PASSING NOTES.

Otago Witness, 1 June 1910, Page 5

PASSING NOTES.

(From Saturdays Daily Times.)

Kaiser William appears to have gone home from the funeral in a subdued and penitent frame of mind. Indeed, if the papers tell true, we might almost think him the subject of an evangelical conversion. Conversing with the French Minister for Foreign Affairs, M. Pichon,_ he spoke of peace, of humanity, of civilisation, of his good resolutions in behoof of all three. "In a tone of evident sincerity," adds the cable reassuringly. It is not said that M. Pichon was heard to murmur—Alsace-Lorraine. For 40 years now Alsace-Lorraine has been German; but 40 years is as nothing in the life of a nation. The Kaiser -eulogising peace to the French Foreign Minister is the highwayman wishing well to the wayfarer whose purse he has just pocketed. Pax vobiscmn ! —says he ; —Let bygones be byo'ones! He is the revivalist convertee who —as the story goes —boasted to his friends of sins forgiven. Said one of them —" Then I may expect that £5 you owe me." " Not at all!" replied the convert. " The Lord has forgiven me that too." This is pretty nearly the Kaiser in relation to. France. And, as respects Great Britain, we might listen with complete satisfaction to the Kaiser preachingpeace but for the bludgeon which he holds—firm-gripped, and only half-con-cealed—behind his back.

_ Mr Keir Hardie as British Representative in Egypt and successor to Lord Cromer wcm.ld seem (somewhat out of place. Yet it is a veritable Keir Hardie that we seem to have got in Sir Eldon Gorst. The Mufti, ot head man of the Cairo mosques, with a fanatical following of sheiks and mcllahs, hopes to clutch from the gallows the assassin of Boutros Pacha; putting forward ns reasons why he should not be hanged .a series of legal objections that must have come from° a Mahometan "Alice in Wonderland." For example, that under Mahometan law, since Mahomet knew nothing of pistols, killing by pistol shot • cannot' be murder. But the Mufti, spite of the suggestion in his name, is no fool. His reliance is not on his preposterous law points, but on the supposed weakness of the Asquith Government and the known sympathies of its representative in Egvpt. For Sir Eldon Gorst is the Khedive's man out and_ out. and a friend of the Egyptian Nationalists. Blazing incredibilities these, you think. Mv a.uthoritv is the haturdny Review of April 16, and there can only be a slender chance that the Saturday Review is lying, and a still slenderer thai it doesn't know what it is talking about.

Details which are not wanting, fall outside the scope of this column. I can make room, however, for one or two of the more picturesque «>rt. We have Sir e?u 9,° rst B lvin S a banquet in honour ot the German Consul and in celebration of a Budget speech bv Mr Llovd George; at which banquet, within the'hearing of most of the notables of Cairo then'and there present, he informed his German friend that the British were not a fighting' nation and must soon lose command of the sea. when all our colonies and Oriental possessions would become independent. Sir Eldon Gorst " consistently refrains from attending religious worship, openly professes atheism, and speaks contemptuously of the religion of his fellow countrymen." Mr Keir Hardie. it may be remembered, declares that he gets his odious principles from Christianity: but there is another trait in which Sir Eldon Gorst manifestly conforms to the Keir Hardie type. " When the Dnke of Connaught reached Cairo. Sir Eldon Gorst received him in a travelling cap and a rough motoring dress. It "is true this costume was appropriate to the vehicle which conveyed him to the station, for he came on a motor bicycle. Could anything be more discourteous, on the one side to the brother of the Sovereign, or more foolish on the other, if we consider the necessity of maintaining some dignitv in the eyes of a race which sets so much store on appearances?" After some deadly allegations of neglect in relation to the police and the Boutros Pacha murder, the Saturday Review article ends thus : W<& have no party interest in bring-

ing these things to light. Sir Elclon G-orsl -.v&s appointed by a Literal Government, but i;c oorr.fti from a Coiisarvstivx- stock, am' haa always calloii himself, a Conservativ*. 'Whatever his this? cr his party, he rcir.si lie wcallwl. It is little icy to remember ii:at Sir Eldon Got si is a New £*-ala rider. On the mother's side ho is a grandson of the Rev. Lorenzo .Moore, at one Isme wsli known in Dunedin.

Scotch stories turn on two subjects—ministers and whisky. These '.veto the subjects which North Country gossip a century back laid most under contribution; the two subjects were themselves related, the one often containing the other —the minister the whisky. I am quoting or paraphrasing from the Edinburgh fleview, April number, article "A Century of Scottish Life "; and the Edinburgh.' on its own midden-head, is an authority not to be gainsaid. Says ihc writer :*" Temperance was no part of the older Evangelicalism. l)r Webster, leader of the party in the eighteenth century, is said to have been ' accounted excellent company even by those of dissolute manners, while, being a fivebottle man, he could lay them all under the table.' " This worthy held the intelligence of his own party in slight esteem, and lamented the necessity of voting with fools while he drank with gentlemen. In some quarters, however, there seems to have been a public opinion adverse to the five-bottle divine. " What wad the fowk say gin I tell't them I fand ye in sic a predicament, minister ?'' asked the elder who came upon his spiritual pastor staggering home from a convivial party in the small hours of the morning. " Man, they'd say ye were a leear," was the reply. From which it may, be inferred that the minister was " nae that fou "; also that his parishioners had a standard of ministerial rectitude. But practical preaching was counted cold and legal. "If there's an ill text in a' the buik, that creature's aye sure to tak' it," complained an ancient dame of the congregation when her minister had taken for his text a passage bearing on conduct. Lord Melbourne himself —who thought things were coming to a pretty pass when religion invaded private life—couldn't have been more disgusted.

From the same gossiping article I cull a story relating to the accession of the last George'—the last before the present, who may not himself be the last. Sir Henry Moncrieff, Evangelical leader and a staunch Whig, praying in public on the accession of the new Sovereign, George IV (1820), put it thus:—"o Lord, stablish his heart in righteousness, and in the principles of the glorious revolution of sixteen hunner an' echty-eeht." Whether George IV understood what those principles were may be doubted; it may also be doubted whether in 1820 he was not already past praying for. " A bad son, a bad husband, a bad father, a bad subject, a bad monarch, and a bad friend," is Walpole's summing up of this George in his " England after 1815." In illustration of which comprehensive badness I take another Scotch story from the Edinburgh. In the Regency time lived Mrs Robert Dun-das, an old lady, mother of the well-known commander. One of her daughters when reading the newspaper to her stumbled on a paragraph which stated that a lady's reputa-. tion had suffered from some -indiscreet talk by the Prince of Wales (George IV). Up she of fourscore sat, and. with a significant shake of her withered fist and a keen voice,—" the dawmed villain! Does lie kiss and tell?"

Mataura, 16i.1i May, 1910. Dear "Civis,"—ls the attraction of gravity greater on water than on land, or vice versa?—Yours faithfully, Wayback. Ingenuous simplicity ; —but, before laughing at it, please consider how things must look to the natural intelligence unsophisticated as yet by schools and schoolmasters. Falling bodies reach the earth sooner when falling through air than when falling through water; and there are some bodies that will not fall to the earth through water at all. They float on the top. If we brought to these facts the loose logic which makes some people believe in Christian Science, in Prohibition, in the Ward Ministry, we might conclude that gravitation varied with the presence or absence of water. Perhaps some kindly pundit will enlighten " Wayback " on these mysteries, while I attend to the chastening of other correspondents now waiting.

For example:— Milton, 18th May, 1910. Dear " Civis,"—l was amused and entertained with your remarks about young Lochinvar's equestrian feat; but what do you think of the uncanny power of the human eye hinted at in the following extract from another work by the same author: " The cross, thus formed, he <ield on high. With wasted hand and haggard eye " ? ("Lady of the Lake," 111, 8.) Yours truly, B. L. D. Nothing wrong. "Wasted hand" is instrument; "haggard eye" accompanying circumstance, —if an eye may be a circumstance. There remains, however, a point to notice. Dealing with human organs of vision the modern poet is an. "arbitrary gent." As often as not he makes man a Cyclops. Thus Scott in the couplet above; and thus Byron in the following familiar quatrain : 'Tis sweet to hear the watch-dog's honest . bark, Bay deep-mouthed welcome as we draw near home ; 'Tis sweet to know there is an eye will mark Our coining, and grow brighter when we come. The eye of the waiting wii ■, shall w;e say? We might, were it not unsafe to assume anything in respect of Byron's domestic personnel. But, whoever she may have been, it would be equally unsafe to infer that the lady in the. mind's eye of the poet had only one eye of her own.

I It has come at last, a.s I it v.ould I —an Ode to the Gomel. And juat in ;' ii:RP. A week Infer, thy »<»ssibility of | p:tn?lng if, to ?I:e comet's iaij v."o;;W hav« ! Lussixi for ov<v, -that is to spy for 75 .ycitl's, vli'ioh is the s.-illiC thingDear " Csyi'S,''—i »J« just going to cut up it Witr.uss for trapping paper 10-day, when I c*ugn; sight of '' iV'winjf .N<>lc*." Y<>in sa» ooitvpluidt or. th« j di.-sitnciinn'.ing natu:o o: acie>« tsiSo t!wri*s, iu rs I lie comet r>speo;»l]y. ! itifule irro wiindsr why you never ;ispired ■ "-f'-''" ! , !!<v '' il *° Perhaps yon cut yenv i niur short, jl'.iwfv'ar, the exigencies of i rabbi! ims,' kt-.»p nj.e from even a nedding j acquaii:t:i>H'« with the barber, so I Ihoughl ! might <);:■ the job for you. It might afford you s-omc- excuse to go off pop. Eabeiter. I Earnsoletigh. tkk <:o:.;j:t yclept halley. |f"Ah! Great eyed wanderer from th' eterne's | vast shore! Hast none to bear thy fierce-swept robe, as wh?r. j With wings of light thou speedest past our ken ? ! Stay in the smile cf Venus, her adore! iSTor trace thy lovelorn travels evermore. Fairer than she must lure thee thither, then?— Diviner far,. —unseen, unheard cf men Must be the Forms on which thy gaze must pore. Ye stars, of old, were peens to heaven's light. . Ye comets fated kingdoms when ye came. Gone the romance, the hush of ancient night. The know-all day is here, sans God, and! tame, Man's at the perihelion now, like you, Ye stars around! What course will He pursue!" I don't understand the poetry.—not all of : it. But, then, I don't understand thecomet. Anyhow, these lines are not for the wasiepnpe? basket. They are both too bad ,and too good. Civis.