PASSING NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 3195, 9 June 1915, Page 13

PASSING NOTES.

(Prom Saturday’s Daily Times.)

The war continues of a ghastly monotony. To-day is as yesterday; this week s cables might be last week’s. The Germans are shelling Rheims cathedral; the Germans were shelling Rheims cathedral six months ago. Six months age a siege of Przemysl was figuring in the cables; a successful siege of Przemysl figures in the cables to-day. There is a vice versa arrangement of parts, the besiegers becoming the besieged; that is the only difference. See-sawing in this fashion, we are for ever “progressing” and never getting any forrarder. Nothing changes but the daily casualty list, and the more that changes the more it is the same thing, sad to say. I am thinking of the Dardanelles, where our 80,000 are making head as best they can against 200,000 Turks. But on our Flanders front the wastage of life is even worse. In the Spectator latest to hand (April 17) the Bishop of London writes: “1 have been holding services for our troops along the battle-line —some 40 services in all, each service often being attended by as many as 4000 men. Every day, when there is practically nothing going on, 200 are killed and wounded.” The same week in Parliament oun losses on land for two months were stated to be 35,347, —over 500 a day, part of the time with “practically nothing go on.”

Foreseeing, and forestalling, doubts as to the competence of his testimony, the Bishop of London adds: —“I have conversed with nearly every General in the field, from the Commander-in-Chief, whose guest I ' was, to the Brigadier-generals, whose headquarters were naturally very much nearer the firing line.”

It is the opinion of every general at the front that this daily waste of life

is caused by want of concentration on the part of the nation. If the batteries had unstinted supnly of ammunition, they could keep down the enemies’ fire and save the Jives of hundreds of our men. Moreover, no advance is possible through the network of trenches, barbed wire, and machine guns until all this has been blown away by artillery fire before the infantry advance. One experienced general asked me when the nation was going to “ begin to make war,” and another said that the whole nation must be “mobilised” unless this war was to

drag on forever. The language of another on “ racing ” was lurid. Speaking for myself —a New Zealander, but much more a Britisher, and an optimist in grain—l profess myself scandalised,- shocked, appalled. A similar state of ’ feeling must exist in responsible quarters, one would say. In which fact, if fact it is, there gleams some scintilla of hope.

Clearly the Bishop of London is of the church militant —more power to him! “The whole mind' of the nation”—he insists —“must ho concentrated on this one problem,” how to fight the war to a speedy and victorious ending :

If drink is in the way, it must be swept aside without the least hesitation, and the amount saved to the nation

would be enough to satisfy any just claim for compensation. With the lives of the flower of our youth hanging in the balance —to say nothing of the existence of the nation —the Government should take over all factories capable of helping in the manufacture of ammunition, as the .French have done, arrange the wages, and treat as traitors either employers or employed who hinder the work.

To Mrs Pankhursfc also has been given the word of wisdom on this subject, and it is not the less wise because uttered by a suffragette: —“Mrs Pankhusst, speaking at a recruiting meeting at Hull, said she hoped the Government would declare martial law, and mobilise both men and women in their country’s service.” Anyhow the munition factories should be under martial law. Why not? Is not ax'my under martial law? Ihe munition factory that supplies the army with weapons is itself a part of tho army, bo essential a part that- there could be no army without it. Resenting doctrines of this kind, in particular the movement towards compulsory service, the Daily Chronicle, an ill-conditioned Keir Hardie sort of paper we may suppose, threatens

us with “a dangerous and growing antiwar agitation.” For which traitorous suggestion the editor of the Daily Chronicle under martial law would be shot. It has been a pleasant dream of German strategists that England might be ruined cheaply and commocliously by the stopping of her imported food supplies. There might be events at sea, says Bernbardi, that would mean the starving of her whole population. Germany has not vet brought off those events at sea, but none the less dees Bernhardt still behold them in vision, together with their consequences :

For the subsistence of her population England depends almost entirely on foreign countries, and would be simply starved if imports were cut off. MOl- - Japan produce all she wants herself, especially rice; she can therefore be severely injured by cutting off sup-

plies from abroad. Applied to England and Japan these amiable doctrines are sound. But beware of applying them to Germany ! Sauce for the goose is not sauce for the gander. Listen to Von Jagow, the German Foreign Secretary :

Germany objected to Britain’s cool assumption that when she was unable to defeat the German armies legiti-

mately on the battle-held she was entitled to force the nation to her knees by economic pressure, disregarding all accepted precepts and regulations. There was no precedent for the siege of the civilian population of a whole nation in its own land, with, no possibility of escape.

Yon Jagow has forgotten Paris and 1871 — a civilian population in its own land ringed in by German armies and starved into submission. Even more to the point, he forgets the plans, plots, and prognostications of his own colleagues.

Not that any such process of exhaustion will avail against Germany,—o dear no!

The question of foodstuffs and raw materials, said Herr Von Jagow, was not a question of necessity for Gor many, but of principle. Germany had shown that she could not be starved out. She might be short of some particular foodstuff, but she had enough to live on and continue the struggle. This was similarly true of raw materials. She was able to get along, even if the imports were cut off.

After what fashion she- is “ getting along ” may be learned from an item of recent Vienna news:

Although horse meat in Vienna now costs 9ri per ib, its consumption is rapidly increasing, and such crowds gather outside the butchers’ shops that the police have had to be called out to maintain order. The supply of slaughter horses is utterly inadequate to meet the demand, and the Vienna Hors© Butchers’ Association has appealed to the military authorities to send all worn-out army horses to the markets for slaughter.

Information which will be of special interest in the Clutba district. German horseflesh, though not precisely a dainty, comes to table even in normal times. No one who eats a German sausage can escape it. For which reason the sausage rather than the spiked helmet or the two-headed eagle is the national emblem. But never in normal times did sausage-meat reach the price of 9d a pound. For this calamity Ist the Germans thank first the war they have made, next the British North Sea Fleet. Yet, spite of the dearness of horseflesh, Von Jagow remains calm. Piracy and murder are merely by way of formal protest; German submarines sunk the Lusitania “on principle.”

The Rt. Hon. Sir George H. Reid, High Commissioner for Australia, bids us read the G.C.M.G. tailed on to his name—“Go on Calling Me ‘George.’” And to Australians “ George Reid ” he is and remains, his politics forgiven, his unfailing platform humour still held in affection. Australia will be grateful for some things he said to a distinguished audience at the Royal Colonial Institute the other day. Originally, Australia was England’s dumping ground for undesirables, and early colonists could boast — True patriots we, for, be it understood, Wo left our country for our country's good. But nfow, at the Empire’s need, Australia sends back across the Equator “some of the most desirable specimens of the race.” I lived in Australia more than fifty years, and I tell you frankly that when I saw in Cairo these young Australians —22,000 of them —I was absolutely surprised. I never saw collected such a splendid array of young men as that I saw beneath the shadow of the Pyramids in Egypt. Some £0 per cent, of them had never seen this Motherland,

and there they were, half-way from the Antipodes, on the road to fight side by side with the sons of Old England and Old Ireland and Old Scotland. When you think of these young communities with their ardent ambitions, and the strong language they use in politics, it is wonderful to find that through all these restless democracies the impulse to personal ambition and party advantage was absolutely discarded the moment the danger signal wont up, and the moment the children of our own race were called upon to defend the

Flag. This will read well in Australia, and is just as good reading in New Zealand. Among the 22,000 Sir George Reid reviewed. and harangued at the Pyramids were some few thousand New Zealanders.

“ The German spies are splendid,” said Sir George; —“but German statesmen are about the silliest crowd I ever- heard of—nearly always wrong but never more wrong than when they judged what the Empire was going to do when the Call of Honour came. I think in one respect we must rather excuse German statesmanship, because I do not think England herself quite knew what she was going to do four days before she did it. But if, instead of listening to whispers of dissension in

the Cabinet, the Germans had studied the historic genius of our race, they would know that they could not violate little Belgium without this country coming to the rescue.” As to naval affairs, “Think of the awful strain on those men in our battleships in the North Sea exposed to all these submarine crawlers, —think of the awful strain on the men who cannot get an open square fight in the light of day! Of course we do a bit of crawling, too, and we get under the screen sometimes.” We do, —in the Sea of Marmora, for example, and send to the Mahometan Paradise whole shiploads of Turkish true believers. It is all very horrible, but in war we do unto another as another does unto us, and go one better if we can. As to tactical superiority at sea, let us not boast, said the speaker:

We have not yet seen the test of that on a large scale. But I never knew a more brilliant exhibition of tactical skill in the handling of a great fleet, than that which has been shown by the Gorman Admiral in staying behind an impregnable screen —I will not say unfairly, because the Gorman Admiral is no fool. When he comes out he may be one.

“ George Reid is as good as ever,” they will say in Australia.

“Cannot this young man be kept within bounds?” —asks a correspondent, handing me with the question a screed of overwhelming magniloquence taken apparently from a local paper, no name. This Is the style of it: —

The sword was terrible when in the

grip of that gigantic brain. All the destructive forces of Nature seemed to aid him. The kennelled thunder came

out at his bidding from the mouths of cannon to shake with terror the nations of the earth. He illumined the world

with the frightful lightning of exploding powder. He never dreamt that the sword could fail. He never dreamt that the defiance snorted from the broad nostril of his warhorse could be ineffective. With his artillery wagons behind him the universe was his box of toys. And so on, in an ecstasy of eloquence at which the whole linotype room, hardened to most things, would blush. Who the “ypung man” may be, and of whom it is that he rants in “Ercles’ vein,” are matters wrapt iu mystery. T offer them as a guessing competition. Givis.