PASSING NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 3197, 23 June 1915, Page 7

PASSING NOTES.

(From Saturday’s Daily Times.)

Our greatest military centenary has come and gone with little note. There is record of French navy men celebrating the Entente by laying wreaths at the foot of the Nelson column in Trafalgar Square; but it is against nature that French armv men or anybody of French blood should compliment us on Waterloo. lor that reason we refrain from complimenting our own selves, the French of to-day being, in relation to us, not only near and dear friends; but indispensable allies. In effect we. resign the celebrating of Waterloo to the Germans, the Germans, who* as it chances, are for the moment in illicit possession of the historic battlefield itself, where, mendaciously, they will assure each other that on that spot a hundred years ago they turned a British defeat into victory. “At Waterloo you 'saved the Britisii from destruction,” the Kaiser once told his Prussians at a military banquet. They did, in the samp sense precisely that the British saved the Prussians from destruction. The two were in alliance, honourably campaigning together against an early incarnation of Kaiserism then ravaging Europe; each helped the other, and the ruin of either would have been the ruin of both. But at Waterloo it was the British who bore the burden and heat of the day, wearing down and wearing out the enemy’s violence; the Prussians arrived only in time to help at the finish. We have always given them due credit; witness the Tennyson Ode of 1852: The day of decision was on the part of the French, *

A day of onsets of despair! Dashed on every rocky square, Their surging charges foamed themselves away; Last, the Prussian trumpet blew Thro’ the long-tormented air Heaven flashed a sudden jubilant ray, And down we swept and charged and overthrew. So great a soldier taught us there, What long-enduring hearts could do In that world-earthquake, Waterloo! The same thing will be shown again, mayhap on the same field, but with a reversal of parts —the British and the French a band of brothers against the Prussians and Prussian militarism, a blazing and raging tyranny worse a hundred fold than Napoleonism of a hundred years ago. Thus the whirligig of Time brings in his revenges.

The miracle of the Waterlog campaign is its swiftness. 'Three days; June the 15th to June the 18th,- or four, counting extremes, saw the beginning and the end, a feature on which we who are up to the neck in a war of possibly three years may meditate dismally. On June the 15th, which was a Thursday, at the head of au army of veterans “as well schooled and as highly tempered as any he had ever commanded,” Napoleon burst out from behind his veil of frontier fortresses and invaded Belgium with a rush. On the 16th, Friday, while Wellington’s troops were beating off Ney at Quatre Bras (the Cross Roads), Blucher with 90,000 Prussians in bad formation at Ligny, seven miles to the left, was getting from Napoleon himself the “damnable mauling” Wellington had predicted him. When the expected news came in next morning Vvellington said to his staff (we nee-dn't be too mealy-mouthed to repeat his classic phrases) —“Old Blucher has had a damned good licking and gone back to Wavre, eighteen miles. As he has gone back we must go too. I suppose they will say in England we have been licked as well.” This was Saturday, June the 17th, within hail of midsummer’s day. Everywhere on the Belgian plains the corn stood high, farmsteads and villages bowered in foliage. But all that while Wellington went back to his chosen position ac. Mont St. Jean, thirteen miles in front of Brussels, and all the irght that followed, it rained as if for Fov.h’s flood. Next morning, Sunday the l?th, it was a drenched and shivering host’ that rose from bivouac to the struggling sun —not for IVellington s opponent the “sun of Ansterlitz ’ but the sun of Waterloo. When the long day closed Napoleon, a broken man, was on his way to Pans and St. Helena. “The diamond a which were found sewn

into a coat in his carriage after Waterloo are typical of the spirit in which he carried on his great adventure, for even in his hours of established authority and splendour he w.as uneasily aware that ho was skirting the edge of ruin,” —says an English writer. From whose hand came the push that finally sent him over the world of that day had no doubt. I.he King of Prussia ‘ invited the victor of Waterloo to reorganise the Prussian army; the Czar of Russia ‘‘loved him like a mistress;’’ Napoleon’s belief is indicated characteristically by the legacy with which he rewarded a fanatic who attempted Wellington’s life. For years after the great battle Wellington was the most influential person in Europe, yet withal a man of simplicity and modesty. The best words in which to write of him on the hundredth return of Waterloo Ray are his own : “I hope to God,” he said to Lady Shelley just after Waterloo, “that I have fought my last battle. It is a bad thing to bo always fighting. While in the thick of it I am too much occupied to feel anything; but it is wretched just after. It is quite impossible to think of glory. Loth mind and feelings are exhausted. I am wretched oven in the moment of victory, and I always say that next to a battle lost the greatest misery is a battle gained.”

As early as February, the war not six months old, the Germans were fighting for a draw, says Mr Hilaire Belloc. Iheir original be*st having become foolishness, they fell back on their second best —to fight Russia to a standstill, buy off France with a slice of Alsace-Lorraine, and keep Belgium, —Great Britain with wry face assenting. Forsaken by her allies, what else could she do? —reasoned the Potsdam wiseacres.

To terms of peace upon those lines without a- doubt the Gorman Government has now turned. Already Austria has twice approached one portion of the Allies with offers humiliating to herself but preserving the existence of her curiously inchoate dominions. The German Empire has at least once, perhaps twice, approached the French with offers which would restore a large portion of Alsace-Lorraine, but which would leave the enemy in control of Belgium. Germany hopes for what would appear in the eyes of the world as “a draw”; and that ‘‘draw” is the goal for which she now continues to fight. This iooiishuess is a heap more foolish than the other. Russia is not going to be knocked out; the good faith of France is not for sale; nothing in Germany’s power to do, threaten, or promise could sever and sunder the three Allies. Not to mention that Great Britain, her fleet intact, unchallenged and unchallengeable, could and would carry on the war alone. But Italy has joined—“a new factor of immense importance,’’ says Mr Asquith. Moreover at the Dardanelles we are battering in Germany’s back door, an operation which, according unto Asquith (and we may believe him) “will be pushed through to a successful conclusion.” The Germans may bid good-bye to , dreams. The war is more than ever the war, and they will have to fight it out.

Meanwhile on our side, takings long views, looking at things in broad lights, we find the prospect good. Even the men who bear the " brunt, the men in the trenches, think the prospect good. Major Baird, M.P., fresh from the front, told the House of Commons the other day that our troops in Flanders were “ perfectly confident- of success.” “ We are all satisfied with what has happened,” he said; “we know that things have gone from better to better, and that the Germans will find Neuve Chapelle was a perfect picnic to what they will have next time.” This is good hearing. And Major Baird, M.P., is corroborated by Colonel Arthur Lee, M.P., who says, writing from the front to his constituents :—“ I have never, felt more quietly optimistic about the final outcome of the war than I do at this moment. This does not mean, of course, that victory is close at hand, or even that the hardest fighting and the heaviest losses are not still ahead of us, but that the Allies have it in their power to win and to free Europe from the German peril once and for all is now certain beyond question.’’ ■» I see a great deal of our men at the front, they are keen, skilful, and determined. The fine victory, and, still more, the encouraging lessons of Neuve Chapelle, have filled them with confidence and enthusiasm. They are not in the least depressed by their losses, and, unlike most people in England, they fully realise that the casualties already incurred must be doubled and trebled before the victory is finally won. Their one desire is to advance and settle accounts with the Germans. “ But,” he adds —and here’s the rub ! “ this they cannot do without better support. from their mates and their rulers at home.’’ Mr Lloyd George in his new incarnation will make sure this better support;—Minister of Munitions! More power to him !. A hustler was wanted, and a hustler we have got. I never thought that, 1 should be compelled to love Lloyd George. It is a great humiliation. As respects Prohibition, national and absolute, he has run away from his own proposals, and I think none the worse of him for that. M unition makers who get dritnlc to the advantage of the public enemy should be prohibited ; the rest of us may be left to a voluntary following of the King, God bless him ! For the good of the State the King now drinks barley water. Barley water, which is now served at the King’s table, had a spell of popularity in the West End clubs some 20 years ago, and is likely to know a revival. The place for barley water, however, is the Inner Temple, which is very proud of its particular decoction of the drink, and serves it at both lunch and dinner in the Hall. News and argument both, this; our local Prohibitionists owe me ; thanks. On the other hand the Westminster Gazette, no friend to compulsory barley water, rakes ua goroa ograaah-i* -nSsin about the Rev.

Dr Chalmers, of Free Kirk fame, whose name \ve have immortalised by calling the port of Otago after him, and whom theology, political economy, philosophy, and metaphysics, in 30 volumes, enrich Knox College and are there esteemed light reading. It is rather amusing,, when the question of 1 quor is so much to the front, to find that the groat _Dr Chalmers—the most illustrious Scottish Churchman since John Knox, Lord Rosebery called him the other day—was no Puritan as regards some • of the alcoholic drinks of his country. It is told in Dr Hanna’s “ Memoirs ” of the illustrious preacher that in 1833 he travelled down Liddesdalo- in company with George Thomson. “ I made him to stop at a tollhouse,” writes Chalmers, “to wet his thrapplc a woand sat down myself to a bouse wr him, a travelling butcher, and a'sci vant of Mr Elliot’s—that is, I gave all their good healths in the act of slaking my ain drouth with a willy-waught of ale.” Sometimes he favoured a stronger decoction. A relative of a Glasgow Herald contributor used to say to Chalmers, “Is your toddy to your taste, Doctor,” and Chalmers would reply: “I like it, sir; I like it.” It is a long time since Chalmers lived, and the social customs of Scotland have changed enormously. They have, but the whisky is still good. Were it not, we should be asking with Macduff in the play, “Stands Scotland where it did?”

Dear “ Givis,” —I know you are dreadfully full-handed with the war and with trying to urge all the young and middle-aged bachelors to do their duty to their King and country. But could you spare a tiny corner to say what is the difference between a barbarian and a savage? Gibbon is always telling us about barbarians. It never struck mo but that they were ordinary savages until I saw somewhere (I think in the Life of Dr Arnold) something that made out there was a distinction. —I am, etc., Scrupulosity. Why go past the dictionaries ? If you would possess a treasure in that kind buy “The Concise Oxford,” its pi’ice a few shillings. To the Greek a foreigner was a man whose language sounded strange —a man whose talk was bar-bar-bar. But the bar-bar-bar man, the “ barbarian,” was sometimes as much a civilised man as the Greek himself. Gibbon’s “ barbarians” are the northern tribes that threatened and finally overran the Roman Empire, tribes of a low civilisation. A savage, strictly, is a man who runs wild in woods —“silva,” a wood. Your sentence in Arnold’s “ Life” is no doubt this : “ I believe with yon that savages could never civilize themselves, but barbarians I think might.” Currently, the two words mean much the same thing; and .if you would see a shining example of liaidiarity and savagery in union, address yourself to the Kaiser. .

Dear “ Givis,” —Turn aside for a moment from the stress and turmoil of the world’s military clash and elucidate the following', which has puzzled several dominies: — A man left home between five and six o’clock and returned between six and o seven o’clock. Upon his return the hour hand on the clock occupied the place at which the minute hand had been when ho left, and vice versa. At what hour did he leave and when did he return? Puzzled. This needs the philosopher in Hudibras, For he, by geometric scale, Could take the size of pots of ale; Resolve, by sines and tangents, straight, If bread or butter wanted weight; And wisely tell what hour o’ th’ day The clock does strike by algebra. Failing a pundit of this calibre, you ought to find an answer somewhere between Todhunter’s Algebra for Beginners and De Morgan’s Budget of Paradoxes. Failing all else, watch the clock. Ido not profess a Puzzle Department. Givis.