PASSING NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 3016, 3 January 1912, Page 11

PASSING NOTES.

(From Saturday's Daily Times.)

< As totted up by statistic fiends, the British bill for sport reaches sixty millions sterling or thereabouts; which is nearly thirty shillings a year for every man, woman, and child in the Three Kingdoms. k I do not - consider it excessive. Sport is the mark of a holiday, and holidays are necessary to sport. Tou cannot hunt, or shoot, or fish, run a horse, or sail a yacht, without for the time giving up what you call “business.” Nor on any other terms can you play cricket, or football, or bowls, or tennis. Every form of honest sport means a clean break between work and play. It means a holiday, and of holidays we are entitled to as many as we can afford. Deep-set within us is the holiday-making instinct. Many waters cannot quench this love, neither can the floods drown it. Beneath umbrellas w T 6 paddle about the sloppy streets, in and out of the Christxnas-card and knick-knack shops, pathetically resolute to exact our Merry Christmas and our Happy New Year. AH this is good and commendable. Let us work when we work, let us play when we play. What is bad and condemnablo (“damnable” were the better word) is the opposite of this—the “ca’ canny” doctrine, socalled ; a doctrine which the spirit of the season forbids my imputing to our New Zealand labour unions, but which is- professed without reserve by labour unions elsewhere. It is the doctrine that work and play may be mixed and amalgamated. Or if not work and play, work and makebelieve. The quick workman is to slacken dowri to the slowest. Who is he, that he should be quicker than his neighbour? The smart worker must idle without seeming to idle, that the lazy worker and the loafer may be kept in countenance. Piecework is ruled out, because in piece-work a man makes the best of himself ,• whereas the cardinal law of unionism is that a man must not make the best of himself but “ca’ canny” and take things easy. From which detestable doctrines, were they universal, nothing but national ruin could come. Holidays as many as you can get and as complete as you can make them; but let work be work and, play be play. Appropriate to which sentiment is an extract (sent me by a correspondent and lying in my drawer for weeks) from “England and the English,” by Price Collier, a keen-sighted American critic: The only labour that counts for anything in the world has always been, and always will bo, born of pain. That is its glory. The nearer labour ■ comes to being a sacrifice of self, the nearer the labourer comes to being a saint and a hero. Labour is dignified only when it ceases to watch the clock, and when duty calls is willing to bear a cross. Wherever and whenever the individual or any class in the community, whether rich or poor, baulks at labour, at pain, at sacrifice, at the cross, in short, you have in that individual and in that class a menace to the community and to the State. And it is this "very individual, and this same class, that the professional philanthropist, the political and economic sentimentalist, is doing his best to encourage. There is no surer, no shorter way to murder the State than to keep such as these alive. To the same effect has been testifying the new Dean of St. Paul’s, Dr Inge—whose cacophonous monosyllable one New Zealand newspaper betters into Mge. “Dr Mge” ; and again, lower down, “Dr Mge” ; as though the sub-editor, after considering the matter, saw no escape, and (like Lord Milner) d d the consequences. He must have Had before him the ill-written manuscript of a London correspondent. Well, this Dr Inge (or Mge) says amongst other good things, this : Socialism or almost any other experiment might answer in Australia or New Zealand till the British Fleet ceased to patrol the ring fence, after which the Yellow Man would make short work of the pampered trade unionist. True in every word —nothing could be truer. At the same time nothing could be more unpalatable. It is well that Dr Inge speaks at the safe distance of St. Paul’s, London. Not that he lacks courage. His summing up of the Democratic - theory of government must sound as blasphemous to English ears as to ours. -Democracy,” said he (horresco referens !),

‘'was perhaps the silliest of all fetishes seriously worshipped among us.” 1 To talk to the average member of Parliament one might suppose that the ballot-box was a sort of Urifn and Thummim for ascertaining the Divine will. That superstition was merely their old friend, the divine right of kings, standing on its head, and it was even more ridiculous in that posture than in its original attitude. There was absolutely no guarantee in the nature of things that the decisions of the majority would be either wise or just, but there stood the ridiculous fetish, grinning in our faces, and the whole nation burned incense before it. Sentiments to be disavowed and repudiated. Yet there is something peculiar in our counting heads instead of measuring them (‘‘breaking them,” says the temerarious dean); in our reckoning one man’s vote as weighty as any other man’s; in our giving to the larrikin at the street corner and the judge on the bench the same potential voice in public affairs. And this is democracy. It is not piety that breathes in the prayer of Burns—--0 wad some power the gif tie gi’e ua To see oursel’ as ithers see us! a playful malice rather, as h)e seems to explain elsewhere: If there’s a hole in a’ your coats, I rede you tent it: A chield’s aim aim you takin’ notes, And faith he’ll prent it. Burns knew very well that listeners seldom hear good of themselves, and that his “ gif tie ” stirs usually not gratitude but resentment. . A German junker, Count Fritz von Hochberg, assisted by a valet and a long purse, has made the round of Australia and New Zealand, subsequently printing his “ notes ” in two luxurious volumes: “An Eastern Voyage —A Journal of Travel through the British Empire in the East and South.” He lands at Fremantle : What a shore! Never, thank goodness, have my eyes seen such a desolate, untidy, miserable country. . . . And what people ! They remind one of the Czech minors of tne lowest class, with insolent, dogged, daring, badtempered, sulky expressions, . . . sallow-coraplexioned people, men and women, with fallcn-in cheeks, rough, common, unattractive, they have almost a Jewish formation of face and skull, with prominent eyes and animal-like jaws— tush people—l can’t describe them otherwise. Adelaide is “ a wretched-looking suburban sort of place; doesn’t give one at all the impression of a town. Dike almost everything else here it came out of the dust-pit, helter-skelter, so it can’t help it.” The one endurable person be found in Adelaide was a waiter who helped him four times to ham and turktey, winding up with cher/ies, and in admiration of his appetite asked to shake hands with him. Melbourne is “a straight, broad-streeted, uninteresting, largish town, somewhat subur-ban-looking, with a vulgar-looking crowd of people, and overdressed, second-class-looking women. In vain I looked for one really good-looking face. . . The ..country is hideous, nothing, but dead eucalyptus treee and some sheep.” Sydney, like the other places, “ looks a suburb ; nobody would have the impression of a town; as for the unsmartness of the people, it beats anything I’ve seen; they all look like second-class commercial travellers; the women seem either fat or bony ; . . look as much as you like, you won’t meet a really pretty girl or woman in the streets or see a fine-looking man.” People here are frightfully noisy and common. They really are an. awful lot. And such pretentious commonness 1 They think such a lot of themselves. 1 can’t help saying this; I feel out of place, as if I was dining in the servants’ hall, not even in the housekeeper’s room ! Nevertheless, he contrives occasionally to din’e well ; indeed, if anything reconciles him to Sydney it is the opportunity for gormandising: “one revels in strawberries, cherries (and such good ones), nectarines, peaches and asparagus.” Moreover, “the New South Wales claret is certainly better than the French. Really uncommonly delicious. ’ ’ Coming on to New Zealand, this refined and amiable German found the country pretty, but the people unworthy of it. Every prospect pleases, and only man is vile. “ Auckland, December 2.—We landed about 6 p.m. I never saw such disorder and such primitiveness in all my life. ... In the morning we went into the town —-if one can call it a town ; it seemed to me to consist of one main street.” There are beautiful landscapes round. Auckland ; but “ the roads are simply awful ; I think they haven’t even got a steam roller. And in spitie of the luxurious growth everything looks frightfully untidy and unkempt. . . . These people have absolutely no artistic sense.” Yet Auckland is Paradise in comparison with Wellington. We took a cab and drove through Wellington. The fact that the sun shone and tried its best to make this Gad-forsaken place look cheerful was utterly handicapped by blasts of wind blowing through all the streets, hurling up clouds of dust. To be named Governor of New Zealand, and to have to reside in Wellington, would be, to my mind, equal to criminal exile to the lead mines of Siberia. Christchurch, on the other hand, gives him “an absolutely civilised impression ” ; perhaps because he meets with some nice people who feed him well. Mr Stead shows him racehorses; there is a Mr Rhodius (Rhodes?), and another Christchurch man with the unconvincing name of “Graichen.” Names are not the author’s strong point. Menzies’ Hotel, Melbourne, is “ Mansies ”; Australian crooks are “ creags ” ; Chinese junks are. “ djunks ” ; and the Union Co.’s boat that takes him from the Bluff to Hobart is the “Minerva,” possibly the Manuka. “ Rhodius ” and “Graichen” turn up in

Dunedin—" an uninteresting, provinciallooking place.” With which summary we arte let off in a line. At “ a little village ” near Dunedin he pomes upon a rara avis—"one really good-looking woman.” Surely she must be English: “I didn’t think New Zealand could produce such a refined and beautiful thing.” In the same key is his final judgment at Invercargill: While I sat on a bench at the railway station I had ample time to watch the many travellers coming and going, getting in and out of various trains, and I must say that I was again greatly struck by the really uncommon ugliness, vulgarity, ungracefulness, and unsmartness of these New Zealanders. Count von Hochberg is not likely to come this way again; which from one point of view is a pity. His pretentious book is testimony merely to the German narrowness, pride, and' prejudice of its wohlgeboren author. It is a shy and wistful greeting Chat we give to 1912. What will this New Year bring us? Of late we have grown keen on centenaries, and thereby, ranch to our advantage, are getting some feeling of historic perspective—thanks be ! From the bumptious ignorance which thinks New Zealand a world in itself and the only world worth knowing about, good Lord deliver us! We may take note, then, that 1912 is the centenary of an annus mirabilis. In 1812 three great strokes of wmr resounded through Europe from Wellington and the Peninsula: the storming of Ciudad Rodrigo, the storming of Badajos, the battle of Salamanca. In 1812 Napoleon invaded Russia, saw Moscow given to the flames, and in the Moscow retreat entered on the downgrade which conducted him to St. Helena. At Coblentz, on the Rhine, a monument which, for shabbiness, looks in keeping with its surroundings, albeit the most curious memorial in Europe. Dated 1812, it is inscribed to Napoleon and the Grand Army, then passing by way of Coblentz to the conquest of Russia. At the bottom is a satiric foot-note : "Seen and approved by the Russian Commandant of Coblentz, January 1, 1814.” That was after Leipsic, when the eagles were closing in round the carcase, with Elba and Waterloo not far away. Then, t 00,., in 1812 the United States of America, with no navy to speak of, made war on the victor of Trafalgar—and Trafalgar only seven years gone! We have humiliated ourselves more than enough over this American war of 1812. Three frigates were taken on each side—our own naval losses being amply compensated when, in set duel, the British "Shannon” boarded and captured the American "Chesapeake.” Ashore, we captured Washington and burned the Government buildings. And if, later, in the repulse at New Orleans, we took a handsome licking, it was at the hands of our own kinsfolk, not at the hands of the foreigner. Altogether, the records of 1812 are of good omen. Lucky shall we be if 1912 uses us no worse. Amongst the boons and benefactions which the Emperor of India announced at Delhi was a sum of £350,000 for education. We could wish that of his Imperial clemency lie had given the money to something else. It may be doubted whether the universities, colleges, high schools with which we have provided India ever did, or ever will do, India any good. The baboo, their chief product, is not only unlovely, but unprofitable, but dangerous. The India that is safest, and possibly happiest, is the India that in spite of protest from missionary, and schoolmaster will from this time persist in worshipping King George the Fifth as a god, and paying divine honours to his picture. To the same India belongs the village which, when the Commissioner arrives, and there is no milk for his tea, the cows being dry, will miraculously supply it by laying under tribute, unbeknown to him, all the nursing mothers that come handiest. This India may with advantage be let alone. To university education we owe the baboo with baboo English, and baboo ideas thereto correspondent. Take an example given _in a recent Blackwood. A district magistrate ; on his removal to another sphere of work j received from the local schoolmaster* a testimonial headed, "God save our District Magistrate,” and couched in the terms following : Honoured Sir—l beg you to accept as kindly gift in departing five pomegranate fruits, five oranges, two dozen walnuts, and one bottle hair lotion. The latter is restorative to hair, and invaluable after much toil to weak brain. Loyal, and so far satisfactory. But not the kind of result to justify cur squandered millions. Civis.