PASSING NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 3006, 25 October 1911, Page 11

PASSING NOTES.

(From Saturday's D.dly Times.)

"L'Etat, c'est moi." A parallel between the Eight Hon. Sir Joseph Ward, Bart., and Louis XIV is tempting but illusory. There are points in which comparison would be to the disadvantage of Louis/ Booted and spurred, hunting-whip in hand, he disciplined his Parliament of Paris, and "when the unhappy President mumbled something about '' interests ,of the State," snapped at him with, "The State - !—I am the State!" Very fine in its way; but Sir Joseph's way is finer. At the flourish of a whip invisible Sir Joseph's parliamentary pack come whimpering to heel, with an abject wag of their sails. It was never so seen in the Parlement do Paris. But in the am the State," our New Zealand Premier and . the Grand Monarque hit it to a nicety. Discredit Sir Joseph in his Budget arithmetic and you discredit the country. He and the country are one. His figures won't add up; his assets have got into his liabilities, his liabilities into his assets; but you mustn't point it out, or where is your patriotism? Do you want to ruin the country? Allowance may 'be made for the natural touchiness of a treasurer under audit; but let the Opposition audit Sir Joseph, and New Zealand itself is in the crucible. He and New Zealand are one. L'Etat, c'est moi! An attempt this week to correct a flagrant error in his figures generated an hour's wrangle, which may be summed up in half-a-dozen lines: Sir Joseph Ward deelarod that members of the Opposition used every effort to discredit the country. Mr Allen: That is untrue. s , Mr G. M. Thomson: Clear up this £2,ooo,ooo.—("Hear, hear.") Y . And we may leave it at that.

It is too early to dismiss the Tripoli affair as a comic opera war. There are ghastly possibilities as yet undeveloped. Otherwise we seem to be assisting at an adaptation of "The Mikado." At Constantinople, the Grand Vizier in opening Parliament announced a policy of " peace and mutual confidence." Italy not excluded, apparently. Per contra, "a league of hatred is being organised, the members of which will swear to do their utmost to injure Italy." By oaths both loud and deep. Somehow this vaudeville situation at Constantinople is considered favourable to the resurrection of the exSultan —Abdul of the big, big D. He has either escaped from wherever he is, or is about to escape, or is thought capable of being about to escape. At this juncture the Powers, supposed to be incubating mediation, announce* that inasmuch as Italy wants one thing, and Turkey the opposite thing, there is no room for mediation. From which sage deliverance we may deduce the doctrine that there is room for mediation only when the parties are agreed. Finally (for the present) Italy in the act and article of swallowing Tripoli intimates that as soon as deglutition is complete she will offer "financial compensation," amount not stated. Also that by way of argument for its acceptance she will blockade Smyrna and seize a couple of islands off the Dardanelles. That if these amiable proceedings are resented, she will not only pay nothing at all, but. will exact a "war indemnity." Probably for "moral and intellectual damage," after the pattern of President Ivruger. It is a mad world, my masters.

Is alcohol a food ? The students of the « Otago Medical School, demonstrating prohibitionally in the Garrison Hall, sayNo ; Archbishop Carr, of Melbourne, demonstrating in the same sense to his own flock, says No; the Education Board, by placards stuck up in the" public schools, Bays No; the secretary of the No-license party says No. What this collective authority lacks in weight it makes up in emphasis. Alcohol is NOT a food. Well what then ? - Are there no condiments that are not foods? What about pepper and mustard and the piquant contributions of the cruet stand ? Is it for nutriment that we smoke tobacco ? W 6 smoke tobacco because we like to smoke tobacco. For the same reason and with the same justification we may drink a glass of bear. But, as a matter of fact, ft turns out that alcohol is a food.

The leading authority to-day is

Arthur R. Cushny, M.A., M.L\, F R.S., Professor of Pharmacology in the University of London; examiner in the Universities of London, Manchester, Oxford, and Leeds. In his " Text-book of Pharmacology and Therapeutics," fifth edition, revised, 1910, Cushny writes: "Is alcohol a food ? This has long been discussed, and that with more passion and prejudice than are generally elicited pharmacological questions. ... In undergoing combustion alcohol gives up energy to the body, and therefore is technically a food.'' Discussing related questions, he says: "The question might be raised whether alcohol does not require an amount of energy for its absorption equal to that liberated by its combustion." After quoting experiments, he concludes: "A certain amount of energy is required for the absorption, but this ifi not greater than that required for the absorption of any other form of food.' Under the heading " Therapeutic uses," he says: "In sudden chill, with a tendency to fever, alcohol is often of great benefit, especially when taken in the form of brandy or whisky diluted with hot water. Its efficacy here would seem to be duo to the relief of the congestion of the internal organs by the return of the blood to the skin." Again: "Alcohol is of value as a mild hypnotic, a comparatively small quantity taken before retiring being often sufficient to secure quiet and refreshing sleep. Beer or spirits and water is generally used for this purpose."

My correspondent- adds : " These halfdozen sentences from a lengthy discussion are sufficient to show the position of our leading pharmacologist. There is no higher authority." I feel obliged by so timely a communication; though pharmacology (if that is the name of it) merely corroborates common sense and universal experience. Once more the ancient maxim holds : " Securus judica-t orbis terrarum."

The French have recently lost- a battleship, La Liberte, blown up at Toulon, and a picture, Leonardi's Monna Lisa, stolen from the Louvre. I am incapable of the cynical suggestion that more tears are being shed over the picture than over the battleship; but certain it is that in the one case French pride keeps a stiff upper lip,—as if to say to the neighbours, "A battleship the lees, that's nothing!" —-whilst in the other case French vanity squirms at the thought, "We must be the laughing-stock of Europe!" A Paris correspondent writes: "'We are preyed upon by incompetent functionai'ies,'— such is the lament; 'we have twice as many as any other country, and ten times more incompetent. They have not only lost the finest jewel of any art collection, but they have covered the country with ridicule.' " And he continues thus : The Louvre is still shut, as if in mourning, and a crowd stands outside gazing at the laconic notice: " The museum is closed to-day." The crowd is at once distressed, derisive,, and "angry, impressed by the universal fame of the vanished picture, and all art lovers and men in" the street openly curse or mock thu officials of the Louvre. The latter, when coming to the museum, have to run the gauntlet of the crowd. They are loudly ridiculed or abased as they pass, and they hurry in through the doors that remain closed to the public. "If you keep the place shut, somebody will be running off with the Venus de Milo," jeers a man in the crowd. "It is when you shut up the museum the pictures get stolen. Lot in the public to • do the policing you cannot do yourselves." Another man, without saying a word, keeps shaking his clenched fist at the windows of the m use am, where officials can be seen standing.

i It is a long day since I last saw this miracle of art, and my remembrance is less of the picture itself than of the feeling I had about it. The feeling I presumed to have about it was surprise at its enormous celebrity. Leonardi's Monna Lisa is one of the three or four most famous pictures fn the world. And yet, but for the crowd at gaze in front of it, always there,-you might pass it unnoticing. It is a laded portrait in a low scheme of colour, a lady, not not in her first youth—Monna (that is, Madonna) Lisa> third wife of the Florentine Zanobi del Giocqndo, whence by a pun "La Giacoiida," "La Joconde ; ". the Jocund, a popular name of the picture. For "Madame Lisa's main charm is her smile—the smile of shallow complacency : as I read it. But, no: I must be wrong. The Valois King, Francis I, a judge in such matters, bought that smile for 12,000 French livres, scraping up for the purpose his last penny. The Parisians gloatingly ! calculate that at accumulated compound : interest Monna Lisa's purchase price re- ' presents to-day a sum which in British i coin would be eighteen hundred million J pounds sterling. Napoleon _I, as good ! a connoisseur as Francis, was so j enamoured of this expensive smile that j.he transferred it to his bedroom in the i Tuileries. After Waterloo, enshrined | once more in the Louvre, Monna Lisa and | the smile she smole for the Florentines of i four centuries ago became for gay Paree : an object of worship. | On public days Monna, Lisa seemed i to have a morbid fascination for many i men. The attendants watch them often gazing for hours in a kind of trance at the mysteriously smiling Florentine. Actually numbers of letters, full of love, despair, appeals, and laments, have bean in the past received at the museum, addressed, "La Jcoonde an Louvre." Has the mad writer of one of these letters planned and carried out with that successful method madmen often exhibit the abduction of Monna Lisa? Perhaps some maniac is now sitting in his room gloating alone over the smile of " La Giooonda." I The Monna Lisa smile is " enigmatic," j puzzling, provocative; it "intrigues" | you, as the French say, —baffles you, I haunts you. To get it back from the : spoiler what sacrifice too great! By one of the best-known (and least-respected) ' of French journalists the following letter - has been addressed to the Paris press : » There is but one way of recovering

the "Gioconda." It is to offer 500,000 f, and, if necessary, 1,000,000 f, together with absolute immunity, to anyone who will bring- it back. The Society of the Friends of the Louvre, to which i belong, would supply the sum by means of a subscription. (Signed) Henri Rochkfort. I have a feeling for art; but, as thin*,./ are, I should think the million francs better employed in replacing the lost battleship.

Man "Civis"! (please look over the familiarity, I seem to ha© leant ye a lang time) when we are getting such a awfu' spat© of politics and prohibition a bit trickle of fun is a pleasant change. Most 'Scotsmen can enjoy a joke, even when it is against themselves; but I feel sure it will also make " itber folk" laugh when they think of those douce Scots, the chiefs and presidents of the Scottish societies here, and half a dozen pied pipers, welcoming a comic opera company who, it is said, have not a Soot' on their roll, and who have taken in vain the najne of a distinguished Scottish regiment in order to burlesque the advance agent of " The Gay Gordons " must bo a pawkie chiel." HIELANDMAN. The "Gay Gordons," officially welcomed by the heads/of the Scottish community, are not Gordons at all; —is that the point ? Then it is also part of the joke. The less they are Gordons the more they are gay. There is record of an amateur Othello who blacked himself all over. "Entering into the spirit of the part," he said. This thoroughness is not usually necessary, or M. Rostand should have staged his " Chanticler " 'with barn-yard poultry. So far from that, I have heard of a Freak Museum Red Indian, painted and plumed, with scalps at his belt, who when asked if he would have a drink, replied in the brogue of Cork, or Cark, — Faix an' he would thin. The fundamental convention of the theatre is that things are not what they seem.

A correspondent sends me a story "apropos of the St. Margaret Hostel rumpus," though the apropos is not very apparent. A certain country woman went into Wellington with her butter and eggs. Being a Catholic, she wanted to end with a visit of devotion to the nearest church. She found one, entered, made her genuflection, and maybe took out her beads. "Excuse me, madam," said the caretaker, " but this isn't a Catholio Church." The poor woman, confueed, says, " What church is it, then?" "St. Peter's," says he. "Dear me, when did St. Peter become a Pr<> testant?" says sac, and exit.

I may cap this by a smoking room story I once heard from the present Chief Justice (who doesn't smoke, poor man; may his shadow never be less!). An Irish priest was explaining to some of the finest pisantry in the world the total want of scriptural authority for Protestantism. " Didn't St. Paul write an epistle to the Romans?"—said he. " Troth an' he did. But whin did St. Paul write an epistle to the Protestants? Till me that!" i, Cxvis.