PASSING NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2812, 5 February 1908, Page 5

PASSING NOTES.

(From Saturday's Daily Times.) The "general post" which has been going on in the magisterial section of the Department of Justice has been marked by a good deal of humour. With becoming dignity the department, unable to please everybody, has pleased itself, and in so doing fulfilled its " raison d'etre." Did the irresponsible public really conceive it possible that they had any hand in the making of departmental pie? If co, there is another illusion dispelled and the wholesome truth pushed home that a. democratic Ministry is, and must be, as firm as the veiiest autocracy. In noting some of the affectionate remonstrances of the public against the removal of their cherished "beak" — he who had aparently grown to be the very apple of their eye — there has doubtless been more than on© unbelieving Thomas, who, winking the other eye the while, has quoted Shakespeare anent " enduring the ills we know," etc. And, again, there have been hard-shelled citizens of the world who have smiled indulgently at the naivete of that good fellow among the moving magistrates w,ho frankly recoided his regret at leaving "because it was his first magistracy." Myself, I have found much to respectfully admire in the decorous gymnastics of the Ba,r. In half-a-dozen tlifferent centres these legal luminaries have one day murmured "The king is dead," and the next shouted " Long live the king " ; and the dexterity with which they have attuned themselves alike to "hail" and "farewell" speaks volumes for law as a training in the gentle art which the Chinese know as "saving the face." Meantime, though the Department of Justice underlines, with heavy scores its motto of " Fiat justitia," and a wise precedent is established, everyone concerned has had a very pretty little flutter, and no one can complain. These marvellous magistrates, packing their household gods, and rich in the knowledge that virtue is its own reward, will depart to play their little part on a new stage : the Bar will doubtless find "surcease of sorrow" in making up bills of costs undei the new regime, and mine shall be the congenial duty of pointing out to all of them how happy they were \u having wanted something ; how doubly happy in not having obtained it. Theirs has* not been the sad fate of Easselas in his Happy Valley — " That I want nothing, or that I know not what I want, is the cause of my complaint. . . . possessing all that I can want. I find one day and one hour exactly like another, excxpt that the latter is still more tedious than the former."

It is impossible to resist a crowing conMction that the Mayor of North-East Valley has been reading Whistler on "Tiie Gentle Art of Making Enemies." Again, his rociferous challenge to one and all feuggests that the motto of his clan in less conventional times must nave been "Nemo me iinpune la cess it "; or, if he had not a clan, that he must certainly belong to that ingenuous race which is constantly on the look-out for someone to tiead on the tail of his coat. There was a time when I found my appetite for local humour amply appeased by the proceedings of that august body the South Dnnedin Borough Council, for it was not only the loyal burgesses whom Cr Fiddis used to entertain with his originality. But the portentous dulne-as of the City Council has staled that humourist's erstwhile "infinite \ariety," and I must take the aoods the gods provide in the shape of Mayor Green and his bear garden. The pathos which is inseparable from the highest kind of humour makes itself felt in the worthy Mayor's recital of his woes. At his very installation it appears the town clerk refused to extend to him the right hand of fellowship! Surely a strange lack of historical Ferspective on the part of the town clerk, heard H. M. Stanley (that great little man) reproach himself because at his historic meeting with Livingstone he merely

6hook hands with true English frigidity, instead of letting himself go and embracing the great explorer. For all we know, the town clerk of North-East Valley may even now be consumed by unavailing regrets because he went one better, and, for fear of doing too much, did nothing. How true it is that a man's manners con('•ern us more than his morals! What brooding tragedy lay in that hand-shake that never was given — ample material for another verse of " Not Understood." By the way, let me commend the reading of poor Bracken's masterpiece to the drooping Mayor of North-East Valley. It might .have the effect of reconstructing the situation between himself and the glacial T.C.

The hand-shake that might have been, and wasn't, did not, however, cover Mr Green's most bitter experience. "He had been badgered, insulted, and called a liar. The committee had risen in wrath, , shaken their fists in his face, called him 'Liar! ' and left him without a quorum."" Somewhat of an anti-clwnax this quorum business, yet apparently the unkindest cut of all. Better far that his unruly colleagues should remain even to shake their fists in his face and call him Ananias than that they should flee, leav- • ing him to inglorious silence — so much to s-iy and no one to hear him say it ! Then it was that the Mayor rose to the occasion, and demonstrated the uses of adversity. Deprived of his rightful quorum he called, together his ratepayers, and we may take it for gianted that his eloquence had lost nothing by being bottled up. As an orator, Mayor Green is no unworthy follower of John Burns, who in a recent speech described the anti-German crusade as being "made by papers owned by rascals, edited by ruffians, and read by j fools." Long may the Mayor of North- j East Valley continue to emulate the beautiful frankness of his breezy model, , for one thing, is certain : the gradual absorption by the City Council of the smaller fry— the outlying boroughs — will ]ob us of much spontaneous humour, and 1 notice that them is nothing in even the Vest foreign markets so full llavoured on the local palate as local humour ! From ' the City Council one has long ceased to expect fend for a smile — even a little one. Dull, staid, and ret-pectable, the surround- i ings are too impressive, the Mayoral robes too dignified, to encourage any light play of fancy in personalities ; even friend Fiddis has succumbed to dull convention- ; ality. The City Council is neither large enough nor small enough to encourage the irresponsible oratoi : his native heath seems to be either in the small boroughs or in Parliament— indeed, there is e\ery reason to fear that if in due course the North-East Valley, together with other historic boroughs,, is swallowed up in the insatiable maw of city expansion, and ex- t Mayor Green and other notables foregather in the dignified seclusion of the City Council Chamber, we should be bereft of those thrilling scenes to which Mr Green declares " a dog or a bull fight are nothing," and he ought to know. There, is nothing in the way of journalism which I find more pleasantly optimistic than Americans on the achievements of America. It does one good to read', for example, how things' are going in the Philippines, because we have been rather j inclined to pity first the Filipino, then the i Americano, and finally both. V -Partly, no | doubt because it is perfectly clear to every self-respecting Briton that only the British can colonise. However, making , allowances for the tendency to tall talk , which Jonathan has inherited from John Bull, there is a great deal to admire in the way matters are working out in the Philippines. Large constructive work 6 j in progress and in contemplation render | the labour question a very real thing in ; these islands. " Twenty -five thousand little brown Filipinos, hi^h privates in a j great industrial army," is how a recent writer describes the native workers of a j hundred or more camps scattered through- j out the islands. The methods by which I the Filipino conducts his day"s industrial campaign are picturesque and original — the very thing to suit our own brown man and, even (perhaps) stimulate him toSir Robert Stout's ideal of his industrial energy ! For example, when the Labour party starts for work in the morning it is I to the jocund sound of a brass band as harmonious as a Salvation band that they march, and the most approved air is " There'll be a hot time in the old town to-night." Every note of it they know, these nimble little Filipinos, for it ;s; s played at the Sunday ccck-figlits, in the churches, for dances, and at funerals. Ihere is no opening for tailors in the Philippines. The man who possesses an army shirt is the Beau Brummel of his camp; he who sports a hat as well as o loin cloth is handsomely attired. As the sun beats upon the toilers with the inten- I sity of a furnace in full blast, naked boys carrying skins of water pass among them serving a "long water" from cocoanut bowls. Noon finds all hands rolling up for the email coin which e?cli man leceives to buy his meal of lice and vegetables at the primitive lunch '■ shacks."

When the mid-day heat has somewhat j abated the bandmaster strikes up forte Presto, prestissimo ' and tho lithe v orkers, swinging picks in time to themusic, charge the mountain side with cheerful yells. But the Filipino is not a born 'toiler, and only with much patience and some diplomacy has the yoke of labour been laid upon that " industrial army " of natural idlers. Nor ', does the sum total of work strike one- , as in ]jroportion to the sum total of , the workers, for the average Filipino only compasses one-fifth as much in a day as , we should expect from a white man working in a white man's country. Amusing stories are told of the Filipino's apprenticeship to the use of the white man's tools. Weaned from his desire to use his hands to shovel the earth into 4

the barrows, instead of using the stranger shovel of the Americano, the next difficulty was the barrow itself. How should a man carry a barrow full of earth and stones but on his head, of course carefully balanced, as all burdens had been carried and balanced sine* the beginning of things? To balance and wheel the loaded barrow on its one small wheel, that really was a delicate feat requiring much rehearsing. At his present blessedly Arcadian stage, money ie of very littla object to the Filipino. In some parts of the islands the coins are merely used a* ornaments ; in most they are merely th« small change of civilisation returning whence they came — into the pockets ol j the Government as taxes or going to proi ! vide the owner • with his one luxury, a fighting cock^or two. Wherever he goes, the Filipino takes his game bird with him, leaving his wife and family at home, it need be, for who can tell what chance there may be of fighting a. main or two ' upon the way? The railways now in construction by the American Government will not only very populous parts of tne islaaids, where for 20 miles or more there is ' an almost continuousline of villages, but will also open up v large tracts of \meultivated land. On, these untouched lands it is thought that ■ the natjves, being naturally a homelovihg peo^leij will take up land and work plantations, and thus the new land laws are framed on the basis of .the Philippines for the Filipinos. The area to be held! by any one individual or corporation would be approved by our own Mr M'Nab, it' is limited to 2000 acres, effectually blocking the designs of land-sharking outsiders.

In the absolutely lurid atmosphere which has enveloped the Fortunate Isles j and made copy for many a column of 1 disaster there has lain an effective commentary on the ancient proverb that ' " Fire is a. good, servant , but a, bad master." Probably , we only know a quarter of the actual loss in forest lands, but we know enough to make it quitd clear that the public needs educating anew in the possible criminology of fires. i There are precious few things that have escaped legislation in the Dominion — mii deed, for a free and democratic country, it is amazing how much of our freedom ' consists of legislation. Yet it is evident that the prevention of fires, and the punishment of those guilty of carelessness . in regard to the making and extinguishing of fires, presents a fine field to ingenious legislators bidding for the gratitude of their country. The burning of a " skyscraper " or two is a sordid and, withal, small enough thing to mj^ mind in comparison -<vith the devastation of a forest fire. Still, as mere sensation, one cannot deny the effectiveness of the meagre cablegrams concerning the New York ■ sky-scraper conflagration. Whether the result of the incident will be to briri^ down the height of buildings or to send* up the efficiency of the Fire Brigades^ remains to be Been. Meantime, the mere . rough detaik of the proposed Singer, block, of forty-seven storeys high, reads' os plausibly as poor Wellman's optimistic provision against, every contingency — except failure. The Singer building will, it is claimed, break the world's record (including a certain Tower of Babel). It will stand 612 ft above the street, and, j though the total area of the block is onls 1 26,000 square feet, the Singer building; when finished, will have, "one way or another, floor space equivalent to onestorey buildings covering twenty 6uch i blocks. The. foundations are huge con- ! Crete caissons reaching down 90ft into the ground, and the description of how the promoters of the huge erection claim immunity for it against fire, earthquake, j and hurricane is well worth reading, in I the World's Work. In the light of recent ; events in New York even this extract is of interest : — | Even so-called " fire-proof " wood Las been barred. Nothing but metal, stone, and baked | clay enters into its construction. Even tho small plugs of -wood iisually inserted into the wa. 1 to receive nails used in hanging pictures haVe been excluded. j Cms.

A correspondent who spent his holidays at Ka!«i Point, while giving the Tourist , Department credit for having improved a 1 section of the road there, writes suggesting that there is room for many additional improvements. A shelter-shed for the bothers, tracks through the bush, the cementing and tidying up of tho well at Roaring Bay, and at Kaka Point would, he says, be appreciated by thousands of tourists who make and spend their money in New Zealand. A good deal of deep-sea fishing ir done, and a. jetiy of some sort would be a boon to the fishermen, who have to launcb through tho surf. 1 A straight question wa« put to the ]Waikouaiti Council on the 28th by the Otago Hospital Beard : " Are you prepared to undertake the supervision and isolation ci your indigent folk with infectious dieeases?" It left nothing to the imagina.tion, and no room for an evasivo answer. Councillors got up to talk about it, but in succession ran their heads against this bit of dreadfully plain speaking. The final reply decided on was also straight. In tub* stance ir wa< : '"No: but we'll help tLq health officer to do**so."' Tho question of the amalgamation of Maori Hill— or a part of it— with the «Waikouaiti County received definite settlement? at tho County Council meeting held on tha 28th, when it was decided that such an amalgamation would be against the interest^ of the county. Feeling has recently run rather high on the subject, but the dec cisioft arrived at by the council was unani< mous. The Chairman congratulated big colleagues on having" done their best iof the interests of the ratepayers, and general! satisfaction was expressed kt the matter . being disposed of.