PASSING NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 3116, 3 December 1913, Page 11

PASSING NOTES.

(Fro.u Saturday's Duly I'baji.i On the “art for art’s sake’’ principle—•which is a vicious principle, an offence against elementary morality—we are being favoured with a strike for a strike’s sake, and have only just emerged from a still more peculiar experience, a stonewall for a stonewall’s sake. The strike, though logically dead, still lingers in pain, wriggling, or Like a wounded snake drags its slow length along. “ We are not really much concerned about getting strikes called off; the problem for New Zealand rebels seems to be how to get a decent strike on.” That was the note a few weeks ago. But to-day those same New Zealand rebels are squealing for arbitration, no less! —though it was precisely against arbitration that they directed their “decent strike” when they got it, the strike that had no basis in any quarrel about wages or hours, but was merely a strike for a strike’s sake. They are now willing to “ submit their case unreservedly to the arbitration of Sir Joshua Williams.” Far be it from me to depreciate, disparage, or despise this sign of grace, belated yet welcome. But on what is Sir Joshua Williams to arbitrate? On arbitration — what else? Shall or shall not arbitration be the method of settling industrial disputes? That is the question, and on that question his Honor is to arbitrate! How this pleasant paradox will work out let us wait and sea.

The stonewall for the stonewall’s sake must be pronounced a singularly ill-timed exhibition of lawlessness in high places. Grounds of dispute there were none. Both sides of the House want to get rid of the Second Ballot. Then why was the Bill for getting rid of the Second Ballot stonewalled? For pure cussedness.; —either that, or under a fatal impulse to run amuck, strip off every rag of decency, and play the clown; such an impulse as might drive a prohibitionist to drink or cause a kirk-elder to swear and beat his wife by way of relief from a too-exacting respectability. Four-and-twenty legislators clowning it in concert were 'a sight to “ make the judicious grieve,’’ as Hamlet says, but somehow failed to “ make the unskilful laugh,” their clowning being of a vileness that in any theatre would be hissed off the stage. A larrikin display, in short, and as larrikins were the performers disposed of in the end, —thanks to the nerve and verve of Mr Malcolm in the chair. Fiftv hours of fooling by the Ward party, whilst the country, as Sir Joseph Ward himself tells us,'is losing through the strike a quarter of a million of money every week. Nero fiddled while Rome was burning. Someone should send Sir Joseph an eighteen-penny German fiddle. Ito could be had "in the fancy shops, and would be a suitable Christmas present.

From this week's parliamentary news: On various occasions in the House the members for Grey and Grey Lynn, Mr Webb and Mr Payne, have referred to themselves as “Red Fedcrationists.” Mr Pearce in a speech to-night used the terms in reference to these two members, whereupon Mr Russell rose to a 7>oint of order, and asked whether the term as applied to members of the House was in order. The Speaker said the use of terms of this kind as a rule was not desirable, but he had heard one or two members call themselves “Red Federationists,’’ and he did not, therefore, see why the term should bo objected to. So then we are face to face with the Reds. It is an ugly fact, but we may as well recognise it, dismissing any squeamishness we have felt in talking of “Red Feds.” The name is avowed. If Messrs Payne and Webb, lacking the historic sense, are unaware that with the name goes anything more than a red necktie, let them turn np Carlyle in the Parliamentary Library. Their proper symbol, they will learn, is the bloody pike and—for street wear — the red nightcap. Everywhere the Reds are the party of revolution. Peaceable development is not in their scheme of things, nor the settlement of Labour questions by any other method than that the blessedness of which we are now enjoying. To

kqep the Reds in power and \> a y thousands or honest unionists are at this moment starving their wives and children. Poor dupes! From Mr Seddon, of pious memory, we used to hear of “ God’s Own Country.” It is a threadbare phrase. Under the kindly guidance of the Red Federation we may now look for other things. New Zealand is to become the Red Cotton Nightcap Country, and the Devil’s Own.

Tapanui, 24/11/13. Dear “Civis,” —In last Saturday’s issue of the Daily Times you state that “any attempt to deny the vituperative force of the word ‘scab I’ is vain, and still vainer the desire to make the epithet honorific and complimentary.” I should like to suggest that something might be done to rob the offensive term of its venomous sting. I agree with you that the invention of a counter expression of contemptuous abuse is beneath the dignity of any self-respecting man, but the word “scab” comes to us with the imago and superscription of the Federation of I.abour upon it. Why should we not then render unto the Federation the things which are the Federation’s, and show every honest worker in the Dominion that there are two kinds of “scabs’’ in this country? There arc first of all the scabs that are scabs; and then there are the scabs that the scabs call “scabs,” and I have pleasure in subscribing myself Oxe cf Them. I agree. The vituperative force of “scab” is as old as Shakespeare at least. “Out, scab!” exclaims Sir Toby Belch in wrat/i----ful contempt of Malvolio. Shakespearelucky thought! The word “scab ” occurs in a scone of Goriolanus that might have been written for the Dunedin wharf. The play opens with the Roman plebs on strike and Menenius Agrippa addressing to them, quantum valeat, his parable of age-long reitown, The Belly and the Members, otherwise Capital and Labour;

There was a time when all the body’s members Rebelled against the belly; thus accused it: That only like a gulf it did remain I’ the midst o’ the body, idle and inactive, Still cupboarding the viand, never bearing Like labour with the rest; whore the other instruments Did see and hear, devise, instruct, walk, feel, And, mutually participate, did minister Unto the appetite and affection common Of the whole body. The belly answered What the belly answered, the Dunedin watersider may guess for himself; it is a conundrum; let him puzzle it out. But without effort he will savour the humour of the situation when one of the members fed by the belly, and a strike-leader withal, is apostrophised — What do you think, You, the great toe of this assembly? “I the great toe? Why the great toe?” For that, being one o’ the lowest, basest, poorest. Of this most wise rebellion, thou go’et foremost: Thou rascal, that art worst in blood to run, Lead’st first to nun some vantage. But make you ready your stiff bars and clubs : Romo and her rats are at the point of battle !

Then, enter Cains Marcius, and with him the word for which we wait: What’s the matter, you di&sentious rogues. That, rubbing the poor itch of your opinion, Make yourselves scabs?

There you have it, “SCABS!”—and rightly applied. It is applied where it belongs,—not to the workers, but to the shixkers. Winton, 21st November, 1915. Dear “Civis,” —I notice a paragraph in your notes of this week asking for information as to Duncan Gordon Boyce, V.C., R.N., whoso grave in the Southern Cemetery is referred to as in a very neglected state, which I regret very much to note. Boyes was my cousin, and I shall ho glad to give the information asked for. Ho was the youngest son of John Boyce, a member of the firm- of Boyes and Poynter, merchants and importers on the New was a brother of the late C. C. Boyes, at one time owner of The Falls Station, Lake Wakatipu, also of the late Admiral George Boyes, who is referred to in Scott’s book as advising him jn the preparations for his Antarctic expedition. Major-general E. J. Boyes, now retired, who commanded a brigade in the Boer war, is also a brother. Iluncan was educated at Cheltenham College, and, entering the navy, was, as a midshipman, in the Japanese war of the early ’sixties, where he gained his V.C. for gallant behaviour in the attack on a Japanese fort, which was likely to fail had he not advanced with the colour in the face of a very heavy lire, and the sailors then took the place with a rush. For this action ho was personally decorated by her Majesty Queen Victoria in Hyde Park, London. The Rev. Mr Dutton some years ago arranged for a parade of the Dunedin Cadets, who marched to the Southern Cemetery and laid a wreath on his grave and to his memory. Geo. F. B. Poyntee. I forgot to mention that the flag referred to was in the possession of Admiral Boyes, and used to hang in his hall

Other correspondents write me who knew Boyes in New Zealand, or knew his people. One of them says: “ He was invalided home, and was granted an extended furlough to recover his health. His two elder brothers, Charles and William Boyes, then held the station at the foot of the Remarkables, opposite the Kawarau Falls, Frankton. He remained with them some some, and often visited Queenstown, where his genial add debonnair disposition gained him many friends. Ho never properly recovered from wounds received at the storming of the Peiho forts.” There is an error here. At the date of the Peiho affair, 1859, Boyes

would be 12 years old, since in 1869, the year of his death, he was only 22. It was in Japan in 1864 that he won his Cross, a middy of 17. In the Cornhill Magazine for AprL, last a lively account of our trouble with Japan in 1863-1864 is given by Commander Sir Hamilton F. Freer-Smith, R.JSi., C. 5.1., who at that time was serving as a midshipman on board H.M. 17-gun sloop Perseus. We were exacting reparation for the murder of British subjects, and had to do it at the cannon's mouth. The Japanese of the period were a stiff-necked people, so obstinately averse to intercourse with the outer world that the two or three of them who up to then had ventured abroad were requested and required on their return to depart again—by way of harakiri, suicide by disembowelling. Devotees of seclusion, the Japanese of 50 years back were nevertheless shrewd enough to acquire outer-world weapons. One round shot that they plumped into the Perseus weighed 841 b, and with another they took off the heads of Captain Josling and Commander Wilmot as these officers stood together on the bridge of the flagship Euryalus, in which Boyes was serving. Sir Hamilton Freer-Smith believes that the events of those distant years are fresh in his mind. It is curious then that on one main point he can be corrected from the Antipodes. “Admiral Augustus L. Keyser was in command/' he says. Somewhere and somewhen, for anything I know to the contrary, there may have been an Admiral Keyser; but the officer in charge of operations against Japan in 1863-1864 was Vice-Admiral Augustus Leopold Kuper, C. 8., Commander-in-Chief of the East Indies and China station.

Wairuna, Longbcach, Canterbury, November 24. Dear “Civis,” —You seem to know everything. How do you get bees out of a verandah where’ they have been for years?—Yours truly,

P-S.—l don’t want a funny answer. It is a lady, this; and she doesn’t) want a funny answer. It is sufficient that the question is tunny. I have to do, it seems, with a would-be monopolist. That understood, let us proceed; it will cost me no effort to be dull. Virgil in his Fourth Georgic discourses learnedly of bees, showing inter alia how you may bring down a swarm from overhead by tossing up a handful of dust; also, what is more important, how you may generate bees for yourself out of the carcase of a bullock, dead and rotting. But he doesn’t say how you are to get bees out' of a verandah where they have been for years. Maeterlinck, who treats the bee mystically, and from the spiritual side, is equally unhelpful ; and the same must be said of the patient and prosaic Huber, boss of all beemasters. A new and popular insectpowder, mortine, which you squirt out of an elastic bulb at the domestic fly and kill him, would bo difficult of application to a hive of 50,000 bees; the process would be equivalent to putting salt on the tail of each. My own notion is that you should play upon ■ them with the garden hose. No doubt they would grow vicious under this treatment, but you have only to persist. Hose them out. Bettor still, lead a steam pipe from the thrashing machine when it comes round, select an hour when the bees are all at home, and turn it on. In Mr Outliffe’s Hyno’s. books Captain Kettle quells mutinies with the steam pipe. Finally, in the last resort there is Charles Lamb and his roast pig story. When other methods fail you can always burn down your verandah. Civis.