you friz? ’’ He replied, “ Yes, I is,” The last line I cannot quote, but I believe that, as in the older form of limerick, it was more or less a repetition of the first.—l am. etc., G. To rhyme “month” with “ bunth 'i-is hardly playing the game. Such violation of the rules would admit the famous quatrain on the name of Sir John Lubbock, which began with a cold in the head and ended with a pain in my “stubbock.” A possible conclusion to Kipling’s limerick might run:

When asked. “Are you friz? ” He said, ’’ Oh, gee-whizz! My stomach’s an ice-box, by Heck.”

For examples of extravagant rhyming we have only to go to Browning, especially to his “Pied Piper” and his “Flight of the Duchess.” Browning was proud of his facility, though he generally reserved the gift for his humorous poems. The “Pied Piper” has many triumphs, even in serious moments, as when “ Hamelin ” is rhymed with “As a needle’s eye takes a camel in.” It would pay a manufacturer to keep a tame poet in his office, as Messrs Day and Martin are said at one time to have done, to push the sale of their boot polishes. For nothing would drive home an advertisement of a maker's wares better than a couplet with a kick in the rhyme. An Irish manufacturer of. a century ago, an accomplished Latin and Greek scholar as well as a versifier, was the inventor of, among other toilet articles, a liquid shaving sogp. He modestly, advertised his goods in verse:

I hope that you not such an ass are To send for shaving soap as far as Naples, Or to imagine oil brought from Macassar \ From aged pates each hair thats turning gray pulls.” . . . As a tour de force the following—from a song by George Canning—takes some beating: Sun, moon, and thou vain world, adieu, That kings and priests are plotting in; Here doomed to starve on water-gru—-—el, never shall I see the U——niversity of Gottingen——niversity of Gottingen.