PASSING NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 3212, 6 October 1915, Page 13

PASSING NOTES.

(3?iom Saturday’s Daily Times.)

About the good news from the western front. After days of self-suppression at other people’s bidding I at length take leave to talk as I feel, acknowledging “ elation”—a state of mind reprobated by the London Times—and not ashamed of a aneaking desire for a little “ mafficking” if the chance offered. We gloom over reverses and chafe at delays; why may we {lot fling up our caps for a success when t comes and brighten when once again the word is ‘‘Forward!” There will yet be occasions enough for a long face — checks, failures, losses —we are not children that we should forget if. But at the moment there is occasion for drum and fife, pipe and tabor; let us recognise our mercies and be happy while we may. Unquestionably it is a big thing that we, the Allies, have done on the western front. Only a very big thing could have yielded us 25,000 German prisoners. There is no explaining away that enormous and most welcome ‘‘bag.’’ We defclre encouragement for our other longenduring allies, “ moral effect” for behoof of rail-sitting neutrals; —here we have It. Advance made, ground won, miles of trenches captured, with Krupp guns the score; but the fact that will tell is the taking of 25,000 unwounded German prisoners. It is conceivable that at this stage of the war the Germans were not unwilling to be taken. If so, may we meet with other thousands likeminded It will be easier to feed them than to fight them, and much more economical.

Mr Wilford, member for Hutt, is maladroit. He had a good case; flippancy and a short temper flung his good case away. The Government are providing a second hospital ship—why do they not pay for it out and out? ' Paying for it out and out, they would make each of us pay according to the means of each, obviously the one sane and equitable way. But, 10, enter his Excellency the Governor as a begging-letter writer—with the complicity of his Ministers of course, possibly at their instigation—and his Excellency discourses of hospital bed linen with the ease and fluency of a draper’s assistant—sheets, quilts, feather pillows, pillow slips, “draw sheets,” pyjamas, nightinfales, bed jackets, night shirts, etc., etc., own to reels of cotton, packets of needles, pieces of tape, hair combs, tooth brushes, sooth powder, and—queer item !—“ 50 sets of shoe brushes (patterns 15 to 17, various assorted)” all these necessary things the people- of New Zealand are" invited to contribute of their “generosity.” And contribute they will no doubt. Five hundred patriotic women will send in 500 sheets, quilts, pillow .slips, what not, — the overplus to be used in scrubbing d©cks, >as they say befell on board our first hospital ship, the Maheno. Questioning the Defence Minister, Mr Wilford wanted to know why this method of equipment, haphazard, wasteful, burdening the generous, exempting the shirker, lhad been adopted. It is what I myself want to know, and a good many other people as well.

There was an official answer, of course, and it was the exasperating plausibility of tbs official answer that bred trouble in tbe House. Mr Allen: —The busy fingers of the women arc occupied to-day, willingly occupied, in preparing material for this ship, and I should hesitate—not only hesitate, but be loth indeed —to take away from tho women of the country this opportunity. Mr Wilford: —There you are, with

your dirty answers. Why “dirty’’? On this ridiculously inappropriate epithet Mr Speaker pounced at once,—it is Mr Speaker’s duty to pounce. The lion, member must “ withdraw the expression unreservedly.” To Mr Wiford, usually one of the readiest men. in. the House, this demand should have been a gay opportunity. “ Withdraw, sir?—certainly, sir; I spake unadvisably with my lips and withdraw with alacrity- ai’ fights reserved.” Unhappily he took another ticn, defied the chair, ftpd got bin self suspended. Nothing more Was beard of the home; . ship, bon. members abandoning then.selves to a childish Wrangle over tho question of order.

Tho Premiers —The ruling of the Speaker must bo obeyed, right or wrong. Mr Jennings rose to protest against the Premier’s statement that right or wrong Mr Speaker must bo obeyed. If such was tho case what bo tho position of hon. members? Who was to judge? Members on the right (in chorus): — Mr Speaker. Members on tho left were of the opinion that in a deliberative assembly every man may do what is right in Iris own eyes. Division taken —40 to 17, the minority voting in effect for the abolition of Mr Speaker, his office and authority—wig and gown and mace included. Such are the wiseacres this country sends to Parliament.

The friends and backers of Professor von Zedlitz havo* triumphantly explained away everything against him —except that his name is von Zedlitz. The name is the fatal thing. With asphyxiating gases in mind and the Lusitania unforgotten I for my part, though of few prejudices, should" find it impossible to take tea with any “ von,” still leas could I make him my Gamaliel and sit at his feet. Can it be' pretended that a “ Professor von Zedlitz ” looks well on the staff of a New Zealand college? Everything German is odious; the Germans themselves have made it so. A von Zedlitz question crops up everywhere. Thus, respecting a Mr W. H. Schlich employed in the War Office, the National Review observes “It has been discouraging to many correspondents of the War Office, anxious to do their duty by their country by killing Germans, to receive replies to offers of service from Mr Schlich.” The Morning Post, though “knowing nothing against this gentleman personally,” holds that “the presence at the War Office of an official with a German name like Schlich, which not only cries but shrieks of German origin, is a cause of uneasiness in the public mind.” This editor, not ungenerous, “would allow Germans in the public service to draw their pay in temporary retirement.” Which suggestion the friends of Professor von Zedlitz on the Victoria College Council may consider. Perhaps it offers their only coifrse. Paid or unpaid. Professor von Zedlitz will have to go.

Among questions that may be debated world without end is the right or wrong of raffling. The parliamentary conscience —if such a thing exists —is being strained just now by a Bill legalising raffles in aid of patriotic funds. Hon. members have a hazy notion that in strictness a bet—and a raffle is a bet —is immoral, but that necessity is laid on them to do evil that good may come. On the ethical point they are no wiser than the Auckland ministers who in meeting assembled have declared Queen Carnival raffling outside the pale of Christian morals, —not because a Queen Carnival raffle is a frank appeal to selfishness (that indeed is a scandal!) but because raffling is Intrinsically immoral. But not oven their own people believe them. “We are going to raise a quarter of a million,” boasts Mr Parr, to the “ Hooray !” of the Hon. Mr Herdman, and raffling will raise the larger part of it. Though men are ruined by betting, there is nothing intrinsically wrong in a bet. Men are ruined by buying snares, but there is nothing intrinsically wrong in a joint-stock company. Against gambling—by common consent a ruinous vice—ministers of religion are all but helpless. Why ? Because contrary to reason, common sense, and the moral instinct of half the Christian world they pronounce games of chance intrinsically wrong.

It is the prohibition fallacy in another incarnation. Because unable to distinguish between use and abuse, between moderation and excess, prohibitionists have done nothing for public house reform. Traffic in alcoholic drinks is the accursed thing, and they refuse to touch it. An anti-prohibitionist myself, I desire to see the public house bar limited or closed outright; but the ether side won’t help. Before the court this week was a man so respectable, charged with an assault so unintelligible and preposterous, that one of his witnesses declared he would as soon believe it of the magistrate himself. But police investigation brought out that this so respectable man on his way home visited bar after bar—a whisky here, a whisky there, at one bar four whiskies in succession. What is to be thought of a barkeeper who serves a man with four successive whiskies? Deform is hopeless because reformers are all mad for absolute and universal prohibition. Talking of whisky, let me quote the practical homily of a worthy beak on the American bench lecturing an habitual “ drunk.” Give your wife two dollars to buy a gallon of whisky. There are 69 drinks in one gallon. Buy your drinks from no one but your wife, and by the time the first gallon is gone she.' will have four dollars to put in the bank and two dollars to start business again. Should you live 10 years, and continue to buy from her, and then die with snakes in your boots, she will have enough to bury you decently, educate your children, buy a house and lot, marry a decent man, and quit thinking about you. Tlie whole New Zealand prohibition platform has talked to less purpose.

It is almost a pity that Mr Belcher retires from the Dunedin Harbour Board in peace. Consistency demanded an exit more dramatic. When last at the board Mr Belcher moved that the engineer, Mr Blair Mason, bo dismissed; that the office of engineer be abolished; that Mr Bardsley, the secretary, receive three months’ notice to quit; that any person, “irrespective of his status on the board,’’ who should do this or that —namely, certain things disapproved by Mr Belcher —■“ be summarily dismissed from the board’s service.’’ Finally and to conclude, having resolved—liko tho enthusiast in De Quincev’s “Murder as one of the Fine Arts”

—to “ g'o off in a general massacre,” Mr Belcher moved a vote of censure on him-

self. Baulked by the refusal of the chairman to put a motion “ calculated to bring the board into ridicule and contempt,” Mr Belcher was reduced to doing away with himself privately, as it were, —a tame official suicide announced by letter. “ I have been treated by stabs in the back when I was not here to make explanations or defend myself,”—he complained. When a man is stabbed jn the back during his absence it is indeed time to go. In a letter addressed to the public through the Daily Times, from which letter the editor ‘‘found it necessary to excise several objectionable expressions and sentences,’ the victim laments himself as ‘‘poor Bill Belcher.” I echo the coronach—“Poor Bill Belcher!’’ We could better have spared a better man.

Mr Dugald Ferguson of Tapanui has claims on the esteem and kindly feeling of all Otago. He has written books in urose and verse. How many of us—how few, rather —can boast a similar intellectual activity? A book’s a book, although there’s nothing in’t. But in Mr Ferguson’s books there is much wholesome sentiment, and some pathos. “ A man of little worldly wit, and loose regard for L.5.D.,” may be said of him when he goes hence, he suggests. Yet his fond bosom ever woke

In quick response to passion’s flame; And, though chased by misfortune’s stroke, Gave ready hoed to Pity's claim. Now loosed from impecunious pain, He with the wealthy fully shares Of Mother Earth; yet still remain His thoughts behind. But where are theirs Exactly. Quite so. A just obsairve. But it is a grief to me that in his thoughts that remain behind Mr Ferguson should cherish a grievance against Passing Notes. As set forth in a letter to mo this w r eek, his grievance goes back to the prehistoric, even to “Mr Twopeny’s time.” A Daily Times reviewer had complained of Mr Ferguson’s grammar; Mr Ferguson replied in a letter to the editor; “Givis” Pass-ing-Noted the letter; which letter did not appear in the Witness though Passing Notes did; —all this, resurrected after years, is very sad, not to say a little mad. I invite Mr Ferguson to forgive and forget,—let us shake hands upon it! Moreover, since he particularly desires it, let me mention a fact he has urged upon me in three successive epistles—that the Act of Union between England and Scotland provided that the name of the united countries should be “ Great Britain,” —this in support of Mr Ferguson’s dissertation a week back on the vexed question of names. Much good may it do him. Givis.