PASSING NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2467, 26 June 1901, Page 5

PASSING NOTES.

(From Saturday's Daily Times.)

" The works of decorative art arising m our streets and ways are not to be interpreted, I take it, as devices for the exhilaration of the Duke and Duchess. The chances are that the Duke and Duchess, indurated to such novelties by many weary miles of processioning elsewhere, will liai-dly notice them. What we are trying to express in these constructions is partly cur delight in the honour their Royal Highnesses do us in coming to our town, but chiefly our sense of pride in the Empire of which their Royal Highnesses are the living symbol. In other words, the moral effect is to be upon ourselves. If anybody is astonished, it will be the natives. That is quite right and entirely as it should be ; the only thing to regret being that day by day we have watched the growth of these festive objects and know how they are made. It would have been preferable if they could have sprung up in a night like a a Aladdin's palace or Jonah's gourd. We shcmld not then have been aware that the blocks of Aberdeen granite in the massive arch north of the Octagon were brown paper and sanitary paint, and the rnoial effect would have been better. Holyrood Palace, according to some, is what this erection is intended to suggest. Old Temple Bar would be nearer the mark 4 all that it wants is a few traitors' heads stuck on the top, and, but for the general softening of manners, we might have had 'em. I could myself name one or two that would not look bad thus elevated, and the three city members, judging from the tone of a recent telegram to which they have affixed their signatures, could name at least one other. But let that pass. Our Dunedin decorations will do very well as they are, or at least as they are going to be by Tuesday next, and it will go hard with us if in this matter we do not beat the rest of New Zealand.

The British are undoubtedly a proud people, but they are not vain. The distinction is difficult, perhaps, and big generalisations are to be distrusted ; it is cerlainly true, however, that the British, though keen enough about standing well before the world, are wont to criticise themselves -with merciless severity, and that is a fact that argues pride rather than vanity. The hardest things hitherto said about British generals and British generalship in South Africa have been said by the British themselves. For criticism that is dispassionate you must go to an unprejudiced outsider, such as Captain Mahan, of the United States navy, author of "The influence of Sea-Power on History" and of *'The Life of Nelson," an authority whose competence on questions of military strategy and tactics no European expert would d.sjrate. Quite lately we had the Secretary for War complaining in the House of ILords that Lord Wolseley, as Commander-4n-Chief, bad not warned the Government fcgainst making Ladysmith a place of arms S»d *. ixdlitary depot. But CaDlain Mahan,

' in his book on the Boer war, holds that i Ladysmith, being a railway junction, was the key of the whole military situation in northern Natal, and that, but for Sir George White's "correct decision in .shutting himself up there instead of attempting to defend the line of the Tugela, Joubert's Boers would have eaten their Christmas dinner in Pietermaritzburg and Durban. Ladysmith saved Natal, and was itself sa\ed by the "short but brilliant campaign," in which White struck right and left at the Boer columns converging for the investment.

Thpre can be little doubt that the wholesome lespect for the fighting qualities of the British, thus established at the opening of hostilities, had a most beneficial effect tor them in disccuraging attack by an enemy who, though brave and active, constitutionally prefers n waiting same to an assault. Tliu« the fate of Lady<*mitb was settled in the fortnight of operstious that preceded I.he investment. But Nicholson's Nek? Captain Mahan thinks little of Nicholson's Nek, and just as little of Stormberg and Koornspruit. Such mishaps are to be regaided merely as the bmises and the Larked limbs that men get 111 any rough sport. The player does not bleed to death in consequence ; he siniply goes on with the game. Military men, of course, underGtand this, but nations are too apt to be fretful a3 though some strange thing had happened to them.

It is pleasant reading when Captain Mahan lets himself out m praise of our skill in those " operations of war " which consist in conveying the men who are to fight to the place where fighting is to be done. We had to send from Britain to South Africa nearly 200,000 men.

The transportation of this immense body of soldiers, with all the equipment and supplies of war needed for a protracted campaign, a distance of 6000 miles by sea, is an incident unprecedented, and in its success unsurpassed, m military history. No other nation could have done it ; but then the British during two centuries past have had "a continuity of practical experience that has no parallel in other nations " — which indeed " transcends that of all other nations combined.'' Captain Muh an contrasts with the order and precision of the British in these operations the " headless scenes of confusion " when the Americans Avere sending off troops to Cuba ; and he adds :

Only experience can fully meet the difficulties of a great operation, of this character, and we were without experience ; nor can experience like that of British officials ever be expected among us, for neither we nor any other nation has or will have the colonial responsibilities of Great Britain. The large number of seasoned sergeants and corporals, who had embarked and disembarked lialf a dozen times before, contributed immeasurably to the order and rapidity of the process 111 each shipload that left England for South Africa. If the end crowns the work, it may be said, although the end is not quitei yet, that the work of transportation has been crowned. No loss of human life by preventable causes has occurred, nor has complaint been heard of serious lntcb. of any kind. The numbers speak for themselves. It is from independent ' critics such as Captain Mahan that we shall get our first just notions of the war — how big a thing it has been, how well we have come out of it, and how inconsiderable the blunders and imbecilities of which we accused ourselves, being in it.