PASSING NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 3234, 8 March 1916, Page 5

PASSING NOTES.

(From Saturday's Daily Times.)

vVhile the fate of Verdun trembles in the balance we are told of Paris optimistic, the Bourse rising, Joffre gleefully rubbing his hands, and Colonel Repington, military critic of The Times, chuckling over '' the real thing at lost. Which is to say that whatever the fate of Verdun all is to go well. For the Allies the real situation is—" Heads I win, tails you lose." Let us try. to believe it; —Lord increase our faith 1 There are one or two uncomfortable facts that stick in one's mind. It is in the nature of fortresses that when seriously attacked they fall. From Liege to Warsaw, from Warsaw to Erzeroum, that is the lesson of this war. Nothing constructed by man can withstand modern weapons of offence. Verdun may have to go with the others. Next, we ourselves were purposing a ' general-offensive," and the Germans, as usual, anticipate us. Thrice is he armed that hath his quarrel just, but four times te that gets his blow in fust 1 It remains nevertheless that the London Times man, normally a croaker, is chuckling, and Joffre rubbing his hands.

General lan Hamilton, too much a literary man, after spending -weeks in polishing the periods of his Gallipoli report at length permits it to see the light. " Polishing his periods" was the official explanation given to Parliament a month back. If literature were wanted, the delay is justified. The Spectator, January J. 5, affirms that this report " will be read and re-read in ages to come as one of the most thrilling military documents in history." The thrill will be of something less than pride when Suvla Bay comes under discussion. There was failure; Sir lan Hamilton charges the failure against two subordinate generals and gives their names. To which must be added his own.

Whatever may be the judgment of history, we cannot helo saying at once that in our opinion Sir lan Hamilton need not have acquiesced at a terribly vital moment in the conditions produced by the prevalent inertia of corps and divisional commanders at Suvla. He himself, as we read hisdespatch, incurs much of the responsibility he imputes. There was not enough of the spirit of the superior officer in India who, when his subordinate reported to biro ihat a proposed attack upon a. hill-fort was impossible, retorted! "Impossible, sir? Why, I've got the order in n\y pocket I" That spirit, illogical in form though it is, is the only one which will retrieve desperate faults. It is a miserable story, not for discussion here. Our one sure and imperishable possession is the " Anzao" record—the tale of how raw lads from Australia and New Zealand bore themselves when pitted against some of the best soldiery in the world. They were no failure. Nor was the adventure in which they spent themselves altogether a futility. It pinned down the enemy to a place where he did not desire to be, and kept him from other places where he could have wrought us worse harm. The world will not undervalue the share of our Anzacs in this Btupendous conflict with the powers of darkness. They did their bit and more, and their sound has gone out into all lands.

I am indebted, to a correspondent for "a superlative example of German profanity."

Aa tho Almighty allowed His Son to be crucified that the schemes of redemption might be accomplished, so Germany is destined to crucify humanity in order that its salvation may be scoured. It is because we arc pure that we have been chosen by the Almighty as Hia instruments to slay with the sword sinful nations. The Divine mission of Germany, oh, brethren I 13 to crucify humanity.

Authentic extract from a war sermon obtained and published by the Methodist Times. German pastors as well as German pTofessors are "a' gone wud." Both aro ipreatures of the State. The Kaiser is '' sumwu-s episcopus," supreme pontiff, HnoaJ descendant of that Frederick William who, as Macaulay relates, "if he saw a clergyman staring at the soldiers*

admonished the reverend gentleman to betake himself to study and prayer, and enforced this pious advice by a sound caning, administered on the spot." But, like Queen Elizabeth, the Kaiser chooses to "tune the pulpits" rather than silence them; and so, as we read in Life, a German clergyman is quoted by ProfessoT Gilbert Murray as praying in public that Germans " might be delivered from the temptation of carrying out the judgments of God with too great mildness."

Now, who outside Germany could imagine that the German mind was in any peril of failing in its pious duty from the -vice of a "too great mildness"? Of most German soldiera Professor Gilbert Murray says "the God they worship is evidently a Being of pure terror, fitly mirrored by the action of high explosive shells."

And of Zeppelin bombs dropped on civilian populations.

"Elizabeth " of the "German Garden " had ample opportunity of knowing the Lutheran pastor and his ways. Parable of the Tares, Matthew adii. discourse on chemical manures; threshing season, Micah iv, 13, " Arise and thresh," discourse on how best to do it; and so on through the circling year, down to the annual slaughter of pigs, Isaiah lxy, part of the fourth verse, "Swine's flesh." Tin's sermon filled the church. In spite of the poor opinion of pigs in both the Old and New Testaments, where, as the preacher found in looking for a text, they were hardly mentioned except. as convenient receptacles for devils, in his parishioners' lives they provided the nearest—indeed, the only—approach to the finer emotions, to gratitude, love, wonder. The peasant, watching this pink chalice of his future joys, this mysterious moving crucible into which whatever dreary dregs and leavings he threw, uttermost dregs' of uttermost dregs that even his lean cTog would not touch, they still by Christmas emerged as sausages, could not but feel at least some affection, at least some little touch of awe. While his relations were ill and having to have either a doctor or a funeral and sometimes, rousing him to fury, both, or if not ill were well and requiring food # and clothing, his pig walked about pink and naked, giving no trouble, needing no money spent on it, placidly transmuting into the fat of future feastings that which without it would have become, in heaps, a source of flies and corruption. The preacher when on pigs was full of intimacy and local warmth. It was the sermon In the year which never failed to fill every seat, and it was the one day on which the village felt its pastor thoroughly understood it.

Happy clays before the war. But now, faithful to the hand that feeds him, the German pastor exalts the Kaiser, preaches " Deutschland über alles!" together with the duty of "crucifying" the rest of humanity, and prays that "our austerely virtuous army " in executing the judgments of God may be saved from the an of "too great mildness."

" The principal use of cavalry in an affair is to give it distinction and save it from being a mere infantry brawl." The men that fought at Minden may have had ideas on the level of this Sandhurst "howler," possibly even the men that fought at Waterloo. In New Zealand we train for higher things. The papers set in the examination of candidates for commissions in our Territorial Force fill me with awe and wonder. J. had no notion there was so much to know. Neither had the candidates.

Of 247 candidates who sat (not including those belonging to the Reinforcements), only 36 passed, and 211 failed, and in many instances failed badly. What is worse, they failed in the wrong place. Failing under such a test as thisj

5. (a) Define " fire direction" and " fire control." (b) Why is the efficiency of section commanders paramount in regard to fire? and half-a-hundred other posers of like quality, they might expect sympathy. But they failed in spelling,—" bad spelling was a rule and not an exception." They failed in handwriting:—"poor handwriting is a failure of the majority of the young men of this country," thinks the examiner. Inability to "express themselves clearly" was balanced by a " tendency to verbosity and outrageous figures of speech," such as " The kraken-like arm of the service skimming the cerulean depths of the ocean;" —also by an inclination to " hyperbolise," to exaggerate inartistically, shall we say?—a mere error in taste like the kraken and the cerulean depths. The really s ad thing is that these young men who cannot spell, cannot decently write, ' cannot express themselves concisely, have passed through the schools. It follows that there is something wrong with the schools. I stop short of the inference that there is something _ wrong with the schoolmaster. But certain it is that a week or two back we had schoolmasters arguing for the superiority of science to literature and filling a column and a bit with what might have been put into the third of a column. Fact! I count it a sin if Passing Notes exceed the regulation column-and-a-half. If t wrote like a schoolmaster.—common or garden variety—l should fill a page.

Presumably the Territorial examiners themselves had passed through the schools. Singular to relate, they share in some degree the faults of their examinees. They too betray a gift for tliffuseness, obscurity, verbal involution; e.g.— 1. The answer to this question displayed considerable ignorance on the part of several of tho candidates as to the difference between cavalry, mounted rifles, and mounted infantry, and were particularly hazy as to the special functions of each.

A dozen words too many, with a false concord thrown in:—"The answer were particularly hazy " 1 ( Again:—"There nas been a distinct improvement in the quality of the papers from tho present candidates over those who sat at the last

examination." Here " those who sat " would appear to be "the papers." In another case (Mounted Rifles) it was the "results" that "sat":—"lt cannot be said that the results shown in this examination were good. Thirty-one sat, and eleven of these failed." Thus we come once more upon the old problem—Who is to teach the teachers? Who shall examine the examiners'/ Quis custodiet ipsos cusfcodes?

Dear " Civis,"—lf Dan O'Connell stories aro accepted in your column I can give you one. I have not seen the Cornhill you refer toj henoe do not know whether this instance of the great man's smartness as a cross-examiner is contained there, Tho case was about a disputed will, alleged by the one side tobe a forgery and by the other asserted to have been signed by the testator when at death's door, but while " life was in him." All the witnesses on that side used the same phrase. Noting its recurrence, O'Connell tackled the man in the box thus;- "By virtue of your oath, was he alive?" "By virtue of my oath," said the witness, "life was in him." "Now," continued O'Connell with great solemnity, " I call on you, in the presence of your Maker, before Whom you must one day be judged for the evidence you give here to-day, I solemnly ask —and answer me at your peril—was it not a live fly that was in the dead man's mouth when his hand was placed upon the will?" The witness instantaneously fell upon his knees and acknowledged that it was so. A fly had been placed in the mouth of the deceased eo that it might be sworn that "life was in him."

An Irish story through and through. Someone in the plot had given it away, I fancy,—not an unusual feature of Irish plots ; —O'Connell had a hint. Another cross-examining triumph is recalled in the Cornhill article. At the Cork assizes a man named James was indicted for murder. The principal witness for the Crown swore to finding the prisoner's hat near the scene of the crime. He knew the hat, and knew that it belonged to James.- Whereupon O'Connell: '' You are quite sure about this hat ? " I am," replied the witness. "Let me look at it again," said O'Connell, taking it from the witness and examining it carefully. He then looked inside, and spelled J-A-M-E-S. " Now do you mean to tell the court and jury thie name was in the hat when you found it?" " I do, on my oath," replied the witness.

"Did vou see the name, then?" " I did—surely." " This is the same hat, no mistake about it?"

" Ooh, no mistake —'tis his hat." "And all you have sworn is as true as that?"

" Quite." " Now you may go down," said O'Connell sternly. "My lord, there is an end of this case—there is no name whatever in the hat." The result was a prompt acquittal.

In the main, nevertheless, the witness may have been truthful. He was tricked by the lawyer's suggestio falsi. And the suggestio falsi is a department of lying.

City Councillors are by this time aware that the changes they propose in the names of Dunedin streets are an offence and a byword. There is much in a name. The heresy that the rose by any other name would smell as sweet came from a brain-sick lover. Sawyers' Bay by any other name didn't smell as sweet to the people who live there; as often as the meddlesome authorities painted up another name on their railway station they blacked it out again. At this very time a place with a Maori name—somewhere south, I think —is protesting to the Minister of Railways against his' intention to change it. We are all touchy about names, and with reason. A place-name is, to the people who live in that place, a personal possession. It may be made a hair shirt. If the street in which I live is named afresh in compliment to some local obscurity or lopal celebrity, some petty official or ward politician, I am outraged: property in that street is depreciated; I want to clear out. These my sentiments— I beg to assure their worships, past, present, and to come—are those of the citizens generally. Civis.