PASSING NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 3247, 7 June 1916, Page 5

PASSING NOTES.

(From Saturday's Daily Tim«s.) Every male American is a potential candidate "for the Presidency, even as every conscript in the Napoleon armies carried in his knapsack a marshal's baton. Picking out the American probables from the possibles, there are two, for outsiders only "two—Wilson and Roosevelt. There will be others, with qualifications known best to the party machines that run them. Says Mr Doolev, "A man expicts to be ilicted Prisidint"iv th' United States, Hinnissy, f'r th' fine qualities that th' r-rest iv us use on'y to keep out iv th' pinitinchry." But for the British outsider there are only two in the running, the President and the ex-President, Wilson and Roosevelt, and we know them well. Wilson we know too well, his virtues being of the kind that run to vice, the vice of the righteous overmuch. That I believe, is the most charitable interpretation of Mr Wilson. His recent discourse on peace might have been a meditation by the Reverend Chadband. "Peace, my friends," says Mr Chadband, "Peace bo with us! My friends, why do I wish for peace? Let us, in a spirit of love, inquire What is peace? Is it war? No. Is it strife? No. Is it telling the German Emperor that American citizens must not be murdered on the high seas? No, my friends, that, would not be peace! Is it telling the German Emperor — birthday, my friends we rejoiced in—that we dislike seeing the Belgian people robbed ravaged and raped? No. That would be very far from peace. What is Belgium to us in comparison with peace, lovely peace, with plenty crowned? I say, then Peace be with us! My friends, why with us? Because it cannot be against US, because it must be for us;_ because it is not hardening, because it is softening; because it docs not make war like the hawk, but comes home unto us like the dove.- Therefore, my friends, peace bo with us! And now, in a spirit of love, !eb us count up the dollars'." Thus in effect President Chadband WilBon. His competitor, "Teddy" Roosevelt—as Americans not uncommonly call jam—is of another paste altogether. There would have been no murdering of Americans on the high seas had "Teddy" been at the White House. Without any greater risk of war than the acadeihical and unctuous Wilson has run America would have known how to guard citizens from outrage, and to uphold against German brigandage the sanctities of international law. Here are some Roosevelt comments on the Wilson idea of "peace" : This nation has been "peaceful" during the past year while peaceful ships on which its citizens were sailing lost a . larger number of lives than we lost at eea in the entire War of 1812 and than wo inflicted at sea in the War of 1812, a much greater loss than Farragut'a fleet suffered in the aggregate in all its victories, a greater loss than Nelson's fleets suffered in his three great victories. If any individual finds satisfaction in saying that nevertheless this was "peace" and not "war," it is hardly N worth while arguing with hirn; for he dwells in a land of sham and of makebelieve. I Mr Roosevelt has never shown any marked affection for the British people or admiration for British institutions. Assuredly he is not the man to go to war on our account. Nevertheless in the fight for the Presidency—if Indeed his hat is in the ring—he has all the good will wo can give him. The conscientious objector in court, English specimens: A conscientious objector, who had been exempted from combatant, service, appealed for absolute exemption. Tho Chairman i If the German army had landed hero and started to violate woman, would you have said to the British army if vou had control of it, "Hands off!"?—Yes, I would. Tha appeal was refused. Cowards sheltering behind hypocrisy. In another case the objector refused to register. Magistrate: "You say you object on conscientious grounds to serving your 1 King and preventing the Germans from

overrunning this country, ravaging the land, and ravishing women as they have clone elsewhere. I mean to --top this rot i*f I can."—Objector fined £25. and to be handed over to ihe military authorities. At the Westminster Tribunal a jewellery dealer aged 21 said : I never eat meat. I am a vegetarian. If I cut my finger I am ill for a week at the sight of blood. This was not conscience, said the chairman, but nervousness. Remanded for medical examination. Should have been ordered into petticoats and set to wheel perambulators. Before the 'same Tribunal : ''l am a Freeth : nl;er and a philosophic Anarchist," declared a. fine artdealer, who asked for absolute exemption on conscientious and other grounds. " 1 lav claim to no nationality. I have no particular national sympathies. My sympathies are rather I have no quarrel with the people of Germany, and I don't think the people of Gcnhanv have :my quarrel with the people of England. I regard it as a ouarrol between Governments. \ ' Tho Chairman: As a conscientious objector you will have to bo a noncombatant. Employment suited to the artistic testes of this" airy philosopher will doubtless be found him. Something with mop -aid broom in the sanitation department.

Tenderness to the New Zealand conscientious objector was a point with every speaker on Mr Allen's Compulsion Bill. Cant and humbug are to bo held sacred. No one of thorn had been at the pains to understand what "conscience" means in this context, "Conscience" classifies human acts as right or wrong— that is, the man himself does, and in doing it is governed by his nationality, his education, his prejudices, his passions. It is notorious that conscience varies as the man varies. There is a German conscience and a Turk conscience; there is President Wilson's conscience; there is the Sinn Fein conscience. Submission to English rule is wrong, says the Sinn Feiner, murder and arson are r-ight. Conscience in Dr O'Dwyer, Bishop of Limerick, holds the punishing of Sinn Fein murder and arson wrong. "He regarded General Maxwell's action in shooting the Dublin rebels with horror, and General Maxwell's regime as one of the worst and blackest chapters in Irish government." From this the transition is easy to President Wilson's conscience—content in peace with dishonour, responsible for the most immoral utterance yet heard from that side of the Atlantic, that " the causes and objects of the war are no concern of America." The Turk conscience is summed up in its zeal for the massacre of Armenians; and the German conscience is simply a Avar conscience—whatever help 3 in the war is right, whateverhinders is wrong. Near akin is the conscience of the Devil —"Evil be thou my good." All this is an old story. And the moral is just as old, —that conscience as conscience has no rights, not even though it be decorated with the name of religion. If universal military service is just and necessary it should be enforced on willing and unwilling as relentlessly as the custom dues and the income tax. The long and the short of this matter*, the beginning, middle, and end, is that conscience must.be judged by results. If a man is a shirker, a shirker he is, shirk he never so conscientiously. A German pirate is a German pirate however conscientiously he believes his "good old German God" to he at the back of him. And a Gorman blasphemer does most certainly blaspheme when burlesqueing St. p aii ll_"Now abideth faith, hope, hatred, these three, but the greatest of these is hatred" —though in heart and conscience he think himself divinely inspired. The tree is known by its fruit. In the English press the " shirking tribe—Quakers, pacifists, passive resistors —cut a poor figure. Their case, try as they will to make the best of it, always reads ridiculous. But help is to bo provided, —Messrs Snowden, Ponsonby, Trevelyn and Co. are looking to that. Bead this snippet from proceedings in Parliament: — Mr Peto asked tho Home Secretary whether he was aware that tho Fellowship of Conciliation were holding classes regularly showing men how to conscientiously object. Mr Samuel said he was aware that it was the- case that the organisation _ of this body had been carried to a high pitch.—(Laughter). There is room for the same thing here. I imagine a card: — , (Confidential.) To the Conscientious Gbjector. Compulsion—How to Get Out of it. Apply to Blank Blank, M.P. Fees moderato. Blank Blanks more than one may be spotted in Hansard. The chief thing in this plea of conscience is to conceal any lurking trace of physical fear, any secret sympathy with the objector who protested tliat it was great pity, so it was, — This villainous saltpetre should be digged Out of the bowels of tho harmless earth, Which many a good tall fellow has destroyed 8o cowardly; and but for these vile guns He would himself have been a soldier. It must all be conscience, nothing of physical dislike to blood and wounds. On this point Sir Henry Lucy, late of Punch and the Reporters' Gallery, makes a cruel innuendo: — Most of the British regiments fighting for their country in Flanders and in Franco are distinguished by a motto round which gather jjroud memories. The con-combatant forco now being formed has not yet been similarly equipped. May I suggest that j n Hamlet's familiar soliloquy there is one well fitted for tho service: "Conscience does mahe cowards of us all"? Passed on to me by the Editor of the Witness,—an Inquiry from Wellington:— Sir, —Will you kindly let mo kno«r tho grammatical rule followed in nam-

ing- the residents of different localities; thus— Residents of Wellington—Wellingtonians. Residents of China—Chinese. Residents of Greece —Greeks. What is the correct nomenclature- for residents of Christchurch? What book covers the subject? Rule ?—there is no rule ; nor any book that covers the subject. Some English placenames will take an adjectival suffix ; there are many that will not. Names in -ton form like Wellingtonian. Names in -land take -er :—Highlander, Lowlander, Aucklander; also Londoner, though if born within the sound of Bow Bells you are a Cockney. And if Liverpool be your native heath you are a Liverpudlian and must 'put up with the inelegance. Names that contain the Latin castra, a camp, might form on Lancastrian; but we do not find Chestrian, or Leicestrian. The adjectival termination -ite for place-names is to be avoided, —carries something _of contempt. Manchesterite, Christchurchite, Dunedinite are intolerable. In these and other cases there is nothing for it but to make the name itself an adjective —Manchester man, Christchurch man, Dunedin man. And that is good enough. I am still persecuted by that immortal idiocy " Sisters and brothers have I none, hut that man's father is my father's son." A correspondent writes in imploring terms. Over the problem—Who is "that man"? the peace of a Christian household is being wrecked. Will I not interpose and allay the anxiety whilst earning the gratitude of " yours respectfully''? To peop, 1 ! of this calibre should be recommended a course, of Euclid. Probably ray real duty towards "yours respectfully " is to trot him through 47, Bk. I: —"In any right angled triangle the square on the hypothenuse is equal to the sum of the squares on the sides." Waiving that, however, I once more condescend to the brain-racking mystery he himself propounds. Point by point, then, and carefully: "My father's son" is cither my brother or myself. But I have no brother, —" sisters and brothers have I none." Then "my father's son " is. myself. Substitute "myself" for "my father's son" in the original proposition. Then we have: " That man's father is myself." Inference —within the intellectual range of a kindergarten—" That man" is my son. With apologies to all suffering participants, including the linotype, I dismiss " yours respectfully " to deep in peace. Civis.