PASSING NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 1851, 30 March 1904, Page 5

PASSING NOTES.

(From Saturday's D^ily Times.)

From a newspaper point of view the conduct of the war during the last week or two must be pronounced unsatisfactory. In all newspapers we have established twocolumn head-lines — '' The Russo-Japanese War," in large letters. We have sent special correspondents to the front ; tre have secured the advice- of military expeits here at home. These expensive arrangements duly made, we sit down with the feeling that it is now the war's turn ; let the belligerents proceed to business. That is our attitude — an essentially reasonable attitude, to which, sad to say, there has been no adequate 'response. The Far East is a frost ; proceedings there cannot be got to proceed ; our war department is actually gravelled for lack of matter. Distant press agencies are reduced to telegraphing lumours and opinions, whilst our local experts discuss whether they are or are not justified in believing a bogus account of the captiire of Port Arthur. No doubt this dearth may end at any moment ; Port Arthur may be captured in to-morrow morning's cables. Something is certainly going on behind the veil of the censorship, if only we could get to_ know what it is. There was, as we imagined at the timo, a tolerably severe censorship in South Africa. Evidently we were mistaken. There is only one possible explanation of our disappointment with the Japs and the Russians, namely, that what we deemed reserve in the South African war was really a large and loose publicity. Now, as of old, wisdom appears to come from the East.

George, Duke of Cambridge, this week laid to rest at Kensall Green, must have been the last ox our pairely Hanoverian Georges. Hanover was his birthplace, German his vernacular. He was born within the lifetime of his royal grandfather, George 111, who, in like manner, was bovn within the lifetime of his royal grandfather, George 11. So thai; in two strides we are carried far back from this present year of grace 1904. George 111 must have remembered the bells and the tar-barrels for the victory gloriously won by grandpapa in person at Dettingen, 1743. He nrust also have remembered the opposite phenomena, whatever they may have been, that followed two years later for the victory which uncle William, Duke of Cumberland, had gloriously come short of winning at Fontenoy. The glory was much the same in both feats, the English fighting " Avith their customary fire, and their customary guidance — courageous Wooden. Pole with Cocked Hat" — as Carlyle writes A\ith his customary liberality of emphasis and capital letters. No doubt the generalship was equally bad on both occasions. Thus at Dettengen, where we won :

Seldom, since that of the Cauclins Forks, did any Army, by ill-luck and ill-guidance, get into such a pinfold, — death or flat surrender seemingly their one alternative. . . . Thus march these English, that de^y morning, Thursday, June 27, 1743, with cannon playing on their left flank ; and such things ahead of them, had they known i-t;— very short of breakfast, too, for most part. Bui they have one fine quality, and Britannic George, like all his Wclf rocs from Henry the Lion down to these days, has it in an eminent d-egree: they are not easily put into flurry, into fear. In all Welf Sovereigns, and generally iv Teuton Populations, on that side> of the Channel or on this, there is the requisite unconscious substratum of taciturn inexpugnability, with depths of potential rage almost unquenchable, to be found when you apply for it. Which quality will much stead them on the present occasion — etc , eto. I quote this because our latest Hanoverian George, just departed, hail inherited the soldierly qualities of his Welf forbears — their merits, also their delects. He commanded the Guards Brigade in the Crimea, where he had a busy iay at the Alma, and again at InlXtmann. That is just 50 years ago, when George of Cambridge was 55 — the age at which Napoleon, with the Italian campaign behind Mai, made him-

self Emperor, and at which Wellington, having finished in India, about to begin in the Peninsula. These comparisons would be unfair, except to show that George in the Crimea was not too young for his responsibilities. Kinglake handles Lini tenderly ; nevertheless leaves it tolerably plain, that he was neither better nor worse than his ancestors' at Dettengen and Fontenoy — a soldier sans pe-ur, but also sans avis.

In his matrimonial affairs George of Cambridge was peculiar. Born the same year as his cousin the Princess Victoria, he could hardly be considered an ineligible suitor for her hand. Tlis gossip of the time linked his name with hers, and doubtless Barkis was willin'. No greater heiress just then appeared within the visible horizons. But it was not to be. Victoria bestowed herself on the Coburg cousin ; whereupon Hanover George, left lamenting, consoled himself with an actress 1 , Miss Louisa Fairbrother, whom he married— morganatically. What the status, what the rights, of a morganatic wife may be lam unable to say. Is it that the marriage is good from the point of view ot morals but bad in law? Then a morganatic marriage would preclude any ether ; — but it doesn't. Which fact George of Cambridge might have held proved by the example of his royal uncle, George IV, who as Prince Regent married Mrs Fitzherbert, an Iriih widow, seven years his senior, and a Roman Catholic to boot. At George's subsequent mairiage with Caroline of Brunswick relations with Mrs Fitzherbert were broken off — to be resumed later with the sanction of the Pope, who probably held ths morganatic wife the true wife and Queen Caroline a nullity. But George of Cambridge, to his honour be it said, disregarded these subtilties, sticking faithfully to his Louisa, and by her becoming the father of serviceable sons — Admiral Fitzgeorge, to wit, and Colonel Fitzgeorge, both of them extant. Their mother died years ago— steadily ignored by Burke and Debrett, though in the less aristocratic Whitaker you may find her as " the late Miss Louisa Fairbrother." Married woman's denomination, apparently, she had none. " Mrs Cambridge," wouldn't have clone at all ; but I .im not so sure about "Mrs Fitzgeorge." Perhaps that is what they called her.

When disposed to gloom over a declining birth-rate and the imminence of what President Roosevelt calls " race suicide," we may be reminded, though not to our comfort, that a similar state of things obtained long long ago. The decline of the Roman Empire was really a decline in the birth-rate. Witness the panic efforts of Augustus to promote marriage and encourage fecundity ; — I quote from Merivale :

On the one hand, celibacy was punished by incapacity to receive bequests; even the married man who happened to be childless was regarded with suspicion and mulcted of one half of «very legacy. On the other, the father of a family enjoyed a place of distinction in the theatres and preference in competitions for public offices. Also he was relieved from certain public responsibilities [equivalent to serving on juries]. Of the two consuls, precedence was given, not to the senior in age, but to the father of the most numerous offspring. Well-meant all this, but of no more avail than Mrs Partington, and her mop. A society in which measures of this kind seem required is precisely the society in which they must fail. Take a. typical case, and take an example from Augustus's own circle — take Horace. Was Horace legislated into matrimony? The question sounds too ridiculous. When not. in retreat on his Sabine farm, Horace was a man about town, a diner-out, a hanger-on of the Court, in short, " a hog of Epicurus' stye," as he complacently says of himself. A wife would have been an embarrassment. When it came to Horace as poet laureate to write an official hymn for the Secular Games, and therein praise the midwifery deities, soliciting their good offices, he did it in a halfhearted and perfunctory way, as we may see for ourselves in the Carmen Saeculare. So say the wise critics, and I fancy they are right. Nothing availed to stay the declining birth-rate in that worn-out age but the barbarian invasion and a return to nature. Tennyson, in the " Idylls of the King," has unconsciously pourtrayed a society perishing after the same fashion. What was wrong in the Arthurian civilisation was evidently the low birth-rate. Look at Arthur and Guinevere — a childless pair ! Children would have given Guinevere something wholesome to think of, and she would have found less room in her life for Launcelot. There again, thundering at the gate, was Nature's residuary legatee, the barbarian — ready always to administer the estate of any people too tired to go on living. The said barbarian, is not far from our own gate. If in the end the yellow man appropriates Australasia his title will be that lie is not afraid to increase and multiply and replenish the earth.

" A New Zealander by Compulsion " asks kave to exprass his bitter discontent.

I was born in England but came out to Xew Zealand while quite young. I h?ve just been Home for a trip, and when I came back I was grately struck with the poverty, misery, s>nd drunkenness I saw in the New Zealand towns. I also think that the food is extremely bad. the hotels, etc., horribly dirty and mismanaged. The climate is execrable — not fit for a dog to live in. In this last remark the writer gives himself away as an unreasonable grumbler. There is nothing wrong with our Italian climate. It is a climate favourable to exertion, incapable of monotony, fertile in agreeable surprises. There are climates more luxurious, more propitious to laziness and its cognate vices ; but for stern and wholesome Calvinistic discipline in winds and weather give me Otago*! The- rest of this illconditioned screed I print without comment ; so far as it is criticism theie may be some good in it.

In the country people live mostly on meat, potatoes, and bread, with perhaps a little oatmeal or butter. The majority eat no vegetables, there is little or no society, and the men are almost like eavsges. Unless iabid

teetotallers they drink fiery whisky, while the women have nothing to clunk bul scalding hoi tea. If they indulged in wine or beer their husbands would think they were going straight to the bad. Aftei seeing country life in Britain it is pitabie indeed. The people here are ver? conceited about their country, especially when they have seen no other. I noticed much greater improvements in my own town and district at Homo than I had seen here in 22year» t there was in fact no comparison, and yet tha people hero call England a, slow-going place. New Zealand will never be very pleasant ta live in till there is a laiger population. Capitalists are wanted, especially small capitalists.

The editor passes on to me a letter complaiuing of " the fulsome idolatry lavished on the Premier by'Civis.' " Last week in par-* ticular the Premier was made a Jupiter, sitting aloft and savouring ihe smoke of burnt-offerings. Yes, I believe I did say; something of that kind. The Irony of it, I infer, must have been exceeding subtle. This correspondent was evidently taken: in. possibly also the Premier him-self—-who knows? Presently I may be finding mysslf made a J.P.,; or called to the Upper House. There is always a risk of being miscomprehended when one resorts to irony. It is quite conceivable that Job's friends, when he remarked to them " No doubt but ye are thai people, and wisdon? will die with you," esteemed themselves complimented. There are newspaper readers whose perspicacity is not beyond that of the average schoolboy, and what that is only the average schoolmaster could tell. One of them tries to tell me this week ; e.g. : The class was reading of an astronomical expedition to th? summit of Teneriffe. Ths observatory was fixed at this great elevation, so as to obtain an uninterrupted view of " the heavenly bodies." "What heavenly bodies?" asked the teacher. " Those people who have died and gone to heaven, sir." There is better than this in one of the Spectators by the mail "A curate catechising on the Psalms a^ked for the continuation of the text beginning " Theee all wait upon thee —" It came in this form, " that thou mayest give them their meat from New Zealand." The popularity of our frozen mutton is evidently mcrsr.sing. Cms.

The mov&ment in Dunediu and the OtagO provincial district for raising funds in aid of the Veterans' Home Fund has been very successful, and the Finance Committee announced at a meeting last evening thafc the credit balance at present amounts to £900 15s lid. The comtriitee, however, set out originally to raise at least £1000, and! the sum already secured does not satisfy their ambitions, so they have decided to hold another demonstration on the Caledonian Ground on the occasion of -the Governor's farewell visit to Diinedin next month, with the object of increasing their contribution. Matters in connection with tho proposed demonstration are already well under way, and, amongst other attractions, it is hoptd that the members of Mr J. C. Willianason's Royal Comic Opera Company, which opens in Dunedin on Easter Monc'ay, will give an exhibition.

A Naseby correspondent wires that at a meeting of Liberals held on Tuesday nighb the general secretary attended, and Mr John Law, jun., of Ranfurly, presided. Ib was decided to form a branch of the* Liberal and Labour Federation," and to> ask tho Premier to present the chartor ab an early date. Mr John Ewing, who contested the Mount Ida seat at the last election in the Government interest, was elected president (pro torn), and Mr Patrick Bleach (Ranfurly) interim secretary.

A correspondent writes: — The Sandymount people are just now labouring under a considerable disadvantage in . regard to their postal facilities. The post office there is now located at the extreme end of the district, and only one mile and a-half from the Highcliff office. Many of the Sandymount folk have thus to travel a long distance to- roceivo or post their correspondence. A very numerously-sig'ied petition was lately forwarded to the Postmastergeneral, asking that ths office be re-estab-lished at the school. The prayer of tho petition has been refused. A meeting of residents was held on Saturday la c t, and resolutions were carried asking that tho matter be reconsidered, as the Minister's decision was apparently due to a misconception of tho facts.

J. Williams, Dunediu representative in the New Zealand Fire Brigade team thaf competed at the rectnt demonstration at G-eelong, rotumed from Australia by the s.s. Manuka, which arrived on the 22nd. He says that the New Zealander-s were seriously hampered in the competitions by the fact that their clothing was much heavier than that worn by the Australians, who, in fact, wore athletic costume?, consisting of light jackets — in some' cases made of silk, — cricketing trousers, end runningshoe^ without spikes, and no underclothing. He is satisfied, however, that if they had only had another week in Victoria prior to the competitions the New Zealand team would have proved very successful. He acknowledges in the warmest terms the hospitality extended by tho Australian public to the party from this colony.

A man named Patrick Daly, living ir Cumberland street, was discovered in an unenviable piedioament on the 22nd. AbouS 8 o'clock loud cries -were heard in the locality of the cement works, and. on Constable) Hickcy and others going to the spot they found rho man embcdclod id th< -iid, about 50 3-arc.ll from the shore, with only his hea-d in sight. It was with some difficulty that the constable and an assistant extricated him from his plight. He was somewhat weak when fakei. ashore, but -oon rfcevi red, and walked tc h.s liome. He as unable to state how lie got into the mud.

Professor Stewart compares the secretion of mil'v: to the secretion of tears ; ths lat-

SSOW D VI E 3. APBIL. County Agricultural Society, JTaixlie. BO— Hawks' s Bay Autumn Show^

Professor Stewart compares the secretion of mil'v: to the secretion of tears ; ths latter only flow when Ultra is mental -jxcite- ' ment of a painful nature, while milk seJ crelion requires mental excitement of n, ■ p]easurabie kind. The ple:ivdi:-bie .sensa-