PASSING NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 3275, 20 December 1916, Page 3

PASSING NOTES.

(From Saturday's Daily Times.) There was honesty in Chancellor von Bethman-Hollweg's attitude when, in August, 1914, he stood before the world avowedly dishonouring his country's signature to the "scrap of paper" that guaranteed Belgian neutrality ; there was honesty in his declaration that having began the good work of convincing the Belgians by murder and arson Germany would " hack her way through." He acted and spoke, not as an honest man—one wouldn't go so far as that—but as an honest German, which is a different thing. To-day the truth is not in him. Canting and descanting on Germany's innate horror of war and unfeigned love of peace, Chancellor von Bethman-Hollweg is a transparent humbug. Nobody in the wide world believes him, least of all the Germans themselves. What the world will believe is that Germany wants peace—urgently; how urgently the Germans best show when, with idiotic lack of humour, they be-flag Berlin at- the bare mention of peace by themselves! It isn't we that have mentioned peace. Imagine the case reversed—that the Allies were beseeching peace of an averted and haughty Germany. What interpretation would the world put on that? Do I say that Germany is squealing ? Well, if not a squeal, the Bethman-Hollweg oration is at least a squeak—the squeak of a cornered rat.

In proposing—with an effrontery which Mr Massey, speaking for all of us and hitting on the happy word, calls "impudent —that "the hostile Powers should enter into peace negotiations," Germany, says the Chancellor, " is conscious of her responsibility hefore God, before man, before the nation, hefore humanity." Pecksniff isn't in it with Bethman-Hollweg. " If our enemies refuse to stop the slaughter in order to continue their plans of conquest and annihilation, every German heart will burn with sacred wrath; God will be our judge i" And when this clumsy German ' hypocrite, appealing to the Pope, affirms that "Germany is seized with pity at the unspeakable misery of humanity," both Pecksniff and Tartuffe are put to shame. Caricature toils after

To purchase peace, and with peace escape from the nemesis of their crimes, the Germans are willing to clear out from Belgium and make rermration. Here is a come-down for you ! It is a further comedown when they announce through their American mouthpiece, Count Bernstorff, that their peace terms—whatever these be, and we may be sure they are absurd enough—represent what they would like, not what they expect to get. Is it not written that the hypocrite's hope shall perish? Their hope includes the restoration of the German colonics. I fancy I see it! —Japan handing back Kiao-chao; Botha and his South Africans relinquishing South West Africa, the prize of their own bow and spear; Australia giving welcome to the Bosche as again a neighbour in New Guinea; New .Zealand surrendering Samoa —a small thing, but our own. The Allies will have to be beaten to the wall before the German* colonics revert to German ownership. And then the Germans would have to come and take them. Picture it! Though methodical, the Germans are in war and diplomacy a stupid people, says Mr Hilaire Belloc, who is a judge. To German stupidity, encouraged by the thought that Rumania gives them something more in hand wherewith to bargain, this seems an opportune moment for proposing impossibles. I approve. In the inverse way the moment is supremely opportune. One and all, the Allies are making changes ominous of a sterner prosecution of the war. The British have promoted Sir John Jellicoe to the Admiralty (for losing the Battle of Jutland, say the stupid Germans ;—even as Wellington was decorated and rewarded 1 for losing the Battle of Waterloo); at Whitehall the Man of Action replaces the Man of Words. "Wait and See" has gone out of office; but, for the moment, his formula is the watchword of the nation. Wo have not yet had the Lloyd George response to Bethman-Hollweg. Wait and see! We shall not have long to wait.

A sterner prosecution of the war ! This is the beginning, middle, and end of our Eolitical crisis. Nothing else would have rought Mr Lloyd George to the top and ranged under him the party veterans of the other side and of all sides. The time has gone for suavity and polished periods; the time has come for vigour and rigour. Desiderating vigour and rigour, there are patriots who have forgotten the amenities. Small blame to them ! If "ravings of the Northcliffe press", have helped on the Lloyd George revolution, let them be forgiven. Lord Northcliffe at the woi'st is a man of high intelligence and immense practical sagacity,—better to be trusted than any politician "on the make." Blackwood's Magazine, again, in impatience of Asquith slowness has out-raved the Northcliffe ravings; Mr L. J. Maxse and his National Review have out-raved both. Spite of its German look, ."Maxse" is a British name, and L. J. Maxse is the son of a British admiral. "The march of events is rapidly removing our affairs from the palsied hands of the Rt. Honourable Faintheart and the Rt. Honourable Feebleg'jts," —ho wrote in October; and December sees his words made good. There are worc-3 patriots than Mr L. J. Maxse, and decidedly duller journalists. Aro the Germans starving? Not precisely starving, but tending that way. They would eat more if they could get it; —a fact that lias helped to inspire Bethman-Tlollvvr-g's winnings and whimperings, his appeals to the Pope and High Heaven. An underfed German is not only an uncomfortable German but a danger-

ous German ; given enough of them, you have riots and revolutions. Swiss newspapers report an influx of German pet dogs, sent across the frontier to save them from the sausage machine. Eggs are scarce, and eggs is eggs. The Food Dictator will deal you out one egg every three weeks, each egg guaranteed good (in parts) by the legend in red letters, "Gott strafe England." The potato crop this year has fallen off by a third. Statistics prophetical had buoyed the people up, and in the words of Herr Batocki, Food Dictator, they had been counting on "paper potatoes which were of no use as human food." Conviction of this plain truth led to trouble in the October session of the Reichstag. Members representative of different parties all indulged in sharply worded criticism of the War Food Department, one Socialist speaker declaring that the shortage of potatoes "cried out to Heaven." A Conservative member urged that prisoners of war should be employed on the potato harvest, while a Radical (Herr Hoff) exclaimed* pathetically "We must hold out to the last potato." Holding out to the last man is a familiar idea. In Germany holding out to the last potato will mean much the same thing. London Truth has always had a keen nose for quackeries. First and last, its rogues' calendar will run to length. One of the latest entries is that of a swindler —name and address given—who at the rate of a guinea a week, paid in advance, protects the lives of soldiers at the front by " scientific right thinking." Swindler may be not quite the word; " Christian Scientist" is his own term: but it .comes to the same thing—the soldier pays his guinea, the scientific thinker thinks a thunk, and that is all there is to it". Literally all. Truth cites an instance " where a lady placed three men under the scientific thinker's protective influence; — of these one was killed in action, a second has been missing a. year, and the third died under an operation." Quite easily explained! His explanation is that he was not informed until too late that the killed man was going to the front, that he was not asked to protect the missing man until after ho was missing, and that the man who died under an operation did not do anything to help himself, to which he adds the elucidatory remark that, "as a ru!o, when a person prefers an operation, it shows that hia mind is not very susceptible to God." In medicine and in religion—the therapeutics of the body and of the soul—it i 3 that human credulity reaches its height and quackery best thrives. According to his own account, this quack employs " seven or eight shorthand writers and three or four secretaries," and yet has " four or five hundred letters awaiting answer." On which Truth sagely remarks that "scientific right thinking at a guinea a week per patient would appear to be profitable enough to make an ordinary medical practitioner's mouth water."

Another sphere should be found for this benefactor's activity. What astonishes is that he should be in private practice at all If he can stop German shells and bullets by right thinking, he can render this service for a platoon, company, battalion, or army as easily as for an individual. His right place would appear to bo at the War Office, where lie could show Mr Lloyd George how to get rid of the casualty lists without worrying about such ineffectual devices as steel helmets or body shields. Why is he not at the War Office? Ask rather why he is not in jail. " New Zealand soldiers at the front bag other things besides Huns, —chestnuts, for example; also literary discoveries." Thus a correspondent, sending me a clipping from the Timaru Herald, December 11: Mrs Blank has received from her son now in France two chestnuts from a tree made historic by Eliza Cook's poem. "The Village Blacksmith." In an accompanying letter, written from Sling Camp (on New Zealand Y.M.C.A. paper) he says:—"These aro two chestnuts off the tree that piece of poetry is made of, ' Under a spreading chestnut tree the village smithy standf..' The smith's shop is still there. The tree is always guarded, and if you want any nuts from it you have to pay for them." Whereupon my correspondent: "Chestnuts," quotha! For the beet part of a century the Villago Blacksmith was supposed to owe his rather too pervasive celebrity to the poet Longfellow ; but the war changes everything. It is not quite clear whether "the tree that piece of poetry is mado of" ia henceforth to bo located "somewhere in France." It has been claimed for England, though I (fondly, perhaps) always imagined it to be an American growth. lie this as it may. if Eliza Cook is to annex this favoui ■ of the third-rat© concert room there- ought to b" some compensation, and 10 should i>." required to hand ovi r her old armchair for insertion in the next editk . of tha Poetical Works o: Longfellow*

"I lovq it, 1 lovo it, and who shall dare To chide rno for loving my old armchair?" The deal would be " reasonably fair," h« thinks; for though the " Old Armchair " piece is "supremely silly," the "Blacksmith " has come to be " a- nuisance by over-familiarity," not to mention that " there was always something fatuous in the idea of his wiping that tear-drop from his eye, with ritualistic regularity, Sunday, after Sunday." To criticism in this tona lam not altogether friendly. In my plebeian memory the " Village Blacksmith " and the " Old Arm-chair" link themselves with " Juanita,' and tha "Irish Emigrant," and "Don't you remember sweet Alice, Ben Bolt?"—with tha robustious " Life on the Ocean Wave " ; with the songs of middie-class hope set to music by «fienry Russell, " Cheer, Boys, Cheer—There's Work for Honest Labour, " There's a Good Time Corning, Boys—■ Wait a Little Longer " ; and with the easy rhymes of Charles Dickens when he chosa to rhyme—" The Ivy Green " ; Creeping where no life is seen, A rare old plant is the Ivy green,— and the " Romance of Bold Tiirpin " The coachman, he not liking the job, Set off at a full gal-lop, But Dick put a couple of balls in his nob, And pcrwailed on him to stop. . . . They belong to that mid-Victorian time of which it is the fashion to speak with contempt. And yet—deny it who may—tha world went very well then. Civis.