PASSING NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 3263, 27 September 1916, Page 3

PASSING NOTES.

(From Saturday's Daily Times.)

Revenge is sweet, though it be but in dreams. We are still at war, still at " Carry on !" paying still day by day the ghastly price in blood and tears and millions sterling, that we may be able to dictate peace. And the peace we shall dictate—preferably in Berlin—will be our revenge. I see no reason to shy at the word. There is a revenge that is Biblical and religious. The magistrate who beareth not the sword in vain is a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil. That will be our function in dictating peace at Berlin. In and about the palaces thereof are evil doers who in strictness should be handed over to the hangman. Pass for that, however; —hanging or no hanging, there will be a woful settling up for the Hohenzollerns, their accomplices and their dupes. Details, shadowed forth in the London papers, have found instant approval. Thus—one enthusiast out of many—a "Lieutenant-commander, Royal Navy," to the "Spectator :—• Thank God I have seen your "leader" of July 15. ' The terms of peace arc to bo dictated and not subjected to negotiation ! Let the fame of that article be noised abroad ; let it be echoed from end to end of the Empire. If it were reprinted ill leaflet form and distributed hand to hand throughout the United Kingdom, if it were read from every pulpit and in every other public place and in every public, private, and national school in England, it would not receive too great a publicity. Let every man in England take a mighty oath thai, such are to bo the conditions of the coming peaco, whether thai peace ivr "is year, or next yea;\ ui in ten years' time, and though, uountlesa further

casualties may yet have to bo incurred. Then only will the world be safe. Indemnities, the making good of damage done, the loss of colonies, of Alsace-Lor-raine, of Heligoland, and of whatever may remain of the German High Seas Fleet—these are some of the Spectator's conditions of peace. Merely to dream of revenge thus scheduled is sweet.

The Pall Mall Gazette, equally sound on the main point, specialises on a point of its own—German shipping to make good the ravages of the submarine —ship for ship, ton for ton. Germany's deliberate policy is to destroy as many British merchant ships as possible in order that Germany, alter the war, may hold a position in shipping never before dreamed of. The one way to defeat her purpose is to determine that part of the price of peace to be demanded from her shall bo the forfeiture of the exact equivalent in actual ships- for those sent to the bottom of the sea contrary to the laws of warfare recognised by civilised coun-

tries. The only adverse criticism reported of this proposal is that it doesn't go far enough. "No! No!" exclaims an excited correspondent : —"Not keel for keel, not ton for ton. Ships they have already sunk let them replace in the proportion of two to one; if they continue their outrages, let the proportion be three to one. Hamburg and Bremen are crowded with shipping, and they are building more. There is plenty to come and go upon," —etc., etc. All this, doubtless, is selling the skin before killing the bear. But, barring miracle, the kill is a certainty, and the greater the profit we see in the hide .the stronger the motive to secure it.

I I Among things we -would gladly believe if we could is the story Lord Kitchener when at Athens told King Constantine, or is said to have told him, which is not quite the same thing. Eight German submarines of the newest and strongest type went forth for the harassment of the British Grand Fleet in its north of Scotland lair. One of them "came to grief in our North Sea net," and then there were seven. In breaking through or getting round special nets in the vicinity of the fleet two others were lost, and then there were five. Discouraged and dispirited this residuum resolved to return to their Heligoland base, but couldn't find the way out; —"the gate in the net had been closed." Two of them perished in the attempt, and then there were three. Which three " were forced to come to the surface and surrender; we took them intact —crews, submarines, and all." Then why have we never made a show of them ? A German submarine mine-layer, a poor little specimen, that somehow had come into our hands was on view lately at London Bridge, the Londoners in thousands flocking to see her. What a joy if we could have produced three of their finest and biggest! This submarine story may pair off with the Zeppelin story intended for German consumption—that the King and the Queen, with the Duke of Connaught whom they had gone to meet at St. Pancras station, being unable to return to the Palace because of the bombs, sat cowering in a cellar, and that "during an hour and a-half the King spoke three words." " London," continues the narrator, "is a maze of underground offices, shops, bars, and theatres."—gone to earth j for fear of the - v 3mbs. This story will go j down ; the other doesn't.

From Catlin's Paver : Dear "Civis," —Last week, replying to " a feminine baek-blocker," you confessed yourself unable to oblige her with " the story of the Socialistic Irishman whoso sole property was two little pigs." For 30 years a silent admirer, having full .confidence in your ability to deal with" tlio multitude and their varied puzzlements, I have stood by and seen fair play; but to see you "stumped" on mere theoretical detail, never. Hero is the story : —Andy to Dennis (a professing Socialist, and incidentally tho owner of

two desirable pigs) : " Denny,, phwat is a Socialist?" "A Socialist, Andy, is a man willing to share his wealth wid his fellow-man." "If ye had £IO,OOO, Denny, wud yc give me the half?" "Sure, Andy." "If-ye had two houses, Denny, would ye give me wan?" "By coorso, Andy." " Dennis, if ye had two pigs wud ye " "To blazes wid ye 1 i 7 e know I have two pigs."

Quite worth remembering,—and I had forgotten it! Socialists of the Dennis brand, embarrassed by fixed capital, and of the Bernard Shaw brand, afflicted by big incomes the product of their own exertions, are martyrs to principle. They can-'t like being laughed at; yet how conceal from themselves that all the world is laughing?

According to Mr W. H. Mallock, who on these abstract matters has written much and written well, there are Socialists " who enjoy the attention of footmen in faultless liveries, and say their prayers out of prayer-books with jewelled clasps." It may be that the allusion is not to Mr Shaw, of whose domestic establishment and devotional habits little is known, of his prayer-book nothing at all. But it is known that the Shaw plays bring him in " amazing royalties," for says Mr Mailock he has "publicly boasted" of the fact. No harm in royalties, bar the boasting; nor in his sticking to them, bar the paradox of his sticking also to his Socialist principles. But George Bernard Shaw is nothing if not paradoxical. His latest sixshilling volume of plays has the usual preposterous preface, —preposterous in tho strict sense, for the porch is bigger than tho house; in which preface a pompous patronage of the Author of the Sermon on the Mount (I am quoting from, his reviewers) goes with a comparison of the Christian hope of immortality to " the ridiculous old harvest song, ' John Barleycorn ',." Mr Shaw's Christianity, remarks the Spectator, is Christianity upside down. And his patriotism as expounded through the American press is patriotism upside down, less helpful to his country than to his country's enemies.

Though an Irishman and a Socialist, G.B.S. " has no use for Irish patriotic rhetoric." This is part of the general paradox, and a welcome part. In the face of towering facts that blot out the heavens with smoke and pile the earth of Europe with dead, I invito America to contemplate tho spectacle of a few »manifcsto-writing stalwarts from the decimated population of a tiny green island at the back of God-speed, claiming its national right to confront the world with its own army, its own fleet, ite own tariff, and its own language, which not 5 per cent, of its population could speak or road or -write even if they wanted to. Unless the American climate has the power of totally destroying the intelligence of the Irish race, its members will see that if Ireland wore cut loose from the British fleet and army to-morrow sho would have to make a present of herself the day after to the United States, or Franco, or Germany, or any big Power that would condescend to accept her: England for preference. "In point of learning nothing and forgetting nothing, these fellow-patriots of mine leave the Bourbons nowhere," he says. Tho cry that " England's Difficulty Is Ireland's Opportunity" is raised in the old senseless, spiteful way as a recommendation to stab England in the back when she is Fighting someone else and to kick her when sho 'is down, instead of in the intelligent and large-minded modern way which sees in England's difficulty tho opportunity of showing her what a friendly alliance with Ireland can do for her in return for the indispensable things it can do for Ireland.

In this way he flagellates the IrishAmerican agitator up and down the columns of the Xew York Times. Let it be counted unto him for righteousness.

Dear " Civis."—Would you kindly put tho public right about a billion? Is it not a fact that the American billion is a thousand million—1,000,000,COO? Also that a British billion is a million million —1,000.000.000.000? When an American talks of a billionaire he further depreciates the value by moaning dollars, whereas the British would be pounds. Not only are tho Americans smaller in these figures, but in cwts, tons, gallons, and horse-power, so that their big talk

moans less than it seems. I know nothing of American cwts, tons, and gallons; but the American billion is the Freiym billion, and the French billion is a thousand million. Originally, and as invented by the French themselves, the term " billion " denoted the second power of a million—a million million ; " trillion " the third power—a million million million; " quadrillion " the fourth power, " quintillion " the fifth —1 followed by 30 ciphers, infinity being big enough to carve from. We have retained this use; the French have dropped it, and have been followed by the Americans. The French "billion," which is the same as a " milliard," is a thousand million. Of course, when we talk in billions, we have no faintest notion of what we mean. A passage from a late astronomy book—" A Voyage in Space," 11. IT. Turner, Oxford Savilian Professor of Astronomy —ma}- help: Sirius is nine " light years "• away

from tho earth; meaning that light, , travelling, as we know, at 166,000 miles per second, actually takes nine years to come to us from Sirius. We can now tell how many miles away Sirius is. Remember that there are 30 million " seconds in a year, and you will find that Sirius is more than 40 billion miles away ■ —using billion in our English way for a million million. In France a billion means much less; they use it to mean only a thousand million. When he goes on to Beta Centauri, 100 " light years," or 440 billion (million million) miles away, one has- the sense of losing touch. Imagination limps and " Time toils after him in vain."

A month ago I mentioned casually that the Saturday Review, the Spectator, and other London journals were affirming in the teeth of angry Scots the right to us© the words England and English in a sense not barely geographical but generic. "'English*' or ' British'?—that is the quarrel (well we know it!) and the London editors are bound to get the worst of it." So I wrote. I have had the worst of it here, —in the sense that I find it concerns my peace to walk warily, never by any chance using the words " England " and " English ' except in the narrowest geographical connotation. " Britain" and "British" for me! Yet "A Lowland Scot," writing in wrath all the way from Brisbane, asserts my "lamentable want of tact and fairplay." Hiu grievance, I take it. is a quotation I permitted myself from the Spectator : Burn? is in language a-purely English poet, and far more 1 Anglian in his vocabulary than Shakespeare or Milton. Tho dialect of tho Lowlands in which ho wrote was brought there by the conquering Englishmen. (Anglos), of the seventh and eighth centuries. The Scots and their language were banished to the hill country of the north and tho islands of the west.

A mere .statement of facts, ethnologic, philologic, and facts are chiels that winna ding. It is curious that at the sending away of troops this week the Rev. G. H. TWlfour, who is a Scot, minister of First Church, which is Scottish, quoted somo stirring verses by J. IX Burns (surely a Scot) in which " the bugles of England" appeal, and. '' the banners of England" beckon, and the poet makes answer thus : O England. I heard the cry of those that died for thee. Sounding like ail "organ-voice across fcbo winter sea; They lived and died for England, and.

gladly went their way, England, 0, England—how could I stay? So he went to the war, —and by the oddest of chances his name was Burns ! The "Lowland Scot" of Brisbane may take a lesson in breadth and charity. Civis.