PASSING NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 3251, 5 July 1916, Page 5

PASSING NOTES.

(From Saturday's Daily Times.) \ About Verdun and the martyrdom of France, there are few of us who do not feel with Mr Lloyd George. "I cannot think of Verdun without emotion," he told the representative of a Paris paper. For weeks and months the French before Verdun have withstood the concentrated fury of the German hosts. They have borne the brunt alone, not accepting help from British reserves near at hand, not asking that the British should hurry to attack in the West, nor recalling their oym armies from the East. If in the history of war there is anything finer than French endurance in front of Verdun, I do not know it. The fact escapes us that it is a mutilated and dismembered France that puts up this heroic fight. There are trampled and ravaged French provinces on the wrong side of the German lines and in no better plight than Belgium. Of original offence, be it remembered, France is as guiltlesa as Belgium. Surely the day of vengeance cometh! For me, the British guns roaring now as never before are the artillery of heaven. At one extremity of the league-long front Kitchener's armies are all astir; at the other goes on still the hundred-days battle, — The war-clouds rolling dun, While fiery Frank and furious Hun "Fight 'neath their sulphurous canopy. The casualty lists of the desiderated great offensive, now at hand, are the price we are to pay for being rid of battle casualties for ever. Sydney, June 14. Addressing the commercial men of Newcastle, Mr iSuttor, Eastern Trade Commissioner, referred to the strike evil, which was responsible for the State losing all the Eastern coal trade. He remarked that New South Wales was known all over Asia as "Strike Land." On the other side of the world Mr Hughes, the New South Wales Prime Minister, meteoric, Napoleonic, has wound up by purchasing 15 ships, heavy freighters, to carry Australian wheat. Which is to say that he has given 15 new hostages to fortune. Fifteen Government ships are 15 opportunities for putting the Government under the screw. To run a navy you need discipline; the discipline you get is the discipline of the labour unions. It is no use crying out; the fact is the fact, and I "merely mention the fact. Escaped from the tyranny of the Tudors and: the Stuarts, we are invited to be happy under the tyranny of the bosses and the caucuses. "New South Wales," a/wkward name, be painted Out; Sydney is the metropolis of Strike Land. But, really, it is much of a muchness everywhere. Of America, pretended land of freedom, Mr Dooley, who lives there, can write thus:— Th' carpinter that has been puttin' up a chicken coop f'r Hogan knocked off wurruk when he found that Hogan was shavin' himsilf without a card fr'm th' Barbers' Union. Hogan fixed it.with th' walkir.' diligate iv th' barbers, an' th' carpinter quit wurruk because he found that Hogan was wearin' a pair iv non-union pants. Hogan wint down town an' had his pants unionised, an* come home to find that th' carpinter had sthruck beoauss Hogan's hens was layin' eggs without the union labelHogan injooced th' hens to jine th' union. But wan of thini. laid an egg ' two days in s/uceission, an' th* others sthruck th' rule iv th' union bein that no hen shall lay more eggs thin th moat reluctant hen in th' bunch. Excellent fooling. Unluckily, the Red Fed and his congeners have no sense of humour.

The Rev. Dr Waddell explains that when he wrote of Quakerism as ''having behind It the momentum of a noblo and beautiful character," he not mean George Fox, the Quaker founder, but admits that " the way he wrote it " was "open to that interpretation." Many thanks;—Dr Waddell is right, and I am right, and all is right as rizhi can be. This is not to say that Dr Waddell does not think well of George Fox. Qui\& the contrary. Of eminent men who think well of George (Tox he nanus Lfnxley (a Saul among the crochets, truly \) -iru? the rj ev _

Dr Watkinson. I myself could name half a dozen. Strange that of all these admirers there is not one who follows him. Yet not strange. For, put it as you will, George Fox was' a first-class crank. Imagine him appearing at St. Andrew's Church with leather breeches and immovable hat to interrupt the service by shouting his conscientious objections to the manner of it. Feats of this kind were his habit. At.St. Andrew's he would be politely handed into the street by members of the Kirk Session. Repeating the performance, he would make acquaintance with the police. It is not easy to see spiritual greatness in a fanatic of this kidney. What we are to see in George Fox is the reductio ad absurdum of the conscientious objector.

Not otherwise is he presented, as it chances, in the current number of the Nineteenth Century. Archbishop Whately is laid under tribute for a definition of "following conscience": —"A man may follow his conscience as a man in a gig may be said to follow his horse, by driving it before him." And George Fox is cited to illustrate conscience as whim and caprice. The one characteristic doctrine that the Quakerism of to-day derives from its founder is the duty of non-resistance — turning the cheek to the smiter. Yet to this duty Fox himself was not always true. " It happened once that' he was brought up with a number of his followers (or ' friends ') before the magistrates at Leicester for refusing to take the oath of allegiance to the King, and while they were standing in court their pockets were picked. How did they behaVe? Did they accept the loss of their money with equanimity? Did they repudiate the idea of bringing the thieves to trial? The following is George Fox's own account of the incident in his own language " (the linotype will please be careful here): A 9 wee was standing in ye place where ye thieves used to stancle.. there was a Cutt purse had his hande in several friends' pocketts; and friends declared it to ye justices and shewed them yo.jnan; who caled him uppe before ym; whoe

upon examination he coulde not deny it, yett they set him att liberty. Add the Nineteenth Century writer's comment : —»VSo the founder of the Quakers was not wholly averse from invoking the aid of the law—i.e., of force —for the punishment of the thief who robbed him and his coreligionists." To-day his co-religionists may resort to force with better reason. In vindication of the lives of men, the honour of women, the faith of treaties, the peace of the world, we are at war, and every honest Quaker should fight. How to collect a Sunday evening crowd and have hundreds turned away from the doors: —hire a theatre and announce a lecture on sex matters "for men only." How to horrify your crowd and have neurotics carried out fainting : —descant on venereal disease and with lantern and screen show disgusting pictures from medical books. These commonplace miraeles have just been wrought in Dunedin by Dr W. H. Pettit, an evangelist concerned for the morals of the soldier. My first notion, glancing through the report, was that Dr Pettit had accompanied our troops to Egypt, and that for evidence against them he had personally raked and ransacked the stews of Cairo. Quite wrong. It does not appear that Dr Pettit was ever in Egypt; but it certainly does appear that for a foul libel on thousands of cleanlimbed New Zealand boys who went from the tearful embrace of mothers and sisters to en dure-hardness as good soldiers, facing wounds and death, he has no better foundation to allege than hearsay. He was speaking recently to a returned officer, who described seeing the men arriving off one of our transports at Alexandria. Their eyes were literally standing out of their heads with amazement as they saw for the first time the extent and the openness of the vice «• in that city; and within three hours of their arrival' they were standing in queues outside the closed doors of _ tho brothels waiting their turn to go in. But we have a Chaplain-captain King who makes short work of«Dr Pettit's hearsay. >" It was a lie, and if he were not a minister he would call it a damnable lie." Good! The word would not be forbidden him if he were an apostle. " Damnable heresies " is an apostolic phrase, I believe, and on due occasion we may speak of damnable lies. Chap-lain-captain King left New Zealand with the Main Expeditionary Force, served with it everywhere, and knows what he is talking about. He, too, had heard the hearsay story, but it related not to our men at all, nor to Egypt at all, but to the crew of an American warship and to Malta. Whereupon uprises a Knox College medical student to attest the queues of Dr Pettit. They " were to be seen," he says, both in Cairo and in Alexandria. But he doesn't say that he observed these phenomena himself. Hearsay again.

Matters touching the public health, physical or moral, are matters for public discussion. One doesn't exactly care to serve up the unsavoury at the breakfast table along with the morning newspaper. But Mr Chuck's rule holds:—"Duty before decency." Even into this column — which, indeed, affects no high-sniffing prudery, but still has its notions of taste—topics distasteful push themselves. When they come—" An ounce of civet, good apothecary, to sweeten my imagination!" I have, for example, a correspondent who complains of "immoral catalogues" sent through the post office. Catalogues are sent by post to private addresses advertising articles by which young men and maidens may bo able to live a life of shame without tho world knowing it. Ono wonders if we, a paltry few, deserve this fair land of New Zealand whilst other lands are bursting with population that would be glad to get it. No Christian country should allow immoral catalogues to como through tho post. Ono wonders what tho Y.M.C.A. ' and tho Y.W.0.A., and tho W.C.T.U., etc:.. ■>.>"> about.* A lot of dreamers 1 Maybe the Germans are an. instrument in Gcd'& hands to wako us \y<

Maybe they are. Indeed, it is more than a maybe. If immoral advertisements are circulated through the post, there are ways of bringing the advertisers to book. I 'should be glad to see one of these manylettered societies "on the job.''

The "Chain Prayer" nuisance is rampant again. You receive through the post a two-line prayer, in itself of the simplest, Grace befoTe Meat not simpler. But appended are directions for use: — This prayer ia to be said all the world. It was said in ancient days that all who wrote it would be freo from calamity, and that all who _ passed it would meet with some calamity or misfortune. Copy it and send it to nine of your friends, and on the tenth day you will meet with some great joy. Don't break the chain. Ignorance and superstition, hand in hand. Simplo souls picture the ever-spreading tentacles of this devotional octopus > and are fascinated. Each one of nine is to produce another nine; nine % times nino are ninety-nine in spiritual arithmetic; each one of the ninety-nine is to produce another nine, and so ad infinitum. Keep it up! Pass it on! "Don't break the chain!" How the orthodox churches are faring this wartime is pretty much a guess, but for a new fanaticism the door lies wide; —Christian Scientist, Mormon, Mahometan, it matters not, credulous fools are waiting. An Ota-go back-blocks correspondent complains of the improper comprehensiveness in the prayer itself—asking a blessing for all and sundry: My simple philosophy recoils at asking a divine favour for the murderers of Nurse Cavell, and for the pirates who sank the Lusitania; for the ravishers of Belgium, Poland, and Serbia, and for the perpetrators of the Armenian massacres. Yet, if I fail to do so, it is implied that I mav meet with some calamity or misfortune. Hard case. But cheer up. You may pray for the Kaiser as an Orangeman prays for the Pope.—to the _ immense exasperation of the Pope's friends and to the comfort of his own. The Orangist prayer for the Pope, by the way, is not quotable here. I desire to live at peace with all men. Dear "Civis," —In stamping a letter is it unsuitable to put the King's head upside down ? Unsuitable? —for a parallel lese majesty in Germany you would be sent to a fortress. Not that the Kaiser's head is exposed to'any such indignity. The German post age stamp shows an allegorical Germania with laurelled brow (a cypress wreath should replace the laurel), and beneath it the words "Deutsches Reich." William the War Lord does not permit his sacred phiz to be banged and blackened in the post-office process of obliterating stamps. He couldn't afford it. His Kaisership is too new. Our King doesn't mind. The royal image and superscription is on every com of the realm, and coins of the realm may pass through queer hands and be found in queer places. Like the sunlight which falls on fair and foul alike, the ancient majesty of the British C"'wn takes no harm. But in affixing a p age stamp to a letter do as you would in hanging a portrait. As a reminder,- try the upside down effect on your own domestic walls. Civrs.