PASSING NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 3169, 9 December 1914, Page 6

PASSING NOTES.

(From SiturJiy'a D til/ Ci aii.t Among voices on the war—persons in authority, prophets, strategists, tipsters, and the man who “told you so a month ago”—two have I found that you may believe every time and all the time, two only and no third —Lord Kitchener and Sir John French. Not that there is any lack of credible news. Tire Australian and New Zealand Expeditionary Force has been landed in Egypt, there to be trained, there to guard the canal —an Empire jugular vein—and mightily to astonish the natives. It was high time for putting the horses ashore, not to mention the men. Also, they have “ caught De Wet.” Trust a Boer to catch a Boer. These welcome incidents let no man doubt; but they fall outside the main theatre of war, east and west. Bussian successes in Poland are great to-day, less to-morrow, and on the third day seem at the vanishing point. But when Lord Kitchener affirms that Bussian victories are real and of vast strategic importance, I believe and take comfort. Kitchener knows whatever there is to know, and Kitchener doesn’t lie. So again when a despatch from Sir John French gets into print. Here at last, in a weltering sea of uncertainties, unrealities, absurdities, you come on the thing that is. Bead Sir John French’s account of his adventurous transfer of troops from right to left across the German front, read of the stand at Ypres, and thank Heaven that the blood that runs in your veins is British. The “ scrap of paper ” held so cheap by German honour has been photographed for distribution in aid of British recruiting It is part of the treaty of 1839, the words French, as is usual in European treaties, but English would hardly be plainer ; Article VII. La Belgique, dans ies limites indiquees aux articles I, 11, et IV, formera un Etat independent et perpetuellement neutre. File sera tonne d’observcr cctte memo neutralifco covers les autres Etats. It doesn't look much; yet in redemption of the pledge it carries the British Empire is at war by land and sea. To that scrap of paper six European Powers set their hand and seal —Great Britain, Belgium, Austria, France, Prussia, and Bussia. Their plenipotentiaries sign thus; Palmerston. Sylvan Van de Weyer. Scnfft. H. Scbastiani Billow. Pozzo di Borgo. It was a Von Bulow who signed for Prussia. Ex-Chancellor Yon Bulow may note the fact and be proud of his country. The principles or no-principles of a race-

course welsher, the humanity of Indian Thugs and Solomon Island head-hunters, the {esthetics of the Huns and the Vandals, —German “kultur” as applied to Belgium tops the lot, and British recruits actual or potential ought to know it. So think the Parliamentary Recruiting Committee whose leaflet is quoted above, and I dare say they are right—distinctly right when they ram the lesson home by adding the message of the King of the Belgians to King George : God will surely help our armies to avenge the atrocities committed on peaceful citizens, and against a country whose only crime has been that she re- • fused to be false to her engagements. Albert. Here let me append a paragraph from the Westminster Gazette: Sir Gilbert Parker (in The Times) recalls another Hohenzollern precedent for contempt for “ a Scrap of Paper.” This is to bo found in the speech made by Frederick William IV in the speech from the throne to the first Parliament of Prussia in 1847 : “ Never will I allow a sheet of written paper to come like a second providence between our Lord God in heaven and this land, to govern us by its paragraphs.” The Kaiser can certainly pray in aid this very pertinent precedent, though it will hardly help him in the eyes of a world which still has a prejudice in favour of signatures being honoured. And yet it may be that the recruit is but little stirre-d by appeals to his moral sense, considerations ethicSl and humanitarian. The retreat from Mons sent recruiting up, the fall of Antwerp did the same; let a few Zeppelin bombs be dropped about, fasten upon German treachery the blowing up of the Bulwark, and the highly suspicious explosion of powder mills in Yorkshire—there would be an instant rush to the colours. The psychology of all this is simple. Life moves in well-worn grooves. Kitchener’s prospective millions that by and by will march and fight—none better! —are endowed with a, plentiful lack of imagination. The British soldier, before and after, is an absent-minded beggar. Look at his marching songs. Nothing about him more completely puzzles the pedants. The French have their passionate “Marseillaise” ; the Germans vociferate in beery bellowings of being “ Whacked on the Rhine.” The British soldier goes to war in serious gaiety—(“Are we. downhearted? NO!”) —his marching music the latest music-hall song : ‘ ‘ It’s a long way to Tipperary, It’s a long way to go. It’s a long way to Tipperary, To the sweetest girl I know. Good-bye, Piccadilly ! Farewell, Leicester square ! It’s a long, long way to Tipperary, But my heart’s right there!” That is the song which has carried our army from Aldershot to Southampton and from Paris to the Aisne; it is the song which one of the sailors from the torpedoed Cressy started singing in the water. “ It certainly is if you have to swim there,” so went the comment, already historic. I am quoting from the Spectator, and mav as well give on the same authority “the latest popular marching song from Aldershot”: The tune is a wild jumble of half a dozen music-hall airs, and the words arc the work of a sergeant of the Gordon Highlanders: “ Send out the army and the navy. Send out the rank and file (Have a banana!), Send out the bravo Territorials, They easily can run a mile (I don’t think!), Send out the boys of the girls’ brigade, They will keep old England free; Send out my mother, rny sister, aud my brother. But for goodness’ sake don’t send me 1” “Gaiety and courage of outlook” it is that finds expression in these nonsense songs for recruits to march to, says the Spectator. We may accept that diagnosis. Dear “Givis,” —Will you please explain ■what the unspeakable Turk meant by applying in a London newspaper for 12 tradesmen for tho Turkish Navy, and at such high wages, too —a torpedo gunner, T 460 per annum; a boatswain, T 42 0; chief stoker.TT 28; and so on. down to a diving instructor, T 216. I enclose advertisement. Will you also kindly ex plain why the Germans arc stuck for copper in connection with tho war. Table Hill. That the Germans should he "stuck for copper” is at present only a pious wish.

Copper goes to the making of brass, and brass to the making of cartridges, and the Germans have no copper of their own. But they still have ways of getting it, I imagine. Petrol also, —running short, no doubt; but they must still have ways of getting it. There are Scandinavian ports; there are Dutch ports (unless we have quite closed up the North Sea); there are Italian ports. Conceivably'the war might go on till the Kaiser is reduced to his last cartridge and his last pint of “ essence.’’ But an earlier ending is to be preferred. The advertisement sent me by this correspondent (Reynolds’ Newspaper, July 26) has a footnote : Application to be made to the Secretary of the Navy Employment Agency, 25 Victoria street, London, S.W. One T (Turkish pound) equals 18s English. Quite open and aboveboard this offer of Turkish service and Turkish pay to gunners and skilled artificers trained in the British Navy. Yet at the date of July 26 war was in "the air and Turkey a possible belligerent. An old story this—Great Britain in the character of Simple Simon whilst accused right and left of fathomless duplicity. We are “Perfidious Albion”—no myth is more persistent. It is we who engineered the war; it is we who made Belgium a shambles. German editors lift up holy hands in horror at British hypocrisy and the depths of British cunning. We shall never be able to live this reputation down, however transparent our simplicity. No nation is so incurably unsuspicious, so tolerant of spies, so artlessly open to treasons, stratagems, and spoils. At the moment when the Turk in collusion with Germany is plotting war against ns we allow him to spirit away our trained navy men from under our nose. The one consoling fact in relation to the elections is that “ now we shan’t be long.” Another week and the unseemly distraction ends. The numbers will go up, the predestined failures will go down, and the country will say with Horatio or the other fellow on the battlements of Elsinore, “ For this relief much thanks.” 1 have not followed the argument with closeness, being detained elsewhere in attendance on the Kaiser and Sir John French. But one inquiring elector catches my eye ; “If you are returned would you be in favour uf candidates for Parliament being medically examined to sco if they arc physically and mentally fit?” because, added the questioner, “ I think they should be medically examined in view of the way they go on in the House.” Quite so, —rem acu tetigit. The way they go on in the House is the way they go on in a football scrimmage. In particular since they proclaimed a party “ truce” in compliment to the war. The party truce endured for a week or so; and then, 10, again, it was the scuffling of kites and crows, has been ever since, and still is. More sinned against than sinning may be pleaded for some of them; but the. rest, patently off their moral and mental chump, should be professionally examined. An inquiry de lunatico is equally “indicated” —as doctors say—for candidates. At any rate for some. Probably in every case the returning officer should require a certificate of sanity. Red Feds and others who disported themselves in the strike may reasonably declare that on Mr Massey and the Masseyites they will be horribly avenged. It was the Massey party that raised the labour blockade, opened the ports, saved the country from mob rule and club law. The Ward party would have done the same, but the Ward party chanced to be out of office. The inexpiable sin was the sin of the Masseyites. But now the hour has come, — “Revenge!” Timotheus cries.. And revenge is not necessarily what you would call insanity, though profoundly immoral. Yet in some of its manifestos that have come mv 'way Red Feddism is mad as a hatter. Every vote cast against Masseyism will help to cut the tentacles of the Trust Octopus. Frustrate the enemies of the people by casting your vote for the Labour Candidate. On the intelligent vote of the workers depends the proper control of Food Prices. “ Tentacles of the Trust Octopus,” “enemies of the people,” “control of the food prices,”—clearly there are visions

about. Jack Cade is too old a chestnut to bring in here, though I believe that the last word on Jack Cade has yet to be said ; indeed it : s beginning to be thought that Jack Cade, like Mr Bracken’s sad soliloquist, is “ not understood.” But, certainly, if extant and in New Zealand, Jack Cade would be skipper of the Red x eels. Civis.