PASSING NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2921, 9 March 1910, Page 5

PASSING NOTES.

(From! Saturday's Daily Times.)

The fact of prime political significance a this week's cables is a fact that doesn't ook political at all. The King leaves v Monday for Paris and Biarritz. That 5 the significant fact. Words couldn't ft y plainer that for the moment, and irobably till after Easter, we are quit f catastrophes. The Parliamentary crisis !av go on simmering, with much sputter nd fume, but the pot will not be allowed boil over- It is part of the sputter , j fume that • the Opposition urge the Electing of the King's taxes, and that Iyp Government refuse.. The financial }ian« is of the Lords' creating -savs Mr Lloyd-George—and their's is i«'res»onsibility. I should have thought lat -it this stage the responsibility is u country's; for it is the country that as denied to the Government the •ttdeet a practicable majority. But on iudcet questions Mr Lloyd-George is ot happy just now - He is more at ease i explaining the composition of German and * n showing that nations nder Protective tariffs feed on offal, [orse-fleah dog-flesh, black bread, and ih*r such-like comestibles.- In a speech ije at York, and reported in The Times ■January 15. he has some quaint sug-

gestions for the feeding of the House of Loi'ds. '" "" ■ . • ,

Very well, let us put them on Indian corn.—(Cheers.) We will have a special trough—(laughter), fit it up in the House of Lords, find give them a real good feed. (Loud laughter.)

Bad though it be, this is a less risky style of polemic than the other. Better insult the House of Lords than insult the Germans. It is- safer.

/ The same Lloyd-George, get him away I from politics, is quite a decent felkiw. A correspondent sends me a speech of Mr Balfour's for the purpose of showing me that Mr Balfour can perpetrate a monstrous sentence containing 100 words; — !of which presently. The occasion was the meeting of a Welsh society, the " Cymmrodorion," whatever that may be; and it fell to Mr Lloyd-George as vicepresident to introduce Mr Balfour, who was to speak on " Welsh Culture." The juxtaposition was odd, but nothing could have gone off better. Good taste, good feeling, genial, kindly, easy of phrase, altogether admirable, —that was the LloydGeorge speech. And this brings in Mr Balfour with his sentence of 100 words, which -ny correspondent thinks reprehensible. Let me quote it. The speech which you have just heard from the. Chancellor of the - Exchequer was. couched in terms so generous, and paints me and my parliamentary performances in colours so flattering, that I confess that, hardened as I am to dealing in public with matters sometimes difficult and sometimes delicate, I really, hardly know how to reply; because the Chancellor of the Exchequer has not dealt with the subjects with which this great gathering has come together—he haa not dealt either with Welsh literatare or Welsh history,—but has confined the whole of the speech which he has made to, not only a generous, but a far too. generous, appreciation of that sphere of activity in which we are both concerned. What is wrong with this sentence ? It is as clear as sunlight, and the test of a sentence is its clearness. I am a shortsentence man myself; nevertheless, for me, reading or listening, a sentence is always of the right length if it doesn't . require me to think twice about its mean-.

Holding session in Dunedin just now is the Society for the Health of Women and Children. This meritorious institution, having been Plunket-nursed through the earlier perils of infancy, has now reached the teething stage. Its gums are still toothless, but it shows the normal instinct for biting;—a coral, or a rubber ring, would serve, were it not that these relics of barbarism ■ are now disallowed. Dropping metaphor, the Society is at odds with the Chief Officer of Health for the Dominion, and answers baok to the '' few ignorant cavillers still left who persistently distort the aims of the Society and belittle all that it takes in hand, but who are now practically a negligible quantity." With which synagogue of scorners permit me

at once to disavow sympathy. With the Chief Health Officer, ditto. The Chief Health Officer and his objectings are a plain case 'of professional jealousy. As for the ignorant cavillers,- why' should they cavil ? I remonstrate with them. The Society, as I have said above, possesses merits. First, it has provided ladies of leisure with something to do. Next, it has produced the Plunket nurse. Wherein her Plunketness consists I am unable to explain. But we may speak of a Wellington boot, of a Gladstone bag; why not of a Plunket nurse? Next it has invented " humanised milk." The true nature of this composition—what the Society does to the milk in the humanising process—may be a trade secret; —I haven't enquired. But I look forward to the time when the use of humaaiised milk will not be restricted to babies. The other day I had a correspondent telling me, in tones of complaint, that ,he suspected his wife and daughters of putting humanised milk into his tea. " Ugh !" he added. Why this shudder ? Milk from the cow, be it remembered, is designed by nature for the stomach of the calf. Yet there are human beings, living under civilisation, who have the hardihood to drink it. Let the shudder of disgust be reserved for that.

To the chief pre-occupation of this meritorious Society there is, it is true, an amusing side; and when a thing, however serious, has a,n amusing side, HeaVen forbid that we should neglect to ■ see it! The S.H.W.C—its name is too long for repetition when life is short —has for its main concern the new and only true art of nursing babies. Now the art of nursing babies is as old as the hills, —older than any hills we . see about Dunedin. It was known to our remote ancestor with pointed ears—the pithecanthropus, 'or. whatever the biologists name him—who swung himself from tree "to tree in the forests of the Upper Tertiary. 'Pithecanthropus must Tiave had a mother who nursed him. Presumably he had also a wife who continued the same office to his children. And yet—such are the paradoxes of science—the only true art of nursing babies has waited through all intervening millenniums for enunciation from the Temple of Wisdom at Seacliff. I find that proposition amusing. I defy anybody not in need of the surgical operation to find it anything "else. I laugh,— but, observe, none the less do I subscribe. Let every reader of this column do the same.

Here is another laughable thing,—it being always understood that we laugh without malice. On Thursday evening, at a lecture that served as a side-show to the S.H.W.C.'s regular session, we were told amongst other hygienic truths thi&:

In a sleeping room there should always be a stream of air, and if two persons slept in. a room, one should sleep-on each ■side of this stream.

The aid of the lantern was sadly wanted here. There should have been thrown on the screen a picture of Darby and Joan so arranged on their chaste connubial couch that a stream of air could pass between them. Perhaps this will be attended' to later. Also the adoption of the hygienic kiss, an invention for which see last week's Witness. A- German doctor, it seems, has been poaching on the preserves of the S.H.W.G Pereant qui ante nos nostra! The hygienic kiss, strictly the carbolic acid kiss, is effected through a screen of silk gauze, which screen, saturated, with a disinfectant, is stretched on.a frame resembling in shape a tennis racket. Persons intending to kiss, or contemplating kissing as a contingency, will provide themselves with this instrument, and can only dispense with its use at the xisk of microbe poisoning. The same doctrinei holds of the -kiseing of 'babies. What is the ' at Karita.ne ? Are the Karitane babies kissed? The public will pause for a reply. And the session of the S.H.W.G. ought not to close without taking this anost serious matter into its deliberatione.

The Gladstone centenary (or St Henry, as a London paper credits one of its correspondents with spelling it) will nowhere be anore fittingly commemorated than in New -Zealand, thinks the Westminster Gazette, —and this for the reason that " New Zealand is a colony in which the great Liberal leader was particularly interested." Really?—is that so? Then New Zealand-was not aware of it. The preat Liberal leader, diagnosed at this distance, was very much a Little-Eng-landcr, his interest limited to social reforms and political exneriments within the area of the British Isles. It is true, I believe, that Bishop Selwyn and he were school chums; and it may be true, as the Westminster avers, that for his speeches in the House of Commons on New Zealand affairs he was posted ud or inspired by Bishop Selwyn. But that must have been in the days of his eaiiv innocence, the days before Gordon and Khartoum, when* as yet Mr W. E. Gladstone was merely Mr W. E. Gladstone and a person of no political importance. The later Gladstone, the great Liberal leader, had barely time in the hurryskurry of his Liberal leading to be aware that New Zealand existed. For any thought that he had of us in the days of his political nonage let us be duly grateful.

The settlement of a section of New Zealand under the direct auspices of the Church of England was a movement in which both Mr Gladstone and his relative. Lord Lyttelton. took a prominent part. Gladstone Park: is a beautiful and spacious rmblic recreation reserve in Christchurch.

A "Gladstone Park." is there? A Hagley Park there is, and the name " Hagley " is connected with the Lytteltons. .But a " Gladstone Park" at Christchurch sets us doubting as to the accuracy of the Westminster Gazette's other facts.

Many Gladstone stories are just now

current in the newspapers, most of them old and risen from the dead. It is pleasant to be reminded how carefully Mrs Gladstone shepherded her Grand Old Man in matters that touched on his popularity. Visiting at Burleigh House, the statesman and his wife were going upstairs from the hall on their arrival. % In the hall two or three housemaids were peeping round the corner to get a sight of the great man, and when Mrs Gladstone eaw them she called down to her bus- . band, "Bow, William,, bow," which accordingly he did with his usual "affability.

Dr Whyte, of U.F., St. George's, Edinburgh, is reported as relating from the pulpit an anecdote of the Gladstone domestic interior. Lord, Ripon—a Roman Catholic—and John Morley—a professed Agnostic —were spending a week-end at Hawarden. On Sunday evening they were seated with the family in the drawing room, when Mr Gladstone disappeared, to return presently with two lighted candlesticks in his hands. Bowing and beckoning to his guests, he led them into another room, set down the candles, placed chairs, shut the door on them, and left them without a word.

It was the time of the terrorism in Ireland, and the expression on Mr Gladstone's face led them to believe a despatch had just arrived from Ireland. But in a few momenta the sound of psalm-singing was heard from the drawing room, where Mr Gladstone was holding family worship. In a quarter of an hour Mr Gladstone returned, a,nd took his guests back to the drawing room, they appreciating his respect for their feeiings. " But as we sat in the parlour," said Lord Morley, relating the incident to Dr Whyte, " we felt like lost and cast-out souls.''

Not unnaturally. Let us hope it proved a means of grace to the pair of them. Nothing helped more to endear the Gladstone of the later'phase to the affections of the Scottish people than his known faithfulness in the matter of family worship. Hence we can understand the meticulous pai'ticuiarity of the Highland mini&ter When praying for him: —" Bless that |7reat statesman, the Prime Minister of £his great Empire, who is now sitting in the third pew from the pulpit."

Here is a story—not a Gladstone story —told for election purposes by Dr Macnamara, secretary to the Admiralty; the moral being, as he explained, that each good Liberal should do his own part well instead of rolying on others.

A pastor in a Scotch village had baen

at the manse 30 years, and a number of the congregation thought they would make him a present. So 1 they elected each to bring a pannikin of the fine malt whisky for which the countryside was famous. Each came with his pannikin, the contents were duly poured into a big flagon and" formally presented. In due course the minister, oromising himself a treat, sampled the liquor,, to make, however, a -surprising discovery. It was water, pure and undented. .

They had all done the same thing, ye'll observe, each canny Scot hoping to smuggle in his own mutchkin of .deceit undetected. It is a weak- spot in -the story that he must have counted on the integrity of the others. What reason had he for thinking Sandy and -Donald less canny than himself? However, it is not for us to be critical. In retailing this delectable yarn I take shelter behind the original inventor, who, ye'll obsairve again, is himself a Scot, or at least has a Mac to his name. To libel the Scotch with impunity ye need to be Scotch yer ain sel'. Civis.