PASSING NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2511, 30 April 1902, Page 5

PASSING NOTES.

(I'rom Saturday's Daily Time?.)

For a fortnight past we are supposed to have been "incubating peace." How far we have got does not appear ; nor me incubations usually judged with success until complete. Nevertheless, to depart from metaphor, London journalists evidently believe, p?ihaps not without reason, that they have some inkling of ■what is in the Boer mind. The Boers, it is said, though not willing to surrender in words their independence are willing to ineoiporate themselves with the Empue " by treaty." Well, provided they really are incorporated, the manner of the "incorporating can hardly be worth discussion. Let it be done in any manner that the Boers fancy will best " save their face." " Don't shoot, Colonel ; I'll come down," said the 'coon. That is to say. the 'coon preferred to come down " by treaty," rather than be brought down by a shot' It amounted to much the same thing, I fancy. To take another point, there is probably some prophetic significance m the talk about pardons, amnesties, and the release of military prisoners at the King's Coinnation. That would beem a kingly thing to do, and a thing meet for so gracious an occasion. ConcesMons to individuals, concessions politic to make or that we can't help making whether politic or not, we may explain to ourselves and to foieign critic as acts of giace jfioper to the King's Coronation. Details of this kind— it matters not how they go ; the essential thing is peace on the basis of incorporation — " by treaty "if the Boers so prefer it. All else is leather nnd prunella. Meanwhile, no armistice! We have been jockeyed in that way moie than once ; but, never again ! Lord Kitchener, according to our pie<-ent advice", i« clearly of this mind, and may be trusted to quicken Boer cunctations by any moral arguments that the carnal weapons at hi^ command enable him to employ. Feeling, bad and bitter feeling, again-t the Seddon Puise and its promoters seems, in Wellington at lea-st, to ha\e been wrought to the lyrical pitch ; e.g — Though we can't afford a statue to our great and l.oble Queen, Though for charity no moneys comma forth, Won't you please to diop s, fivei :n my little tambourine For ft gentleman in broad-cloth going Xorth? Though an able-bodied beggar, his necessities are great— A perfect whale at £ h. tl we find him; And perhaps it would be \vi=e to put oui names upon the slate So that when excision (.alia v,-o iray leuimcl nun Merchants, hr-er m°ii, and jcti of the homy hand, This kind of blcethii; ijayt:ioi }gu c'oi.'t see every day , Ti.s heart bleeds for Now Zealai.J and the " dour old Motherland," A.d tiic orly vay to Leal v is to " Pay, pay, psvy<" Tlioie i> more of thi-~, .i pocd deal more, ?nd much that is astonishing beside. Jndced v. complete lirtlo newspaper, "The Petrel," has floated into being on the way* of anti-Purse sentiment, nr.d devotes itselT to the objftot of ;t« doubtless brief exi«tenco with a vruole-Jiearted jaucour UOkngViA JA^W ffoaJimii iouna*]- j

ism. From title to imprint It is all one thing — a philippic, clamorous, vituperative, defamatory, against Seddon a,nd the Seddon Purse. Not without humour either. Mr Doolej" is laid under contribution as well as Kipling. Thus Mr Seddon at the Women's Social and Political League : Why, the way he mtlvrojooced the money quistion was diheacy itsilf. " I am not goin' •«i way in good hear-rt," says he. "If they was payin' me daciutly it might be differing" he says; " but they ain't." he says, " an 1 I'm nigh shtone-broke," h» says. " With me palthry screw of £2000, ' he sa\s, " XISOO for the thnp is n gashly insoolt," he says, " to a pathrite, he says, "with a chist like mine," he says. ''The Naytioual Poor-rse is a blamed fr-rost," he says. "There was £10,000 in it aisy if the grsh-dinged fools hadn't mulled it,' he says; " an' now,' he soys, takin' out his hanclkercher again, " they'll har-rdly bo half that," he says. "An' why am I powchin' that poor-rse?" he says. " Dooty," he says. "An' whiniver-r ye hear-r me slitill ehmarll vice," he says, " v/hat aoe3 it nund ye of?" he says. " Dooty," he says. "Me Chr.slian sfstor-re," he says, " think on the^e things," he says, " an' ye may gr-Tow to be like me." he ssys. ' '" That'd b? a tidy si. T. 2 for fayniales, wouldn't it?" spul Mr Hennessy. " Twmty stun, Hinmssy," said Mr Dooley, " if ya look at it that way, but it was hivin he was ihmkin' of, not hog-scak?. " The Himpir-re is in pur-nl, an" I must go," -he cays, " That bally Kaiser-r has bare mighty oncivil lately, he says. "An that villyuu Kroojer," he says, " though I've bane jmnpin' on his stummick," he says, " these two year-rss an' mor-re," he says, " is not kilt yit," ha says, " the cowaj-idly viiiyun," he cays. "If I'd me way," he says, ' " I'd shtrmg the pair of 'era to a lamp-post in Thrafalgar-r Square," he says, " with a rope of New Zailan' flax," he says, " to incouragc • colonial projooce," he snys, " an' git me son-n.-lar's fii-rum mor-rc commissions," he suys. Extreme generates extreme. To the Seddon boom opposes it&elf by natural law an antiboom, and this is it. All the same, Mr iSeddon is still booming. "Kapai, the King!" was the acclaim of the Sydney mob ; and a Mr Wise — named ironically, perhaps — toasted him as "a great Englishman,'" bracketing our .Richard implicitly with Rhodes and Chamberlain. Now if he had said " a fat Englishman,"" we might have been all in agreement. Of the vice of gambling, continually cropping up for animadversion in both press and Presbytery, I may say comprehensively, as the Irishman said of the Government. I'm agin it. I never bet ; my principles do not allow me ; — except on a certainty ; and then there are no takers. Nobody is better persuaded than 1 that gambling is bad, economically and morally. Thia being my attitude, it is with pain and grief that 1 see the simplicity with which opponents of gambling give themselves away. They insist that racecourse betting is, in puncipl-e and morally, one and the same thing with baaaar raffling and the traffic in mining shares. All alike, they say, are " gambling." "What is this but to part company with common sense? The eminently respectable Outlook, a religious organVue pages of which I usually peruse to edification, falls into precisely this absurdity. " lJuring the dredging boom clergy, elders, deacons all gambled," it says, quoting Mr J. F. M. Fraser ; then, quoting somebody eke, '' every gambler, great or small, is essentially a thief." Whence, by an easy inference which, somehow, it neglects to draw, the Presbyterian clergy, elders, and deacons aie all thieves! A pretty conclusion, truly! And this is the kind of argument that is supposed to be of service against gambling. By way of vtind up the Outlook moralises as follows : — Once Ift every gambler [clergyman, elder, deacon] be publicly branded as a thief and thereby disqualified from fulfilling any position of trust, and the gambling evil will rapidly decrease. Many a gambler [clergyman, elder, deaden] 13 perfectly willing to risk his money, Lut when it co.nes to risking his reputation into the bargain, he will nntuially shrink from the social boycott which must assuredly ensue when gamblers f clergy, elders, deacons] and thieves are placed in the same category. After " gambler " I have inserted the equivalent terms as required by the reasoning above. Reads well, doc-nt it? Surely it needs only a giain of sanity to see that buying mining s-haies with (he expectation of selling them at a. pi ofi' stands in exactly the wine category as buying oats, or wool, oi land, with the same expectation. As for bazaar raffling, it is an amusement by consent, equally exhilarating to both Hides, morally as innocent as ping-pong. The Puritans who cannot ><cc these things will ue\rr b** the men to abate the gambling cvi!

Our Amenities Society, in the thirteenth annual repoit of its committee, takes credit, for having banacked against the proposal to cairy the tram line through the Gardens — a Quixotism it may live to be ashamed of,— and also for having stirred up the City Council to efface patent medicine advertisements from " a number of rocks, trees, and oth-;r objects in Dunedm and its neighbourhood "— "aid adveitiseinents being "a barbarity to your committee's attention was called by Dr Riley." All praifee to Dr Riley. But what about barbarities equally barbarous and more patently in front of the committee's own nose, namely the advertisement horrois sut railway stations and on public vehicles? Let Dr Riley tiy again. "With luck lie may once more chance on the committee at a waking moment, secure its attention, get it to do something, and thus set going a. whole chain of beneficent agencies. '• Ihis is the stick that beat the dog, that worried the cat, that killed the rat." and m> on. Why hhould railway stations and tram cars, things continually in evidence, he neglected foi "rocks, tiecs, and other objects" more or less remote? Granted that our Dunedin railway station is past ledemption, and may justly be abandoned to its present degradation. But we are to Lave a new &tation (in which I s-hall believe when I fee it!); we are also to have new tram cars. Shadl we without protest allow these changes to serve as a new opportunity to the patent medicine man, to the vendors of mixed teas and old vrh)£kie>>? Apparently we shall. Our local re*th»t«a, though in the thirteenth year of their eoibudiraftEt as n society to promote publk. ariiendtiee, rue iudifferent, make no f" tr r\_ ju£& ua no Ira:], ii'kere is a jjaw

inference : the root of tie matter i^ not ii them.

In Germany, dragooned to uniformity it, things small and great, no railway station^ no public vehicle, is pkbalded with advert tisements. That is one of the advantage* of living under a military tyranny. Appear*; ances a.re regulated by order ; liberty, lik< "the Germans in Greek." may be "sadlj to seek,"" but at least you are assured oi public decency. In Otago, crossing bridge built by the State or a Countj Council you may be admonished from th( parapet in staring white letters — " Prepare to meet thy God ! " A lunatic Salvationist pla-ced the warning at that critical spot, or possibly a remorse-stricken contractor. But no authority, local or general, takes the pains to paint it out, or to punish the perpetrator. In bureaucratic countries things are otherwise. By neither quack medicine advertisements nor Bible texU may a-ny sort of public property be de« faced. That perhaps is the explanation of an alarming development just reported. The latest device of the enterprising German tiader is to flood the streets oi Berlin and other large German cities with fiction interlarded with advertisements in the text itself. The novels utilised are of the " shocker ' type, and the following is an illustration of the new method : — "For an, instant she felt annoyed at her own weakness (Painless tooth extrp^ction by ). . . . She eagerly seized her father's hancte (Lessons in dancing and deportruaitr at )." Nothing has escaped the enterprising agent, from patent medicines to matnnionml offeis. Worse at first sight than any other known form of illicit advertising, this latest device has nevertheless its limitations.- You may avoid buying the shilling shocker ; whereas 'trams and trains and bridges you cannot avoid. For my own part I should b« willing to surrender to the advertising fiend the whole of Marie Corelli and half a dozen other popular authors in exchange foi immunity elsewhere.

Mr " Civis," — Dear Sir,— ln case you still exi9t, after being wiped clean off the slate bj one of your antagonists, here is a brand nevf proverb, suggested by our City Fathers, which may be enshrined in " Passing Notes " — " If you expoel-to-mte as a gentleman you must no longer expectorate on the footpaths m ovir beautiful city." This i 9 like unto a " Notice." conspictiousij posted in a, Testaurant m an Australian city—^ " Gentlemen will not, ethers must not, spi/ on the floor. ' Brand new? — there is nothing brand new under the sun ; leaot of all in jokes. Tho very obvious pun on " expectorate " is probably as old as the word itself. I heard of it lo.st from America, where an election speaker, complaining of changes made by his party bosses, said, "If that is to be the Democratic platform, I rejecfc it, repudiate it, expectorate upon it." " Then you cannot expect-to-rate as a Democratic politician " — was the neat comment of his opponent. I obf.erve that the Dunedin City Council lias placarded the streets with a notice headed " Expectorating By-law." Municipal English ! Is it the by-law that expectorates?

An interesting contribution to the discussion of cancer comes from Berlin. It is stated officially there that investigations made by a number of German physicians in. no fewer than 12,000 cases prove conclusively that cancor is not hereditary. Infection was traceable in many instances to animals, especially to cats and dogs, and less frequently to cattle and horses, but in no case to plants. These results have been communicated to the Berlin Committee for Cancer Research, which, like tho committee recently appointed in England, is now carrying out an elaborate system of experiments and inquiries with a view to a better under-f-tamling of the disease. The German Government is about to establish two institutions in Berlin for the treatment of cancer patients under the supor\i<-ion of Professor Lexden, and funcU arc being raised with which to open an institute at Frankfort-on-.Mam for research unik under Professor Ehilieh. The long talked of scheme for a railway route from New York to Paris, by way of a lino thiough Alaska, a ferry across thu Behring Straits, and tho Trans-Siberian railroad, 13 to be definitely put in hand, according to the New Yoik correspondent of tho Yorkshire Post, and is expected to be completed in five years. The railway through Alaska will start from Ihanima on the south, and will run to Port Clarence on the northwest roast, a distance of ESO miles. The boats to lie u->cd in ( onveying passengers and freight across the strait will be specially constructed of steel, and will be so designed as to rosM the Polar itf>. Engineers say tho passage from Alaska to Russia, is perfectly feasible, and it is expected that tho newcompany will be \eiy successful. The Russian Government is a ready partner to the scheme, because of the Msitor3 it will bring to Siberia, and of tho greater possibility of opening up the wealth of that country. The Wellington coi respondent of the Christchurch Press n-le^raphs :—" According to Dr Jkbon, the Chief Health Officer, who has just returrir*' from a Msit to Eurow and Naseby, phthisis threatened to lay Beriou3 liold of the children of tho.-e districts, who contracted it from infected persons staying there on account of the healthful properties of the climate. In Kurow 64 cases were found Force time ago among aliout 100 childlen attending one school, but the ca~es are now reduced to 21, and some of the*e were recovering The ehildien affected were not; allowed to attend tho public school. Afc Naseby the percentage of cases was much) less, and the di-ease was mostly contracted by families -nho kept consumptive lodgers. Precautions have been taken to provido against tho fuither spread of the dr a.-c." Tenders are invited for the purchase of mining plant lately used by the Pile-up T-'ilCl Dred&iag Coiuu&uu Luovi xn. liauid&tian^