PASSING NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2604, 10 February 1904, Page 6

PASSING NOTES.

(From Saturday's Daily Times.)

Lord Northcote, the new GovernorGeneral, landed at Melbourne last w«ek in bad weather which " militated against the reception." Similarly when his Excellency landed further West — at Adelaide, was it? I haven't the telegram — there also something militated adversely, so, that the reception suffered from chill and damp, either social or meteorological. Without attaching heathenish importance to omens and auspices I regret this bad luck, especially as it extended its malign influence to the levee.

Lord Northcote's first levee was very largely attended. His Lordship is suffering from rheumatism of the arm, and was unable to shako hands with the guests. This is bad, very bad. A rheumatism that prevents a new Governor-General from shaking hands with the sovereign people on the occasion -of his first levee is decidedly undemocratic. What were his Excellency's Advisers^ about that they didn't call in a maker of artificial limbs? There are artists in Melbourne who could have supplied a practicable hand and arm at half a day's notice. Failing that, they should have hit upon some better reason to give the public than an invisible rheumatism. For instance there is vaccination. " Noli me tangere ! — I have just been vaccinated," is the current salutation in Christchurch at present, and a vaccination arm gracefully looped in a sling has become the distinguishing mark of good citizenship. If Lord Nortihcote desired to avoid shaking hands with the crowd, I consider that he should have had himself vaccinated for the sake of appearances. A rheumatic arm fails somehow to inspire confidence. One is reminded of a diplomatic headache.

There are reasons why the GovernorGeneral of Australia more than other great officials of tihe Empire should mind his p's and q's. For one thing, the political constitution is new, and the people fated to live under it have not yet " found themselves." Things and persons are yet to drop to their bearings. At present all is friction, noise, and heat. If behoves therefore a Governor-General, whose official title is perhaps bigger than his office, to pick his steps, walking circumspectly. Then it is to be remembered that one of his predecessors, and he a rich man, made a bad impression by flinging up the billet on the ground that he couldn't live on the salary; also that the next — Lord Tennyson, to wit, now departing — has been snubbed for offering political advice, thereby exceeding his function and doingmore than a Governor-General is paid to do. Remembering this incident I ?m made a little uneasy by the following paragraph in the Melbourne cables :

Lord Northcote, replying to addresses, said that the King watched with deep interest and oonfident hope the development of a great national movement, and every constitutional process for linking together the Empire was enthusiastically regarded by the Soveraign. If the " great national movement" which the King watches with " deep interest " and " confident hope "' is the Chamberlain movement, more is here said than ought to be said, and more than as yet has been said elsewhere. Lord Northcote's reference to the political opinions of the King looks very like a bringing of the ark into the battle.

Prophetic foregleams of the Chamberlain millenniuiQ vouchsafed themselves, as we know, to Cecil Rhodes. Indeed Rihodc? may be said to have penetrated further into the millstone of futurity than even Chamberlain, for the tariff union pictured by his grandiose imagination included America. To Rhodes and Chamberlain asromantic Imperialists adds himself Mr Rudyard Kipling. In his book " From Sea Jfco Sea*" .date 19QQ*. tJiei-e, axe suma aksei'va,-

tions, regretful but resigned, on our ten- 1 dency to physical decline in hot climates. " If only in this part of the world — tropical India, Burma, Singapore, and the like — we could rear children that did not run io leg and nose in the second generation, what an amazing disruption of the Empire.* there would presently be !" The sentence runs to non sequitur and disagreeable surprise ; for why should British settlement, when of the abiding sort, end in disruption? That is Mr Kipling's idea, however, but not the whole of his idea.

And then, later, when the freed States hod plunged into hot water, fought their rights, ovor-borrotoed, over-speculated, and otherwise conducted themselves like youngeir sons, what a coming together and revision of tariffs, ending in on© great iron band girdling the earth. Within that .limit Free Trade. Without, rancorous Protection. It would be too vast a hornet's nest for any combination of Powers to disturb. The dream will not come about for a Jong time, but we shall aocomplish something like it one of these days. This may be read as one more illustration of the truth that great wits jump. Rhodes, Kipling, Chamberlain, these three — idealists all ; imperialists, patriots of the high heroic type. Which the greatest it boots not to ask, but certainly the first two get off lightest. It was theirs merely to dream ; to Chambei'lain has fallen the heavy task of translating dreams, this own and other people's, into fact.

Though familiar from his youth up with Asiatic races Mr Kipling no more than the rest of us is able to assimilate the Chinaman. " Assimilate " — yes, that seems the word I want ; for a white man may come to accept as the " sirnilis " of himself the terra-cotta Aryan of Hindustan whilst he shrinks with loathing from the yellow Mongol. In his book " Front Sea to Sea" Kipling admits, though he- cannot quite explain, this instinctive loathing. " Was it not De Quincey," he asks, " that had a horror of the Chinese — of their inhumaneness and their inscrutability?" Kipling himself is horrified for the sa^ne reasons, and also for others.

The Chinese in Penang are the first army corps on the march of tho Mongol. The scouts are at Calcutta, and a fiying column at Rangoon. Here begins the mam bocly, some hundred thovisarwl strong, so they say. And they are terrible to behold. Th«y work hard, which in this climate is manifestly wicked, and their eyes are just like the eyes of their own pet dragons. . . I could quite understand after a couple of hours spent in Chinatown why the lower-caste Anglo-Saxon hafces the Celestial. He frightened me, and so I could take no pleasure in looking at his houses, at his wares, or at himself. "The faces of the Chinese frightened me more than ever," -<he continues.

The march of the Mongul is a pretty thing to write about in magazines. Hear it onoe in the gloom of an ancient curio shop, where nameless devils of the Chinese creed make mouths at you from back shelves, where brazen dragons, revelations of uneLeanliness, all catch your feet r.s you stumble across the floor — hear the tramp of the feet on the granite blocks of the road and the breaking wave of human speech that is not human! Watch the yellow faces that glare at you between the bars, and you will be efraid, as I was afraid. The sum of which is that the Chinese "in a lump is bad " — as the Northern Farmer remarked of the poor. But a proposal to bring Chinese labour to the Rand is not quite the same thing as a proposal to introduce the Chinese in a lump. Hate the Chinaman and Chinese cheap labour as much as we may, let us still be fair, let us not refuse to discriminate.

It is proposed to bring in Chinese coolies, but it is also proposed to take them out again. In due course, a certain time fulfilled, work done and wages paid, the coolie will be carried back to the place from whence he came. a This is the arrangement under which sugar is grown and manufactured in Fiji. The Union Company's big new steamer Aparima is even now on a voyage to an Eastern port where she will pick up from 500 to 1000 coolies, Indian or Chinese, for transport to Suva and the sugar industry. The ■white labourer cannot do the work, tho native Fijian will not ; hence the covenanted coolie who both can and will, and whose ultimate return to his own country is provided for by the sure mercies of the Imperial Government. The Transvaal may or may not be in urgent need of industrial facilities already enjoyed by Fiji; — I don't say. What Ido say is that the clamour raised against covenanted Chinese labour is, a good deal of it, unintelligent. Thus an angry correspondent of the Daily Times bids us take warning from the " vice and dirt" of Chinese mining camps in Victoria :

I have visited Chinese towns in Victona adjacent to Ballarat, Bendigo, JJaiyborough, raid St. Arnaud. They were all alike — haunts of vies and dirt, — only each other appeared to be worse than the other; and it is a matter for serious reflection when we are to 7 d that the result of the Boer wir is to scatter similar townships over the Transvaal. Such action will put our patriotism to a severe strain. Chinese mining camps in Victoria are nothing to the purpose. I have seen those unregulated camps, or some of them, and liked them as littl° as Mr Kipling the Chinese quarter in Penang. In fact they made me afraid. So would an unregulated camp of Argentine mules. But neither mule nor Chinaman need be permitted to come and go at will, or develop vice and dirt to his own liking. Objectors to Chinese cheap labour should be ingenuous enough to admit that the Transvaal proposition is something totally different. For my own part I would, if need arose, import for labour purposes the Chinaman as freely as the mule or the camel, a cyanide plant or a traction engine.

This note is to be of odds and ends, bits of stories and the like sent me by conespondents, some of them far away; e.g. —

Fiom an ex-Dunedm boy in Scotland, do who rccenes the good old Witness every mnl, and treasures it as if it were deed papers. Pioud to think v. c hay such a pnper. — J. S. Glasgow. The printing of this scrap mu=l be my

of Glasgow will please accept it as such. Not this correspondent but another inquires, " What is the point of the saying that you can't take the breeks off a Hielanman, when, as- is well known, a Hielanman has no breeks?"' Well, that is the point ; — and the inquirer's sense of humour is in the same category as the Hielanman's breeks. For which reason he will certainly miss the point of the story next following : A sidesman, which is a kind of churchwaide^, went into an open church at one cf oui fashionable resorts on th*> Yorkshne coast, and found a strange clergyman standing with his hat on. Instantly he uncovered. " Oh, don't nimd me!" said the sidesman, with witheiing sarcasm; "pi.iy put it on again." In strict charity, perhaps, the next should be explained ; however I leave it to be puzzled out.

At Bristol Cathedral the piccentor has occasionally to print the titles of anthems. Hf> is. responsible for the following — " Rejoice in tbo Lord Humphrey " , " If we Believe Goss," and ' - Hoy, Holy, Holy Crotch.' Finally I have a correspondent who ask? whether Tennyson's remark about tl.e Duke of Wellington that, Whatever record leap to light He never shall be shamed, holds good in the face of such revelations of the Duke's profanity as are contained in the recently published Creevey memoirs. He gives a specimen, but doubts whether Passing Notes would consider it fit foi publication. The doubt does me too much honour. I cannot pretend to bs more squeamish than the English magazines and reviews. He:e is the incriminating pissage :

I had peculiar opportunities for know' lg about Waterloo, for I was hying m Brussels at the time, and was an intimate friend of t.ie Duke of Wellington. A fortnight before the battle I had a talk with the Duke. " Will you let me ask you, Duke, what you think you will make of it?" He stopped, and said i)i the most natural manner: " 33y Gcd! I think Blucher and myself can do the thing. "Do you calculate, ' I asked, " upon any desertion if Buonaparte's army?" "Not upon a man," he said, " from the colonel to a private in a regiment — both inclusiva. We may pick up a inaishal or two, perhaps; but not worth a damn." On the day after the battle Mr Creevey met him ngain, and offered hie congratukitior.3: "He made a variety of observations in his short, natural, blunt way, but with the greatest gravity all the time, and without the least approach to anything like triumph or joy. 'It has been a damned serious business,' he said. ' Biucher and I have lost 30,000 men. It has been a damned nice thing — the rearest run thing you ever saw in your life. Blucher lost 14 000 on Friday night, and got so damnably licked I could not find him on Saturday morning.' " Excepting a needless mention of the Deily there is no profanity here. It is a. fashion of speaking" — the current fashion, coarse and ugly if you will, but not profane. Civis.

The Board of Governors of the Otago Boys' and Girls' High Schools wish to direct attention to the fact that amongst ethers who are entitled to free education under tho Government regulations are the holders of Education Board scholarships, national scholarships, Queer's scholarships, or any other scholarship that the Minister of Education may approve for the purpose, provided that the value of the scholarship h not greater than £40 in the ca=e of any pupil vho is obliged to live away from home to attend the secondary school, or not greater than £10 in any other ease.

Mr E. H. Carew, S.M., and two acoessers- > held a sitting- of the Compensation Court en the 2nd to hear a compensation claim by Charles Dickson Wilson, who claimed £150 in respect of a section of land taken bythe City Corporation under "The "Public Works Act, 1394," for the purposes of the water supply extension scheme, and after evLd>eneß had been heard on both sides the claimant was awarded £55. This is on© of a number of similar eases that, it is expected, -nill come before the Conipeneation Courts, the corporation having taken other land in the North Harbour and Blueskin diotnet from property-holders. All o'aims under £250 will be heard by Mr Oarew, S \L, and two a3s«S3ors, and sums over that amount Ly Mr Justice Williams end two aissesoors.

Bankei'3, it would seem, are men of few ■words. Mr J. E. Wcolaeott, in the January World's Work, writes : " A professional man, unaccustomed to the ways ol tlite city, wao seated the other day in tho office of the manager of a leading London bank. Suddenly the door cp-ncd and the head ?nd shoulders of a customer appeared through the t.corway. 'Filty?' remarked the custoirer to the manager. "Yes," wa* the reply. 'Week?' was the next question. Tho manager nodded. 'Quarter?' continued the customer. * Yes,' fiom tho banker. ' Right,' and the head and phoulders were withdrawn. 'Pardon me,' observed the visitor, who had been hotening, ' but would you think me rude if I asked jou what that all meant?' 'It meant,' replied the banker, ' that I havo arranged to lend him £50.000 for a week at oli per cant per annum ' " This is said t be a fair illustration of tho mcthode of modern banking in the city.

Dunng an informal cli i-cu~i'ioiii -cu~i'ioii a.'. tl;o mc&ung of the Bruco Ccuniv Ccuiiul < n the 2nd Ci Be-pg, mentioned that. the council would do well to consider the macier of a contribution to infectious dise-ascs hospital. Tho PuL lie Health Amendment Act made tho pro-vision and maintenance of si'ch hospitals a charge upon hospital boards instead of upon tho loco.l authority, : ad if such a hoopitai were erected in Di nedin tho county woi Id have to oontrib i'j6 ita share of the coot, etc., while doming no benefit from the establishment of e^ :h r,n institution, ps iifeetious disease paticni; could not i» con"pycd from one district to another, and local authorities outside- Dun-e-din district should m<-.\o m the direction of fti-anani-lnu. fxtun tluv l - u.til3*»