PASSING NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 3148, 15 July 1914, Page 11

PASSING NOTES.

(Fra:u SitairiiyU Did/ Ti an.) Of flowers for the Chamberlain grave there is no lack. Mr Massingham, of the Nation newspaper, flings- a brick-bat: “Mr Chamberlain,” he says, “ Was a great adventurer.” But this amiable contribution is snowed under by eulogies innumerable, some of them from the foreigners who loved him not—Berlin editors, Paris editors, onlookers seeing most of the game, and now declaring that in Joseph Chamberlain they saw “ the strongest, personality in Great Britain for 30 years,” and “ the true 'creator of British Imperialism.” An “adventurer,” was he?—Heaven send us such another! The case is that of old George the Third when they said that John Wesley was mad:—“Then I wish he would bite some of my bishops.” It is to adventurers that we owe the Empire,—not to yeasty demagogues who hint of hesitation and reserve in praising a better man than themselves, Mr Lloyd George comes forth with bucket and blush as though to lay it on thick, then .pullshimself up with a “ but ” —“ In my judgment, but for the fatal diversion of his energies caused by the Home Rule schism, ■ Mr Chamberlain would have been the greatest democratic statesman of the century.” But me no buts. There is no “but” about it, nor any “would have been.” “He was inconsistent,” say detractors. Thanks be, he was. “ He began as a Radical and ended as a Liberal Unionist, . which is next door to a Conservative.” Praise the powers, he did. This is the consistent inconsistency of growth. Things that grow are both consistent and inconsistent. The shrub that is in leaf to-day was a bare-boned skeleton yesterday, and will give the lie to its whole past by putting forth bud and blossom to-morrow. Which is what happens when you get a Joseph Chamberlain, —he grows. I may as well'quote the inevitable verses —somebody will, if I don’t-—about the “divinely gifted man ”'whose life begins in low estate, but Who breaks his birth’s invidious bar, And grasps the skirts of happy chance. And breasts the blows of circumstance, And grapples with his evil star; Who makes by force his merit known And lives to clutch the golden keys, To mould a mighty state’s decrees And shape the whisper of the throne; And moving up from high to higher, Becomes on Fortune’s crowning slope The pillar of a people’s hope. The centre of a world’s desire. . . . There were analogous steps and stages in the Chamberlain development, hailed by anti-Chambsrlains with a corresponding series of __ epithets—“ Republican,” and “ Jack Cede,” and “Judas,” and “Jingo,” and .the “Mad Hatter.” But it was all on& thing and a logical progression. John Morley, whilst he was still John Morley and a Radical, wrote of Chamberlain thus : Confronting Lord Hartington was Mr Chamberlain, eager, intrepid, self-reliant, 'alert, daring; with notions about property, taxation, land, schools, popular rights, that he expressed with a plainness and pungency of speech- that had never been heard from a privy councillor and cabinet minister before, that exasperated opponents, startled the whigs, and brought him hosts of adherents among radicals out of doors. John Morley now sits as Viscount Morley in the House of Lords; Joseph Chamberlain died a commoner. Which facts are a comment on consistency, political and moral. The young King and Queen , of Denmark came to England on a State « visit the other day and were received with honours befitting. , The Prince of Wales met them at Sheerness, our own King and Queen at Victoria Station, the Prime Minister being also in attendance, along with other Ministers and officials of rank, not forgetting an escort of Household Cavalry wherewith to make a brave show in passing through the London streets. Such the divinity that doth hedge a king, though it be but a. king of Denmark. The population of London alone would outnumber two Donmarks. 1 am not suggesting that we should grudge t.bifl pomp and circumstance. The world

would be poorer, and vastly duller, if it contained nobody above the rank ol Asquiths and Lloyd Georges. As for the King and Queen of Denmark, they are hardly to be envied. Denmark is Naboth’s vineyard, and Ahab bides his time. Metaphor apart, the three tiny kingdoms of Denmark, Holland, and Belgium are but a mouthful for gaping Germany, were Germany minded to gobble them up and were Europe minded to let her. They lie in the path of German ambition, and are not allowed to forget it. Along their seaboard pass and repass, parade and manoeuvre, the German w ? ar ships continually. They are well-behaved little kingdoms, and need to'be,—their rulers soberminded and walking warily. It was not always thus. In witness take this paragraph from a London daily :> Mr C. H. Lowthcr, our new Ambassador to Denmark, will have no such experiences in Copenhagen as befell Ambassadors at tbe Danish Court a century ago. Lord Holland described to Macaulay the maimer in which he saw King Christian ol Denmark receive the Neapolitan Ambassador. “"Such a Tom of Bedlam I never saw,” he said:—“One day the Neapolitan Ambassador came to the Levee, -and made a profound bow to,his Majesty. His ' Majesty bowed still lower. The Neapolitan bowed down his head almost to the ground, when,, behold! the King ■ clapped his hands on his Excellency’s shoulders, and jumped over him like a boy playing at leap-frog As seen in the illustrated papers the King Christian of to-day and his wife look a pair of innocents. But innocence will not save them.

After dribbling for days and nights more or less the no-confidente debate' has dribbled dry, “ having served its purpose/’ we are told. Its purpose must have ueen to hold up for admiration once more the exquisite beauties of the’ party system. Perhaps" the party system is indispensable, —we couldn’t get on without it. But, that is a detail and may be neglected. The essential thing is its absurdity, and the delight of knowing it absurd. The party system means a ship with two crews, the one in possession of the bridge and the .engine room, the other trying to get ■possession. What kind of voyage ttie ship will make under these conditions, towards what port,'"at what speed, and when to arrive, is a Parliamentary toss-up; no man knows,' no man can ever know. A noconfidence debate is a , formal trial of strength, barefaced, shameless, its sole object the thrusting out of the ins and the putting in of the outs, with the consequent control of the bread locker, the beef cask, the whisky canteen, and the boatswain’s whistle. "But the metaphor is getting tiresome, let us dismiss it. Let us say° in plain speech that the no-confidence debate has reached no higher level intellectually than morally. Mr G. M. Thomson quoted Shakespeare to purpose, which was well ;■ also he quoted Latin, and explained it. Ho was almost tempted to give them a little Latin; but they would not understand it. Mr Russell (indignantly): What University degree did you get? Hon. Mr Allen: Let me have it. , Mr Thomson; It is a very old quotation from Horace: “ Dulce est desipere in loco,” which a compatriot of mine has translated “Real fine claffin ”, Opposition Members: ‘What? Mr Thomson: Real fine daffin ° This is to explain obscurum per The Scotch is harder than the Latin.

That invidious heading “The Church and Labour ” will have to be dropped. It is time we heard of the Church and Capital, the Church and the Idle Rich, the Church and the Smart Set, and thus and thus—an alternative line of things. Our respected townsman, the Hanover Street Baptist minister, who has been arranging debates on the Church and Labour„only to find that Labour dislikes being fussed over ecclesiastically and resents it, should now convoke an assembly of Bond street merchants, bank managers, company directors, drapers, and softgoods-men, in order to discuss with them their relation to church services and the Christian religion. The working man doesn’t; go to church; and why? Because he doesn’t want to go to church. Probably the banker and the broker; the middleman and the moneylender, stay away for the same reason. Impeach the guilty one and all, or none at all. It is to be admitted, however, that last week’s Church and Labour' - debate evolved some interesting features. For example : Mr Gray said: “I have mot a lot of men' on the platform and off, but I have never met a man like you. I have never met a man who could put into a 10 minutes’ speech so much - colossal ignorance as you have tonight.” , ! Mr Maguire leaped to his feet. “ I challenge you to debate the matter on any public platform”! he-,shouted. “I have a medal for championship debating in "Victoria —presented to me by an archbishop ” An old woman at the back of the hall complicated matters by loud screams ,of objurgation. “You are no good, Maguire,” she screeched. “We have no time for you.” Later, we have the same Mr Maguire crying frantically “ I challenge you to debate !” Whereupon follows uproar, led—says the reporter —by the same old lady at the back of the hall. Assuming their dulness, I have usually skipped discussions headed “The Church and Labour.” That seems a mistake. A dog-fight is never dull.

The other week we had the Rev. Dr Jones, new arrival, informing us that the England of our imagination is not the England of fact; that the cables we get are party cables, —“very biassed against the Liberal Government,” and “inclined to exaggerate the Home Rule, disturbance,” a matter about which, when he (Dr Jones) left, “the country was quite placid.” In short, that in relation to British politics we are

systematically hoodwinked by a conspiracy of reporters and news agents. Which is absurd. We have all the means of information here that the Rev. Dr Jones had in the seclusion of his English manse. To save the face of this innocent abroad, a correspondent of the Daily Times remarks that the cables bring us 'puerilities and trivialities. They do. They -report cricket scores —how county champions succeed or fail, When casting a ball at three straight sticks and defending the same with a fourth. They report billiard scores—the green baize vicissitudes of Gray, Inman, Lindrum, and other such nonentities. transmit such thrills as this : Press Association —By Telegraph —Copyright. (Received July 6, 8.30 a m.) BERNE, sth'. July. A Judge, in fining a man 40s for kissing a woman, explained that the smallness of the penalty was due to the fact " that the kiss was given in the dark, and was too fleeting to be-of much account. Note the careful dating, the hour of reception, the warning “Copyright.” Call this trivial and y uerile if you will; it is the kind of thing that people like. They uikb trivialities and puerilities. If the Kaiser kissed the kitchenmaid, and the kitchenmaid slapped his face, the fact would be of more value for cable purposes than a Home Rule debate. The place matters not ; distance is.,.nothing; Berne, Berlin, Borioboolagha, it is all one to the cable. Rubbish we may'get, and do, bushels of it. But that is not the point. The point is that dpinion in this counti’y is not and could not be systematically drugged and hocussed by false intelligence. Once seen, the thing is clean ridiculous!

It is*with something of pain and something' of shame that Dunedin suspects itself of forgetting Thomas Bracken. _No memorial stone marks his last resting place ; nobody seems quite sure of the spot. What may be dhlled his “literary remains” are scattered here and there amongst, us—a stray copy of Paddy Murphy’s Annual and one or two thin books of verse—but the Athenaeum library contains them- not; nor d b I know where else you could look, unless perhaps in the neglected Hockcn collection, adjunct the Museum. A generation - having arrived that knows him not, let me say that Thomas Bracken was an amiable journalist of the : 70’s and ’Bo’s, with the journalistic knack of never getting rich, but, in compensation, with a happy facility in writing verse, which verse when serious to the level of poetry, and deserves to live, Dr Waddell and other competent persons being judges. Bracken was a light-weight politician, and in that capacity was sent by Dunedin Centra] to Parliament, where his one memorable ’ achievement was the singing of a Scotch song during debate., Celebrating this incident, Passing Notes also dropped into poetry, as was meet.

Mb Bhacken and the .Scotch Song. , Sing, Bracken, sing! the' Opposition cried, Sing, Bracken, sing! respond the other side. Though sweet the scrannel pipe of Weston be, # Though dear Montgomery’s drone, Though sure to please , Macandre’w’s wheeze, Fish’s hoarse note, Dick’s twanging cacophone—i Though soft the silken sibilants frorfi M. W G.— These pleasures pall, We waive them all— Let Bracken strike \the string! Come, come, dear boy! enlarge our j°y; . . Sing, modest minstrel, sing! Whereupon, in response to calls from all parts of the house, Mr Bracken uprose and sang the Scotch ditty “Behave yersel afore folk.” Though not an Early Settler or Old Identity, pur sang, Thomas Bracken deserves a niche in our Temple of Fame, and at least a headstone in the cemetery. Givis.