PASSING NOTES,

Otago Witness, Issue 2363, 8 June 1899, Page 3

PASSING NOTES,

(From Saturday's Daily. Times.) The hysterical welcome which the French are giving to Major Marchand strikes one at first as ridiculous ; presently one comes to feel it pathetic. The exploits A of Marchand . are, after all, nothing particular. Africa has had .no -lack of military explorers, leaders of filibustering expeditions and the like, -all bent on the same general errand, tliat of grabbinrr territory for the nationalities that sent them. Some are British, some Belgian, some German, some French. The only thing that distinguishes Marchand from the rest is. that he filibustered into territory not open to appropriation by that method, was ordered out again, and thus became the occasion of an international crisis. For this, when he arrives at Marseilles, the "whole population flings itself on his neck ; Marchand is all but stifled by embraces. From Marseilles he will be ■wafted to Paris in such a tempest of acclaim as France has not given to any man, soldier or civilian, for generations. The Government trembles at his approach ; already the hero of the hour feels it necessary to explain that He " does not mean to overturn anything." Marvellous, is it not? And supremely ridiculous ! If the French jgo mad over a Marchand, how would they comport themselves if they possessed a Kitchener? And yet it is all very pathetic. The distracted French nation knows not •wheTe to look for a public man in whom at may trust. Military chiefs and political chiefs alike are discredited. The Dreyfus scandal has dragged the honour of France through the mire ; never was there a highspirited people more utterly bankrupt in self-respect. At this junctuse, enter Marchand, a brave and good man, as all Frenchmen believe ; a soldier who figured well An a strikingly dramatic situation, doing his duty quite simply and firmly, ready — as he told Kitchener — therein if necessary fco die. This ought not to be a rare type

of character, surely ; but apparently the French think it so. Hence these frantic rejoicings. And a very pathetic spectacle they make. Everybody who has read Bodlcy's " France " — and whoever wants to understand the France of to-day should make haste to read it — will be aware that the advent of a popular hero is the one serious danger dreaded by all French Ministries alike. Parliamentary institutions are in France a fifth wheel to a coach. What the nation in its heart of hearts really wants is, under one name or another, an autocrat. Let there but arise a man — preferably a soldier — who can concentrate all eyes upon himself, get his name into every mouth, fhe the inflammable imagination of Frenchmen by his deeds or his promises, — such a man might take the first cab for the Elysee. Everything would fall into his hands. Really, when one comes to think of it, Major Marchand just about fills the bill. The suggestion is absurd, no doubt. But in French x^olitics it is the absurd that happens. Did there not once walk the stieets of Paris an undersized out-of-elbows sublieutenant of artillery, without money, without patrons, without any work to do, a member of the Paris unemployed in short ; the name of him, Napoleon Buonaparte? And did not a certain Louis Napoleon Bonaparte once carry a baton as a special constable in the streets of London. There is really nothing extravagant in supposing, or indeed in believing, that if there were a plebiscite in France to-morrow, Major Marchand would be made Dictator. Modest man, he has sent word on in advance that he " doesn't want to _ overturn anything "" — not at present, anyhow. All the same, the Government is on the gui vive, and taking precautions ; in particular it is trying to moderate the public transports ' over Marchand's return. Discoursing of football as understood in America, the San Francisco Weekly Post says: — "Football is a college game; it is played not only for the entertainment of the aristocracy, but by the scions of the aristocracy themselves." This sounds well. I had no idea that the social surroundings of football as played in the Great Democracy were of so select and exclusive a kind. It would never do to say that I had noticed similar facts here — had been struck by the aristocratic bearing of our leading Dunedin teams, their high-bred courte&ies of speech and manner in the field, their air of " Gentlemen of the. Guard fire first ! "" — • and so on. I should be suspected of irony, or accused of popularity hunting, a vice I abominate. Nor would it be judicious to pretend that New Zealand football is played "for the entertalnnjent of_the arfistftcracy." It is played for the entertainment of the gentle barrackeiy whose comments on the performance are usually unfit for publication. Probably in America the case is not very different. , It may be that the San Francisco editor — whom I suspect of democratic leanings — uses the word " aristocrat " as a term of opprobrium, and is insinuating that American football, being aristocratic, is necessarily degraded. Anyhow, he goes on to give it a despei - ately bad character : During the months of September, October, and November last year, which cover the entire period of college football, five deaths were caused by the game, and there were 33 serious accidents, some of which will be felt throughout life. Among the latter there were five broken collar-bones, three fractured skulls, two broken shoulder-blades, and a large number of torn ligaments, broken noses, brain concussions, ruptured kidneys, broken wrists and ankles, dislocated knees and elbows, broken thumbs, and broken ribs. The statistician who compiled the figures from which we are quoting confesses that lie did not obtain information concerning all the minor mishaps of football. Only the more serious accidents are reported and recorded. The casualties of prize fighting, he goes on to argue, are fewer. Football is as bruttilising as the prize ring, and more dangerous. If the police stop prize fights they ought to stop football. And so on, through the counts of the usual indictment, which nobody disputes, but which nobody minds. The truth is that football flourishes because it affords bent to combative instincts rooted in human nature for a thousand generations back. Age after age our fighting qualities were developed by natural selection and the survival of the fittest — that is, of the best fighting man. The progress of the race, possibly its very existence, depended upon these qualities ; I am not sure that it doesn't depend upon them still. Anyhow, football is a survival from times

when fighting was part of the day's work, when a leading tribesman would accept broken bones with more equanimity than his huckstering modern successor makes a bad debt, or buys into a mining company to see it go bung. We are a nation of shopkeepers, no doubt ; but it is comfortable to think that there is something of the barbarian in us still — the old love ot a physical tussle, the old indifference to physical pain ; that, if due occasion arrived. ' The smooth-faced snubnosed rogue would start from his counter and till, And strike, if he could, were it but with his cheating yardwand, home. The Duke of Wellington used to say that Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton. They had no football in those days, or none worth speaking of ; otherwise, [ fancy, he would have inclined to attribute his victory to the shin-hacking scrums of Rugby. The fighting instinct, latent in us ! all, crops out even in our parsons. The ' other day somebody recommended as a sub- j stitute for fisticuffs in the newspapers an j ecclesiastical game of golf. Football would j be better. More bad blood could be Avorked off harmlessly in football than in golfr ! Give me a free hand and the. gate money ; | I would arrange a clerical match that should j guarantee the peace of the churches for the ; next twelve months. ! .Upon the high matters which certain of our Dunedin parsons — the Rev. Curzon- ! Siggers, the Rev. J. Gibb, and the reverend editor of the Tablet — have been debating in ihe Daily Times I make no comment whatever ; I wadna preslioom. Moreover, the long-delayed editorial footnote — " this correspondence is now closed "'■ — has appeared at last : for which relief much i,hanks._ Now that the contest is over I would like to make a remark on the amazing longwindedness exhibited by the parties to it — one and all. Screeds of a -column, or a column and a-half, seem to be nothing accounted of in a clerical controversy. Did I read these screeds? Well, I did and I didn't. I glanced down them, as my duty was : but, I am afraid, in a perfunctory spirit. When a newspaper tournament -of this kind is on — political, ecclesiastical, or what not — I judge the parties to it by a short and handy rule which I commend for '' general adoption. I judge them by the length of their letters. My sympathies, preferences, intellectual convictions, go to the man whose arguments are shortest. ! Quite right, too, for if a newspaper cor- ! troversialist can't double up his adversary ' in less than a column and a-half of brevier . he deserves no respect. A controversy on \ that scale is not for time, but for eternity. ; Why, I am accustomed within the space of , a single Passing Note to knock the wind ' out of any opponent who presents himself,and find room besides to clap my wings and crow. No doubt I am generally in the right, which fact does make a difference. But to all newspaper correspondents, whether they are in the right or whether they are in the wrong. I commend brevity. As they hope to be read, let them cut it short ; or — to quote an American editor — let them "boil it down." This is how he puts it : Whatever you have to say, my friend, Whether witty, or grave, or gay, Condense it as much as ever you can, And say it the' readiest way; And whether you write of household affairs, Or particular things in town, Just take a word of friendly advice — Boil it down. Moreover, if Providence has bestowed upon a minister the grace of prolixity. he shouldn't wa&te it on the public ; he should reserve it for his own congregation. The character of a community may be known from its newspapers. This is a large doctrine, too large for adequate statement in a Passing Note. But give me scope and verge enough and I would undertake to deduce from any newspaper sheet you chose ■'to lay before me the whole sociology of the people amongst whom it was designed to circulate — their degree of civilisation, their religions, their politics, the books they read, their domestic manners and customs, their dress, their food, their business, their amusements, their virtues, and their vices. And most of this I would contrive to deduce from the advertisement columns alone. Here, for example, is a death notice extracted from a Wisconsin paper. Of course no general theory can be based on a single fact : all the same this one advertisement reveals a great deal more than it says, both about the people who put it in and about the people who were expected to read it : f* Death.— Smit— On the 2Sth inst., Amy Jane Mary Smit, eldest daughter of John and Williel-

mina Smit, aged one day two and a-half hours. Phe bereaved and broken hearted parents beg to tender their hearty thanks to Dr Brown for liis unremitting attention during the illness of the deceased, and for the moderate brevity of bis bill. Also to Mrs "Williams for the loan of 3lean sheets, to Mr Wilson for running for the 3octor, and to Mr Robinson for recommending mustard plaster. Plainly this advertisement belongs to a community privileged with many blessings of the higher civilisation — a newspaper, doctors, doctors' bills, obituary notices, clean sheets, mustard plasters, a sympathetic helpfulness amongst the citizens, and much beside. And yet the Arcadian simplicity of it ! I have the feeling that some day, wearied out by the complex problems of the higher social development we have reached in New Zealand, I might be glad to flee away and be at rest in Wisconsin. Civis.