PASSING NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2913, 12 January 1910, Page 5

PASSING NOTES.

(From Saturday's D.iily Times.) To the Union Company and Captain Newton the Waikare affair is a core blow and discouragement, no doubt; but not without some compensating kudos. The people were got out of the sinking ship in an orderly way, yet with most commendable celerity. Swift and sure was the handling of the boats, and there can be no better test of seamanship. It is evident that .the Union Company is well served. Sir Joseph Ward picks out for praise the stewardesses, who doubtless deserve every good word they get: but it looks as though there were a similar deserving all round. For honourable mention first and last are the engine-room contingent, for whom, as for nobody else so much in the whole affair, duty meant danger. Altogether the story of the Waikare, even in the first confused and overlapping accounts that fill this morning's paper, must anneal to one's national pride. As for the passengers, they are nothing to be commiserated; I think them in luck. They have completed the Sounds trip according to procramme, and have had a : first-class shipwreck thrown in, —a story for the fireside and for all the years that are to be.

Forsan «t haec olim meminisse juvabit. Thus, in the wake of a much more serious affair, that incurable optimist the pious Aeneas, always putting a good face upon affairs :—" After this, my lads, you will have really something tb talk about." In the Waikare case there are the reef, the wreck, the boats, the desert island, the camp in the forest primeval, the rescue by the war-ship, the return to civilization, all within the space of eight-and-forty hours. Crusoe and his rivals the Swiss Family Robinson hardly contrived to get more romance, and spent years over it. The Waikare adventurers emerge without a scratch; and, although in that circumstance there is nothingromantic, it will help to confirm them in the true nautical faith, which is that there are few places where life and limb are safer than on board a well-found steamship.

I have read Mr IT. D. Bedford's fourcolumn address on Social Reform, and find it good. Not that I agree with it or with more than five per cent, of it.' You may find a sermon of Cardinal Newman's good, likewise an address of Mrs Besant's, yet . agree with neither. MiBedford discourses of political economy, and political economy is as badly split into sects as theology. Protectionist and Preatrader, Socialist and Individualist are to each other as the Roman Cardinal is to the T'heosophist; metaphorically sneaking, each desires to cut the other's throat. So the reasons for Avhich I find Mr Bedford good need not in the least require me to agree with him. Talkine ae a young man to young men, he exhibited all the virtues proper to the part, and most of the vices. That is why I find him good. His audience was the University Christian Union, a. body with which the hope of this country is bound up; and which, aware of that fact, retires every year for a season into the wilderness for meditation on its destiny and mutual exhortation thereanent ; —this year to Marton, somewhere in the recesses of the North Island. And so, far from the madding crowd, vox clamantis in deserto, Mr Bedford could take on the tone and manner of a Hebrew prophet. Cocksureness is not the- word ; it was inspiration. His address might have been an Address by the prophet Isaiah, if the prophet Isaiah had been educated at the Otaigo University.

And caught young. For this divine ' •afflatus has no quarrel with the errors of youth. It is curious to see how well they go together. To imagine the present time the most portentous time since time began seems to me an error of youth. It is the opposite of the laudator temporis acti error, which is the error of age. The old man dwells in the past, exaggerates the past; the man will hardly so much as allow that there has been aaiy past. Things never really began to hum until to-day. Everywhere to-day there is "social unrest." "The noise, of strikes and rumours of strikes are con- .

stantly in our ears." " Social forces of immeasurable power are at play. Around us whirl racing floods.' "The discordant clangour of it all roars in on one incessantly." Thus Mr Bedford. Let me beg him to believe that the roar and the clangour and the whirl are no new thing. Long before the Newcastle strike there were Chartist mobs, and Reform Bill riots, and French Revolutions. And before that there were Jack Cade risings, and peasant revolts ;—the Jacquerie, for one—(if Mr Bedford will allow me to remind him)—a fourteenth century affair, with a whirl and a roar and a clangour and a slaughter that cost 100,000 lives The Gracchi and other patriots perished for better land laws' sometime B.C. ; and, as for strikes, the fable of The Belly and the Members, which is still political economy of the best, was used to quell a strike of the Roman plebs under the Early Republic. This social Avar is, in short, the most ancient of all wars, and the most persistent. It means that you have something that I have not, that you are the minion of fortune, the rest of us derelicts and outcasts. Thus understood, the social war is as old as Cam and Abel.

But since the world began only f**W" day, there is no reason why it should not be perfected to-morrow. Not by the tedious processes of evolution, with freedom broadening slowly down from precedent to precedent. Nothing that only broadens slowly will serve the turn of your young reformer: nor anything in the nature of a "process." With Mr Bedford it is to be "the battering ram and the battle-axe,":—the sword of the Lord and of Gideon! Our affairs should be entrusted to " the sanctified and instructed intelligence," examples of which may be found in " men like Dr Clifford of London, and Dr Waddell of Dunedin" ; two worthy ministers of the Gospel, one of whom has announced, L believe, that the crossing-sweeper and himself, since each gives his best to the State, should be equally rewarded. A New Zealand bishop has committed himself to the same doctrine ; but I have not heard that he shares his income of four figures -with his curates whose incomes are of three. These pulpit Socialists are excellent preachers but mighty poor performers. Yet only to the idealist can we look for salvation, "We are cursed with the practical man," —the jnan of compromise. Abhor the peace arising from splitting the difference with the ■ adversary. Spurn the ease and infamy of the lesser of two evils.

The whole hog or none. Those oldworld sayings about the possibility of the half being more than the whole, and the best being the enemy of the good, are devices of the enemy. Of two evils choose—not the less, but—neither. The fitting comment on which is a negro story that lit up the Budget debate in the House of Lords, a story to,; be found in the London correspondent's letter, but too good to pass with a single telling. Lord Balfour of Burleigh, speaking for the Unionist Freetraders, ; ; ; said their dilemma was a choice between."two evils— Protection and the Budget. : ■.";

It reminded him of the negr.p evangelist who announced that in life there were, only two paths—one leading to death and the other to damnation. On© of his audience remarked, " In dat case dis niggali will hab to take to de woods."' —(Laughter.) 'My Lords, I propose to take to the woods. —(Renewed laughter.)

The trouble and wrong of human society, ancient and modern, may be presented in a typical case, which case, as Mr Bedford thinks and with him the multitude, is nothing leg's than damnable. It is enough to make one's heart bleed to read that the Duke of Westminster draws en income of £500,000 a year for doing nothing, and with the money can go on the world's market and command the products of the year's industry to that value, while Hodge draws an income of 15s a week, or less than £4O a year, for driving the plough and harvesting the wheat. It is a. national crime that one who renders no service should be so rich and one who renders the greatest of services should be so poor.

Just now there is a slump in dukes, says one of Mr Lloyd-George's colleagues. " He did not believe there was a man in the country at the present moment who would accept a dukedom if it were offered him." That may be; but the fact need not prevent our saying that if the Duke of Westminster has £500,000 a year he has too much —much too much. I wish he would give some of it to me. A modest £IOOO a year would never be missed. Would I accept it ? Like a bird ! lam not proud. But that is not the point. The point is that the Duke's £500,000 must be either spent or invested. He doesn't wrap it in a napkin and bury it. Being either spent or invested, it is employing labour and paying wages, every pound of it. The economic result is the same whether you have one man with £500,000 or 500,000 men with £1 apiece. Unless kept in a stocking the money is either invested or spent; in other words, it employs labour and pays wages. To connect as cause and effect the Duke's excess of wealth with the poverty of the ploughman is a pro,digious fallacy.

" But dukes live in luxury." And so do we all. Is it permitted to picture Mr Bedford in Sunday blacks and a top-hat? Then I ask on what principle lie goes

beyond a Mosgiel suit of hodden-grey and a tam-o'-shanter ? The argument that justifies the two useless buttons at the back of his Sunday ccai mtuld justify Sardahapalus. In point of luxary, I mean; I say nothing of justifying th* too much. You may have too much of any good thing..—of "Passing Notes" on political economy, as I bethink me too late. One word more and I have done ! The one word is that bogey word—" unearned increment." The Duko of Westminster does nothing to earn his annual half-million. His strength is to sit still. The growth of London earns it for him.

And we are all in like condemnation. The jjunedin man has the commodities and conveniences of a civilised life. What has he done that he should thus differ from the man of the uack-blocks ? He has done nothing. He gets his commodities and conveniences as the Duke of Westminster gets his annual half-million. If the population of Dunedin were doubled, there would follow a general rise in values. Not town allotments only would be worth more, but the business of the storekeeper and of the merchant, the practice of the lawyer and of the doctor; the Daily Times would have more subscribers, " Passing No ties " more' readers, and perhaps I should be paid five shillings a line instead of half a crown. Unearned increment? The doctrine of unearned increment is a doubleedged tool, a tool of' many edges, not for careless handling. Let the fumbier beware !

The London papers have found a good thing, a world of good things, in the re-cently-published biography of Sir Wilfred Lawson. At this distance, we knew of Sir Wilfred Lawson as a belligerent teetotaller, instant in season and out of season. But there was a good deal more to know. Sir Wilfred Lawson was a baronet of ancient lineage and a large rent-roll, and yet withal a Radical in politics, a LittleEnglander, and much besides that was queer. He was for local option, secular education, manhood suffrage, and .Down with the House of Lords! What madia him precious, however, to politicians of both sides was his native gift of humour. The papers cite as an example of " perfect parliamentary invective" his attack on his own party leaders, the Gladstone Government, for bombarding Alexandria/No Tory Government could have done ■what the Liberal Government did yesterday in bombarding those forts. If such a thing had been pro posed, what would have happened? We should have . ]-~d lay right honc.u-able and; learned friend the Secretary of State for thi lionw Department (Harccurt) stumping the country and denouncing governnien( by ultimatum. We should have had ih< nobte Marquis, the Secretary of State foi India (Hartington), coming down and moving a resolution condemning theS'Q proceedings being taken behind the back of Parliament. We should have had the President of the Board of Trade (Chamberlain) summoning the caucuses. W* should have had the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Bright) declaiming in the Town Hall of Birmingham against the wicked Tory Government; and, as for the Premier (Gladstone), wa all know there would not have been a railway train passing a roadside station at which he would not have pulled up to proclaim non-intervention as the duty of the Government. Later, as his manner was, he dropped into verse : The Grand Old Man to the war has gone. In the Jingo ranks you'll find him; He went too fast for Brother John, But Chamberlain's still behind him. " Land of Fools," said the Grand Old Man), " Let nothing I do surprise thee; And if any blame be easit on my plan, The Gra,nd Old Man defies thee." This choice doggerel, passed round th« House, cams welcome everywhere as a joy and a. refreshment. The same merit belongs to his Hanky-Panky lines on the unnatural alliance between Balfour and Chamberlain:— Arthur and Joe are two pretty men, They declare their affection again a.nd again; When Arthur proclaims a thing to b« " " so," " That's just what I think," comes tin answer from Joe. " The name of Protection w-e stoutli abjure, Free Traders at heart we both are tfc. be sure." " Where thou goest I go," exclaims Joey Hanky> " And I go where you go," replies Arthur Panky. There are many stories; e.g.. on the Bible in schools " without note or comment." I have heard of an old woman who Lad clear views on this point:. Her husband was blind, and someone said it must be a great deprivation to him, not to be able to read. To which she replied, "Oh, no; I reads She Bible to him every night, and many's the bit J puts in for his good!" .. Replying to a Tory Privy Coxuicillor who had just made a speech on a Liquor bill, and who had "a perpetual appearance oi inebriety," he said " The right honourabh gentleman was evidently full of his subject.*' The Tory boast during an election was, "The flowing tide is with us." Said Sir Wilfred, " The flowing bowl is with them." "They talk of the flowing tide; then what I say, gentlemen, is Dam the flowing tide!" I take over these little plums just as I find tnem. They are common property, and as good to lauah. at here as elsewhere. ____________ Civi?.