PASSING NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2672, 31 May 1905, Page 5

PASSING NOTES.

(From Saturday's Daily Times.)

Two months ago, at the end of March and thereabouts, some leading English newspapers were eagerly and confidently predicting peace. March 25, the Daily Telegraph on the authority of a St. Petersburg correspondent announced that " despite the seemingly hopeless outlook, peace is at last in sight." A day or two later "the question of peace" had " now assumed practical shape," and " a manifesto . announcing the good news would, it was expected, appear to-morrow." March SO, the Standard reported Moscow as "resigned to the conclusion of peace on any terms," and the Daily Ufews quoted its St. Petersburg correspondent to the effect that peace was "apparently imminent." March 31, the Westminster Gazette hailed the approaching reconciliation of Russian and Jap in an article headed " The Dawn of Peace." Considering the weeks that have sines passed and the things that have happened, it is evident that a London editor sees no further through a millstone than other people. We too have had our premonitions and previsions; they were quite as hopeful, they r-ave been as effectually refuted. I make a point of forgetting now the good things I expected "to- follow the fall of Port Arthur, and I never mention my once confident belief that the Baltic fleet would mark time somewhere east of the Cape till the convenient liour for returning on its tracks. Perhaps we have all had a lesson, and were no longer the prophets tfeat we were. Anything may happen any day, no doubt; but at present I incline to dwell on certain St. Petersburg rumours as not improbably representing what must be the mind of the Czar. A letter of the Kaiser's recommending peace he is said to have tossed aside with the curt remark : "It will be a long time before I follow that counsel. If I make peace lam no longer Czar." And there is a saying current in Russian diplomatic circles : To continue the war will be to lose Vladivostock; to make a dishonourable peace would be to lose St. Petersburg. Which is a way of saying that the unhappy Czar is between the devil and the deep sea.

The Privy Council decision " upholding Mr C. C. Graham's reading of the act " — that is, of that miracle of muddle the New Zealand Licensing Act — is a feather in the^ cap of that worthy beak, no doubt ; but it leaves vs — where does it leave us? In Barrack-Room Ballads there is a soldier urder discipline who Sits in Clink without his boots Admiring how the world is made. Quite helpless and a good deal astonished. Personally I am not concerned, and the cases are not parallel, T>ut that is pretty much how I feel. There is the wonder of the law's delay, an evil which, along with the insolence gi office and a few others, Hamlet thought might encourage a man. to make his quietus with a bare todkin. The question to be determined two years ago was which of two magistrates should hold a magisterial inquiiy at Port Chalmers, and it has taken the whole two years to determine it. Then there is the amazing triviality of the issue. Had Mr C. C. Graham been allowed two years ago to proceed with the business which the House of Lords authorises him to proceed with now, he would have found out whether the licensing poll, then recent, was valid or not valid. But that was exactly what tihe prohibition party did not want 'him io find out. They wanted the licensing poll, valid or not valid, to remain, in their favour, as it then was. Had the magistrate enquired and decided, they might in reason have appealed against his decision, if they liked it not. But he had not decided ; lie had not enquired ; he had not got beyond the stage of being about to enquire, when, to prevent his enquiring, the prohibitionists set in motion this prodigious series of legal processes. Also they j^'.ust have given security foi a prodigious bill of costs. And this last is the only

f feature of a sorry comedy which to me, : a dispassionate onlooker, yields any satisI faction.

More than once of late a batch of hopeful New Zealanders, men and women, have left by way of Auckland for America and Zion Citj — converts to Dowieism. Also, if I don't mistake, we have occasionally despatched by the same route and to the same general address a consignment of [ New Zealand Mormons. Presumably these ' simple people could read and write ; they must have passed through our schools and our standards; their intellectual condition would be pretty much that in which, the New Zealand education system tad left them. Then the churches — I was forgetting the churches; these pilgrims go fcrth like Abraham under a religious impulse, and the New Zealand churches must have been the teaching agency, that prepared them for the Prophet Dowie and the Prophet Joe Smith. These "seem melancholy reflections, but "I don't see how we are to avoid them. We may note, however, with comfort that America, which is a large and airy place, more and more reveals itself as the promised land and final dumping ground of qnaek religionists. _ Better America than New. Zealand, "anyhow. I have a recent- Michigan paper, the Detroit Tribune, in which is a large photograph showing the march of the Christian Israelites. Glittering with topazes and accompanied by ; an uproarious brass band and a small menagerie (parrots and cockatoos), the long-haired " angels of the House of David " 'passed through Detroit yesterday en route to the community of Christian Israelites in Benton Harbour. There were 85 in the' party, following Benjamin and Mary, missionaries of the faith, home from Australia. With which faith cockatoos and topazes have no necessary connection — explained Benjamin in answer to a query : " The birds and the stones are common in Australia, and the Australians like to bring 'em along to remind them of home." The " Christian Israelites " are the " Beardies " — known under that name in Australia for half a century past — and they are never going to die. Vet in even this strange sect we are to discriminate, — absurdity has its less and its more. And in the lowest deep a lower deep. " Don't mix us up with the ' Flying Boilers/ insisted Brother Benjamin above the hubbub of the bandUL' : We are not Flying Rollers at all, though our hair is long. The Flying Rollers are envious of us because we have the advantage of them physically, financially, and spiritually. We have altogether rejected their alleged prophet, Prince Our faith was founded by John Roe, the fifth messenger of God, in 1822, and we are the original Christian Israelites. j This John Roe, who in 1822 announced that he was never going to die, has since died and remains dead; yet his disciples are still trooping to America. They will remain at Benton Harbour, Michigan, until August Ist, 1916, on which date they are to ascend to heaven in golden automobiles.

If we are left wondering how these preposterous delusions are generated in men and women otherwise sane, perhaps we ought to go and listen at " The Fountain," Princes street, Dunedin j or, •if that is too much trouble, we may read and ponder a suggestive item of news in Monday's Daily Times. Preaching at Ashburton the Rev. Dr Watson affirmed that from Adam to Noah there was no "actin" in the atmosphere, and hence no corruption or fermentation.

The juice of the grape before the Flood- had. an entirely harmless effect; for, ho matter how long it was kept, there would never be fermentation, and the alcoholic properties were always absent. The atmospheric conditions entirely changed at and after the Deluge, and, in complete ignorance of how the new order of things affected the grape juice, in all innocence the patriarch Noah drank as usual, •with the deplorable result stated in the Book of Genesis. Why this care for the reputation of the patriarch Noah, seeing he has no surviving relatives to blush for him? Other good men besides Noah have been " overcome," and more urgently need white- washing. Moreover it seems a strange thing that flooding the world with water should have been the origin of wine and whisky. Apparently if there had been no Deluge, Mr Isitt would have lacked his function,, and the prohibitionist ferment afflicting this remote generation is a bequest from the unrepentant antediluvians, which seems about the worst thing yet alleged against them. Leaving these details, however, I return to the one and only purpose for which I condescended on Dr Watson and his Ashburton sermon. What that purpo&e was I remit to the judicious reader.

Sharing, as do we all, in the admiration expx'assed just now by press and pulpit for that really great Scotchman, John Knox, who once was a Catholic priest, and who might have- been an Anglican bishop but that he preferred to bless mankind by founding Presbyterianism, — catching, I repeat, the fervor of the moment, Mi's Civis (for it is to her I am coming) tells me that she adopts Dr Nisbet's suggestion and will henceforth think more of Knox and less of Burns. But here I put in a word. " Considering all he did for your mysterious sex, even congratulating ' Auld Nature ' on inventing it — Her prentice han' she try'd on man, An' then she made the lasses, O — isn't that rather hard on Burns?" — I asked. " Whereas Knox — ," had she ever heard of Knox's '' First Blast of tKo' Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women"? She thought she had, — which, privately, 1 doubt. The word " i*egiment,'" I go on to tell her, has nothing to do with an army or trcops, — an explanation she loftily waives aside. " You see it is this way," I continue : "In Scotland Mary of Guise was Regent, and Mary Stuart was visibly about to follow ; in England Mary Tudor was Queen with Elizabeth Tudor waiting to step into her shoes ; and against this rule, or J regiment,' by women, as a monstrous inversion of the ratural order, John Knox sent forth his ' Trumpet Blast.' Let's see, — yes, here you are — Christchurch ' Press,,' Professor

Macmillan Brown, article on Knox, quote, first sentence of Knox's book :

To promote a woman to bear rule, superi ority, dominion, or empire, above any realm, nation, or city, is repugnant to nature, contumely to God. a thing most contrarioxis ta His revealed will and approved ordinance, and! finally a subversion of all equity and justice. And this is the man," said I, apostrophising the incandescent overhead, " for whom a woman proposes to abandon Burns !" Somehow the appeal fell flat. " Are you aware," said she, sweetly, " that at one time Johu Knox thought of mabhyikg Mary Stuart?*' ''Good heavens!'" I shrieked, caught off mj guard :— " He had better have gone back to the French galleys. Marrying Mary Stuart ! — why he was married already— twice." "Not at that time,"' said she j — " and if you were not &o idiotically omniscient you would be aware that when Mary Stuart was first .a widow John Knox wat a widower,, and that he might have married her — as everybody knows who has tread Maurice .Hewlett's novel. 'The ; Queen's Quhair.' " "So that's you: authority, is it" — said I, with derision — ." somebody's novel? But let me take it in — Mary Stuart^and John Knox — Mr and Mrs Knox; — and James I and VI, that clobbering - Solomon-, the ' wisest fool in Europe- as his neighbour Louis used to call him, would have been a combination of Knox and Stuart," and as cute as they make 'em, — which must have changed the whole current of history. And here is the wife of a journalist knowing all this and concealing it, withholding from her husband journalistic wealth untold, allowing him to celebrate the" Knox centennial in ignorance of facts the most ' essential — '* But by this time the wife of the journalist had whisked herself out of tie room, and I felt a brute. On persons of Mrg^'C's sex irony is wasted. Fortunately these thincs have a way of adjusting themselves, or I should, ere this, have sent in my name to Mr Curzon-Siggers and the Society for Protecting Women anrl Children.

By way of expressing my personal veneration for John Knox and his progeny after him. here let me bring in, quoting from Professor Maeinillan Brown, the historic seen* in- which Knox's youngest daughter, Mistress Welch, wife of the minister of Ayr, exchanges civilities with the same James I and VI complimented abovp.

When her husband -was exiled she went witlt him to France, but, dying of consumption, he longed to see his native land, and came to London. In order to get permission from Kin* James to return, she sought an interview witH him at court, and this is the record of it. His Majesty asked her who her father was. " John. Knox." was the reply. " Knox and Welch !" cried he, " the devil never made such a match: as that." " It's right like, sir " she answered, for we never speired his advice." On beine asked what children hex father had left, sou* rep]yin t ~ that they were three lasses, " God be thanked!" he exclaimed, lifting up both his hands, " for an they had been three lads Z had never brooked my three kingdoms m. peace." She urged her appeal that her husband have his native air. " Give him hi» native air!" answered he; "give him the devil." Quickly she took him up : " Give that to your hungry courtiers." He said be would give permission if her husband submitted to the bishops. " Please your Majesty, I'd rather kep his heid here," retorted she, lifting up her apron. This Mistress Welch, it is good to know, was ancestress of Jane Welch Carlyle. Civis.