PASSING NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 3117, 10 December 1913, Page 11

PASSING NOTES.

(Fr j:u 'i tour I iy'i X uly I’iaji.)

“ Soyez mon frere, ou je vous egorge !” —“ Be my brother, or I’ll slit your weasand!” This, the preaching formula of late on every New Zealand waterfront, looks beet in its native lingo. The Bed Fed. gets it where he gets his “ syndicalism,” and his “ sabotage,’’ — ideas that are not English and for which the English language provides no word. It is well to remind ourselves that the new evangel is an old evangel, and that it comes to us from French atheists, anarchists, communists, jacobins,—that is to say from revolutionaries brimming over with brotherly love : “ Soyez mon frere, on je vous egorge!” This kind of brotherly love applied persuasively to a. Dunedin wharf labourer named Beat left him with “a blackened eye, a blackened cheek, a cut ear, and- minus three teeth ” ; —see Police Court proceedings. His Worship the Mayor invites subscriptions for another wharf labourer, Plaw, from whom brotherly love has knocked out an eye. These are incidental examples. Similar manifestations of affection are at the service of us all; indeed brotherly love in »s aggressive form would now dominate Hie port of Otago if we had not supplemented the terrors of the law, such as they are, by an army. It is a veritable army, not big, yet big enough; invisible, but handy,—a telephone call, and twenty minutes would bring it thundering into the streets. If for the momeht the word is “ All quiet on the Potomac !” we owe it to the moral in fluence of our army in cantonments at Tahuna Park. Judged by letters addressed to this column, though fated for the most part to the wastepaper basket, the temper of rural Otago, not to say back-blocks Otago, approaches danger point. “ Are we of the stock of the old, hardy, and valiant Britishers, or are we a race of despicable curs?” —this is the kind of thing. Of course the reference is to our friends of the waterfront and the toleration shown them. Our masterly inaction is perhaps misconstrued; but tliere is no misconstruction on another point. These men who say they will not have masters, will not be slaves, go about in abject fear of one another. It is the workers who abuse other workers, the workers who terrorise other workers, the workers who harm each other, while they seem to think that they do all this to the capitalist, who takes excellent care that things do not harm him very much. Nothing could be truer. The ranks of insurrectionary labour are demoralised by fear. Each man fears the next man; the women fear the women; even the children in the schools go in dread, are in terror of each other. The bullies who struck down Peat and knocked out the eye of Flaw were themselves terror-stricken cowards. From highest to lowest, from first to last —excepting only the well-paid schemers who pull the strings—the strikers are afraid of each other. Not one of them dares to please himself. There is no fear so abject as that which subjugates a man to the opinion of his class. Call him “scab” and he squirms, a worm and no man. Redemption will come when the individual labour unionist summons courage to declare himself captain of his own soul. A settler down south is asking himself what he has done to merit being apostrophised by a mercantile firm up north in terms such as these: Dear Mr So-aud-So (addressing him by name). — Ake You That Max ? In every district there is a man keen, alert, penetrating, practical—a typical successful farmer. It’s not that his land was originally any better than the farm next to him, but ho has made it bettor. It is not that ho had money to start with, but he has it now. . . . If you axe that man, then you will buy from us, —that is the drift 'of the typewritten pages that follow. But your records show no orders since we forwarded our No. 5 Catalogue, and naturally I have been wondering why. Will you turn over and tel! mo on the back of this letter, or, better still, make out an order, and, if possible, let it bo Over £4, as I know you will appreciate

that free silverware we offer on page 7. Just use the enclosed envelope, which is specially marked so we can distinguish it easily from the rest of our mail. And this is all the way from Auckland. “ These people never had a penny-piece from me,” says my correspondent; and he declares himself quite unmoved bv the personal touch in “Dear Air So-and-So” and the favour of an envelope specially marked. Just so. The writer of the circular assumes that he is addressing a fool, and he isn’t clever enough to conceal it. Carlyle’s estimate of his countrymen—“mostly fools ’’ —may be sound; but not even Carlyle would have indited an advertisement on that basis. The skilful advertiser contrives discreetly and astutely to flatter his public on their wisdom. Dear “ Civis,” —I, too, knew Midshipman Boyes personally. Ho was about, four and a-half years the writer's senior. I was a boy in H.M.S. Rattler at that time; captain, H. E. Howard; first lieutenant, H. F. Stephenson, now Sir Henry F. Stephenson, Admiral of the Fleet, and Usher of the Blaek Rod in the House of Lords. Prince Satsuma and Prince Nagato rebelled against the Tycoon, and would not allow any foreign ships to go through the Straits of Simonosaki. so a combined fleet, under Admiral A. L. Kuper (whom I have spoken to on more thari one occasion), entered the Straits, September, 1854-, bombarded and destroyed the Japanese batteries, and then manned and armed boats with a battalion of British Marines, which landed and spiked and dismounted the guns. It was here that Midshipman Boyes came in ; he was officer of one of the cutters of the Euryalus, the flagship, and, on grounding, he seized the boat’s flagstaff and sprang on shore with it, and led the men on (I have enclosed a card of the event illustrated), and that is how he got his V.C. I may also state that Simonosaki was not his first engagement. Kagosima was his first engagement, in August, 1863, and it was there that Captain Josling and Commander Wilmot were killed, the same shot going pretty close to Mr Shanks, the Admiral’s secretary. Through these two engagements several promotions went < through the fleet. Commander Alexander, of the Coquette, got posted flag captain to the Euryalus; Commander .Moore, of the paddler Argus, and Commander Kingston, of the Perseus, were also posted, and went Home. x may also state in conclusion that when the fleet went to Kagosima the Japanesp opened fire on them, and then the Admiral bombarded the town and burnt tho Princes’ three steamers, then wont back to Yokohama and sent Home for a battalion of Marines before making an attack on Simonosaki. I could write a good deal more about tho above, but not wishing to take up too much of your space, I beg to bring this to a close. —Yours faithfully, W. H. Harris, Janitor, University of Otago. I take off my hat to Mr Harris. Show me a veteran of either service, army or navy, and you show me a man I delight to honour. You won’t find an old army or navy man talking anarchy, nor having sons who refuse duly under the Defence Act; least of all may you look for him in the “band of cowardly bullies and hooligans who are terrorising this community,” or trying to—as Mr Fraser remarked in the Magistrate’s Court the other day. A man is always the better for having borne the yoke in his youth, submitting to another will than his own, learning to obey. The King himself is an old navy man. He went through the mill, and is a better man for it to-day, and a better King. Mr Harris, I note, is janitor to the Otago University. His old first-lieutenant in the Rattler, Sir Something Something, is Usher of the Black Rod to the House of Lords. Honours seem to hav.- been distributed not so unequally, after all. Dear “ Civis,”—l was struck by that particularly fine piece of poetry beginning, “ I'd set the cause above renown ” quoted by you in’ Passing Notes of Saturday before last. Can you tell me who is the author, and of wliat poem it is an extract?—Yours truly, Y. Z. Balclutha, December 2. The lines are from “Clifton Chapel,” a piece in “Collected Poems, 1879-1907, by Henry Newbolt;” —my copy is a “sevenpence net” reprint by Nelsons. There are better editions, but I commend the sevenpence net, for this is a book that should be in the hands of every New Zealand schoolboy. Henry Newbolt’s school was Clifton, by Bristol, on the Severn, “The best school of all,” he insists; and certainly he gives a fine interpretation of its spirit. For example : There's a breathless hush in the Close ■ to-night— Ten to make and tho match to win— A bumping pitch and a blinding light, An hour to play and the last man in. And it’s not for the sake of a ribboned coat, Or the selfish hope of a season’s fame, But his Captain’s hand on his shoulder emote — “ Play up! play up! and play tho game 1” From Clifton more than from most schools boys go to the R.M.A., Woolwich, and the R.M.C., Sandhurst. Of 35 old Cliftonians who served in the Indian Frontier campaign of 1897, 22 wore mentioned in despatches and six recommended for the Distinguished Service Order; of 300 who served in the war in South Africa, 30 were killed in action and 14 died of wounds or fever. Which are most honoured at Clift-on, the living or the dead, it were hard to say. Dear “ Civis,” —Among your notes of last week I noticed that a lady correspondent seeks a non-hurnorous remedy for verandah-bees. However, I do not intend to prescribe. You refer to Virgil’s observations on the spontaneous generation of “bees’ from a bovine carcase;— Meanwhile tho juices of tho tender bones Heated ferment; and, wond’rous to behold,

Small animals, in clusters, thick are seen, “ Short of their legs at first. On filmy wings. Humming, nt length they rise, etc., etc. I do not think there is much doubt that those “small animals” were what are now the so-called “ rat-tailed ” larva? or maggots of a common dronefly which breed in putrid matter, and, when mature, so closely resemble certain bees that, although belonging to two distinct orders of insects, they are frequently confused by the uninitiated even at the present day.—Yours sincerely, Bug-huntee. A very natural explanation. On the other hand, Sidgwick’s note on the passage is this; The superstition that dead bodies of animals gave birth to bees arose no doubt from bees building in hollow skeletons of animals, when they could not find hoLknv trees Or rocks to 'suit them; compare the well-known tale of Samson and the lien’s carcase.” It should be noted as essential in the Virgil prescription that the bullock was to be beaten to death—no less! That is how you come by his ,! tender bones”;—and tender no doubt they would be. Yet Virgil, we must know, is (he tenderest of poets, a miracle of pity and pathos. Reading aloud his own verses—so' the story runs—he was able to twitch the tough heartstrings ot Augustus and reduce the whole court to tears. But he wouldn’t have understood a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Nor is the impelling motive understood in Italy to this day. “Don’t you think Postmasters should be more careful?” asks a correspondent, sending me an extract from “Mail Notices” in a Canterbury newspaper No mail for Australia, via Bluff, will be despatched from this office on Saturday, November 29. H. KISSEL, Chief Postmaster. Always loving, always loved. This seems to be a case in which there really is something in a name. Another Canterbury correspondent asks me to perpend and explain a statement in his local newspaper about the stealing of coal from railway stations : It is perhaps natural that, when the householder looks at his empty scuttle, ho is prone to cost a covetous eye on the large stocks stored at the stations for us,? on the railways. Officers of the department have found evidence of fact that the breach of the Tenth Commandment has been followed at various stations by the breaking of the Seventh. I compromise on this at once as merely an argument for Bible in schools. Otherwise taken, it would have to be confessed a staggerer. Stealing coals from railway stations in breach of the Tenth Commandment conducts to breach of the Seventh. So peculiar a sequence must be left to its discoverers, the officers of the Department. It is not for discussion here. Civis.