PASSING NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 3061, 13 November 1912, Page 11

PASSING NOTES.

(From Saturday's Duly Timam It is a relief to get the American election over. I did not bet upon it, but I have all the feeling. I feel as though I had betted and had lost. Not that I favoured this candidate or that; as a matter of fact I don’t care a dump for any of the three. Nevertheless, whichever the winner, his win comes as a snub to one’s judgment and a surprise because the losers looked just as good and just as likely. The election of the elected is intelligible; what I stumble over is the rejection of the rejected. All alike were of superlative merit, each a trifle more superlative than the other. Mr Taft’s patriotic attempt to jockey us out of our treaty rights at Panama was supplemented by personal recommendations —e.g. : The Politest Man in America. Mr Taft, whatever fate may finally befall him in the present “dog-fight,” will be able to extract some consolation from the fubomo compliments paid by political admirers to his ample physical proportions. They contend that their candidate during his tenure of office has been literally “ broad-based upon the people’s will.” A Californian supporter asserts that “Big Bill Taft” is “ the politest man in America,” on the ground that ho x'ecently rose from bis seat in a tram car, and thereby made room for no fewer than four ladies! Mr Roosevelt, who in a similar emergency would make room for one only, or two at the most, compensated that disadvantage by getting shot at an election meeting and delivering a forty-minutes’ speech with a bullet in his breast. This tremendous advertisement ought to have carried the election, had he not divided the Republican vote with Mr Taft and so left Dr Wilson —whose merit lay in being a Democrat. —to slip in between them. This Dr Wilson did, and so the game ends, honours easy. To the last it looked a toss-up; the safest tipster might have come to grief; and although the American Presidency is nothing to me, I feel as if I had lest a bet.

Last week, greatly daring, I pointed out to military men the chief military lesson of the war, namely that long distance weapons had not abolished close fighting. Since then I have read Lord Roberta's speech at the annual meeting of the National Service League, September 23, an impassioned appeal to the nation to set its house in order and train its youth to arms. Like other appeals of the same tenor from the same lips, it will pass unregarded. The curse of Athelstane the Unready lies upon us, and we must dree our weird according. Mean while the point to note is that on September 23 Lord Roberts, the Nestor of the subject, who has seen more war and made more war than any other living soldier, believed that fighting tactics had been totally changed by the introduction of long-range weapons. I don’t think be believes so now. The Balkan battlefields arc a demonstrated refutation. “Our soldiers must be more highly trained, more intelligent, and better marksmen than formerly,” affirmed Lord Roberts, and let no man say him nay. But the argument at the back of this demand has all at once become antiquated and obsolete.

The old-tirne battle war, fought ‘‘in close formation officers, non-commissioned officers, and men in cont*-c' with each other and affording each other mutual support, the zone of fire not entered until the attacking party wai within a short distance of the enemy’s position. :1 But to-day “ all this is changed by the introduction of long-range weapons. The zone of fire is usually now from 1800 to 2000 yards, and so soon as the zone of fire is entered the ranks have to be opened out and loose formation adopted ; officers get separated from their men and the men from each other: each individual has to act more or less upon his own initiative.” Thus Lord Roberts, and as an example of the old-time battle he instanced Waterloo. At Waterloo tho English and French

armies each numbered between 70.000 and 80,000 men. Tho length of tho front was about three miles; the fight-

ing chiefly took place in one mile and a-half. Welington and Napoleon were perhaps never more than three-quar-

tors of a mile apart. Such a battle at the present time would be impossible. An army of 70,000 men would now occupy a front of about 12 miles, and instead of infantry soldiers in close order firing at each other from a distance of 40 or 50 yards as was the case at Waterloo, they would be compelled to open out and adopt loose formations as soon as they entered the zone ot fire. This is theory, and a particular case of Goethe’s “ Grau, teurer Freund, ist alle Theorie,” which is a German way of saying that experience may knock theory into a cocked hat. It is true that we conducted the Boer War on this theory, our guiding principle being to kill as few Boers as possible; whereas it ought to have been to kill as many Boeis as p°ssible and as fast as possible The Bulgarians would have managed the Boer War better than we did, and, in the end, at less expenditure of life-

Baptists and Billiards!’ It doesn t look natural. Conceivably Spurgeon might have played billiards, and Spurgeon was a Baptist.' I infer the possibility of his billiard-playing from the fact that he would smoke a cigar after sermon, and said that he could do it “ to the glory of God.” But as there is no Spurgeon within the visible horizons,/neither need there_ be anv alliterative collocation of “ Baptists and Billiards.” The newspaper correspondence in progress under this heading is kept up, it is true, by two Baptist ministers ; nevertheless, it iendeth to barrenness. On the subject of billiards they are very babes; not easily do you picture either of them with a cue in his hand. And when in discussion they follow out the logic of billiards to cards, and to a possible ticket, in the Art Society s innocent art union, you recognise at once the “horre&oo referens !” note. In short, we get glimpse* of a morbid conscience and a belated Puritanism. It is a pity that the Christian young men of the Y.M.C.A., who seem to be a special type of Christian young men, and in whom theMwo Baptist ministers are specially interested, cannot be kept apart from a world in which any evening they mav chance on a godly family engaged in whist or bridge. Also it is to bo regretted that 'their reading cannot be censored As things are, they run the risk of taking some worldly character in a novel—Thackeray’s Colonel Newcome, say—for a better Christian than they usually encounter at prayer meetings. I am speaking, of course, from the Baptist minister point of view. As for my own point of view, that is neither here nor there ; in any case it is different. I would just suggest, however, that in practical ethics asking too much is the way to get nothing. And to the Dunedin, Presbytery I might hint, with all respect, that in the matter of Sabbath Observance they would get more if they asked for less. To the lay mind groping after truth the Old Testament Sabbath and the New Testament Sabbath appear to be by no means one and the same thing. At a meeting of the Southland District Council of the United Labour party on Saturday night Mr H. Fairdough -said that there was too much “ smoodging” going to those who were not labour, men at heart. There was too much of the velvet hood and not enough of the mailed fist. “ Velvet hood ” —instead of “ velvet glove,” the phrase of his intention—is an undesigned coincidence with truth. Labour hoodwinked (by its own paid leaders) makes a more credible picture than Labour handling things with velvet glove. But what is “smoodging”? “Too much smoodging,” complained Mr Fairclough; whereas Mr Neil, who came after, said that there had been no “ smoodging ” at all. It seems, then, that in this monstrosity we are presented with a term already established, and may like it or Tump it along with other ornaments of the Labour vocabulary—“scab” and “ blackleg,” for instance. As itself a new thing with new ideals to express, the Labour movement is entitled to new words; but its taste is deplorable. No strike can be transacted without “ yah !” and “boohoo!” as argumentative statements; “blackleg” is the militant striker’s mildest epithet for the nonstriker ; “ scab ’’—delicious morsel! —is never out of his mouth. To these I could prefer “smoodging,” if only I knew what “ smoodging ” meant. A thirty-shilling “American Glossary,” of which there is mention in The Times Literary Supplement, should be a lumpish book, if price is any guide. Next to follow will doubtless be an American Dictionary, in volumes. Another decade or two, and to the man who knows merely English the fast-developing American language will be Double Dutch. Already there are American novels and newspaper articles for which he needs a glossary; for intercourse with a New York Bowery “ tough,” he would need, first, a policeman, and, second, an interpreter. What are we to make of this?—“ Hully chee, pipe do guy wit de noo lid !” And of this?—“ Geewhizz ! Them inkslingers sure gets away wit de flowery dope.” The one is a street satire on the smartness of your hat; the other a newspaper reader’s criticism of verses in the New York Daily Screecher. And both arc authentic specimens of the American Language on its road to Double Dutch. Nearer to the tongue of Shakespeare is the talk of Mrs Stowe’s slave-niggers in “ Uncle Tom.” Of course, the tongue of Shakespeare has no rights; the Americans if they chose might, talk Choctaw and Pawnee. All that I venture to pronounce regrettable is their depraved liking for ugliness. Consider this list of wordssockdologer scoot, galoot skulduggery jayhawker poppycock plug-ugly absquatulate skedaddle, and

slantindicular There are a hundred others worthy to rank with the Labour party’s “ smoodgmg ” and ‘‘ scabbing,” all alike proofs of a vicious jweference for the hideous.

The established formula of greeting when you land on the American shore,

“ Stranger, how do you like our great country?” has been reciprocated in London by an “ Impressions ” dinner a.t which guests from over sea might say what they thought of the Old Land. It was a dinner of the Atlantic Union —an international club, Sir John Cockburn presiding. I quote from a London evening paper: Professor de Sumichrast of Harvard, said he hoped that none of the visitors who were to give their impressions of tho old country would make the mistake of the Boston lady who, on the shores of the other world, was piloted by an angel through the locality in which her existence was henceforth to be spent. After a somewhat prolonged ramble, she said to her guide, “I really had no idea that heaven was so like Boston.” “I beg your pardon, madame,” sa ; d her guide, “ this is not heaven. ’ ’ —(Laugh ter.) In fact, it was the other place. A touch of irreverence, the essential salt of much American humour, was nob wanting to the professor’s story, nor to the remarks of Mr Joseph Hiner, of Chicago, who came after him: Since ho was in this country throe years ago London had greatly increased the use of motor vehicles. He noted with the greatest personal satisfaction that the drivers of these vehicles in London gave two “ toots” before they killed a man. In Chicago they only gave one ” toot,” and that far too short as a preparation for Eternity.—(Laughter.) To these two followed ‘‘Mrs Cross, of New Zealand.” Not necessarily does the presence of a lady at this dinner imply the absence of tobacco and the flowing bowl. The Atlantic Union I take to be a club of humane and liberal principles. Nor, although she came from New Zealand, did Mrs Cross discourse of Prohibition, but of the London Metropolitan Police, their efficiency, their courtesy, a well-worn theme on which she contrived bo say something absolutely new. One of her colonial friends arrived home early one morning during her visit to tho metropolis, and after reaching her room found it impossible to reach those “ throe little hooks ” which gave the majority of ladies so many anxious thoughts. Looking out of her window ' she saw a policeman beneath the street lump, and found him an excellent substitute for a lady’s-maid. Whether the lady descended to the policeman or the policeman went up to the lady’s bedroom is not revealed, but >n either case we may trust the officer’s discretion. ' And, as respects the intricacies of a lady’s dress, much handling of militant suffragettes has Dnado the London policeman an expert. Civis.