PASSING NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 3292, 18 April 1917, Page 3

PASSING NOTES.

(From Saturday's Daily Times.)

It is understood on all hands that nothing not nice is to be said to America. We are noi to say that America comes in at the eleventh hour, whilst we have borne the burden and heat of the day. Nor are we to say that- the motives which bring her in so late in the afternoon were equally cogent in the early morning. " Let us be very clear to all the world Avhat our motives and objects are," says the President to his Congress. " Our motives, now as before, are to vindicate the principles of peace and justice in the life of the world against selfish, autocratic power." ' Hear, hear! say we all. His Majesty the King says Hear, hear! Mr Lloyd" George and Mr Asquith say ditto to the King. The glowing phrases of the President's noblo deliverance illumine tho horizon and make clearer than ever tho goal wo are striving 1 to reach. This is Mr Lloyd George. That the President's glowing phrases and noblo deliverance might naturally have followed at once on tho sack of Belgium and the sinking of the Lusitania he did not add. Nor will we. Late, late, so late, is the coming in of America. But the maxim holds—Better late than never.

We are advantaged at once by an immense moral effect. On the Germans — on them first. What would have been our own state of mind had America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, taken sides with the enemy? The thing is impossible, of course, but not inconceivable. ..How should we have felt about it? We should have felt something of that same horrible sinking at the pit of the stomach which has helped 12,000 Germans on the Western front to fling down their rifles, up hands, and cry "Kamerad!" to the advancing British. The British guns did their part; the tanks did theirs j the surging waves of infantry, and specially the Canadians (who had the cream of the fighting), did theirs. America's part was not in the programme, but we mav credit America with a share in the resuiii. As more and mote the outraged nations turn against

them it is not in nature that the Germans should escape depression. Originally the anti-German Allies were -Britain, France, Russia, with Serbia and Belgium as humblo dependents and Japan as a zealous off-sider. Then came in Italy, then Rumania (alas!), then Portugal, then dumb and distant China. Now it is America, with possibly Brazil and other Transatlantic recruits to . follow, —Cuba even: Cuba " will send 10,000 men." The thing grows clean ridiculous.

In hunting submarines our new friend will immediately "get busy." Dollars by the billion (we count in billions now) are to make the Allied finance easier all round. And interned in American ports are enemy ships not a few that may replace our sunken tonnage. But, speaking generally, America's part will be that of Robert Bruce's henchman at the killing of the Red Comyn,—an episode illustrating the amenities of early Scottish politics: On the 10th of February, 1306, Bruce and Comyn, competitors for the throne of Scotland, were brought together in the ancient burg of Dumfries. As they entered the monastery in company, Bruce charged his rival with treachery; the latter denied tho accusation, and the next moment was stabbed to the heart, Kirkpatrick rushing in to "male siccar" —or complete the deed of slaughter hi 3 chieftain had begun.

Or as Scott in " Tales of a Grandfather" tells it: —"I doubt I have slain the Red Comyn," said Bruce. "Doubt!"—exclaimed Kirkpatrick—"l'll mak siccar!" —and went and did it. Making assurance doubly sure is America's part. If the original Allies hold on and hold out, Germany is done for already. But America will "mak siccar."

"At this point tha audience rose up, for several moments, cheering loudly." At what point, when and where ? At this point in Mr Lloyd George's speech at an American luncheon given in his honour : It behoves tho Empire and America ■ principally to make Hindenbnrg's reckoning as false as his computation regarding his vaunted line on tho west front, which wo have already broken. What is tho Hindenbnrg line? It means a line across other people's territories, with a warning to the inhabitants that they shall only cross it at the peril of their lives. Europe, after enduring this for many generations, has now made up its mind that a Hindenbnrg lino must ba drawn across tho legitimate frontiers of Germany herself.

These word 3 will be in the cables this morning; I am proud and happy to put them in Passing Notes as well. And to clinch them by the speaker's final words :

The British advance on Easter Monday began at dawn, and it wa.3 a work fit for The Dawn. Our gallant soldiers are the Heralds of Dawn, and the Allies will soon emerge into the full radiance of the Perfect Day. Good, and good again. More and moro does the little Welsh lawyer grow upon us. Soon we shall aay of him as of Luther that his words are half-battle.:

Dear " Civis," —The -Acting Premier and some other Minister with him aro on a peace errand to the West Coast colliery strikers. A lot of good they'll do! In the present position of oiuaffairs a colliery strike to stop conscription and help the Germans is mutiny, in fact it is civil war. Aro wo prepared to shoot? Wo haven't got the nerve, and the mutineers know it. There is something better than shooting. Do you know the verb "to cob"? I will give you word for word the dictionary definition: —"To cob, to punish by flogging on the buttocks." And an illustration is given from Marryat:—"l was sentenced to bo cobbed -with* a worsted stocking filled with wet sand." On % board ship I have seen this punishment administ&red —a shirking sailor stretched on tho anchor stock, his hinder parts exposed, and solemnly cobbed by the men who had to do the work ho funked. Every West Coast striker should be pub-

licly cobbed. That" is the best punishment —disgrace him, hold him up to universal ridicule. And there aro hundreds of willing troopers now in the camps who would bo ready to do it. Thus a correspondent, signing himself "Right is Might." It ought to be; but where the Kaiser and his friends hold sway things are the other way about. Might, say they, is right. And of that belief appear to be the Kaiser's West Coast friends. Being able, as they imagine, to take the country by the throat and paralyse its activities, they have the right to do it. But sanity will return. Grown men cannot for ever behave like children. There may be virtue in a Ministerial visit and an official word of remonstrance,—who knows ? But. be that as it may, the country will not permanently consent to be taken by the throat. West Coast might, persisting, will have to argue it out with'might that is mightier. Meanwhile, however, there is the cobbing recommended above. I should be glad to look on and see it done. To look on, I say. Duty before decency,—which is Marryat again*.

The other day I looked on at a column of reinforcements marching away. It was their first stage in tho long long road to Tipperary, their first pacing to the endless rhythm—• Boots —boots —boots —boots, movin' up and down again— There's no discharge in the war! Tramp, tramp, they went, to the sound of bugle and drum; flasrs beat above them, the city crowds pressing and narrowing in. Here and there a grrl snatched a final hand-clasp ; here and there a girl marched clinging. It was a page from tragedy, a sight to purify the heart with pity; you laughed and you cried. Whilst tnere sprang to your lips the piou3 malediction —"God damn the Kaiser!" But the lads themselves • went gallantly,—cheering, waving, singing. And when the Kaiser is efficiently, comprehensively, and finally damned, may they return! Meanwhile e are left to bracket as best we can these scenes with coward shirking, plotting, skulking of the West Coast. Infection—a poisonous microbe, mayhap—has been wafted _ from shores lying further west. Australia, after rejecting conscription, "by a combination of anarchists, Labour pro-Germans, misled democxats, timorous young men and old women' I —says the Daily Times correspondent—is now'under voluntary enlistment "providing less than one-third of the reinforcements asked.for." Are these Australian and West Coast jibbers of the same race as our willing conscript lads? Did the same kind of father beget them ? Verily we shall begin to doubt it.

The war novel "Mr Britling Sees it Through," by H. G. Wells, has been much approved by the critics. For once the critics fail to'carry me with them. In this "Britling" book as always Mr Wells writes with force, fluency, originality of thought, with geniu3 if you will; but, as always, the tone offends, —surgit amari alicpiid. For one thing, the writer is too much overhead of everything and everybody, superior both to the world about him and to the imaginary world of his own creating, to the people he puts into it and to th« people who are to be interested in them. Speaking for myself, I find the society of this superior person fatiguing. His Mr Britling, journalist, essayist, poet, in points a replica of H. G. Wells, is of an oppressive superiority to all the j>owers that be in State and Church and the conduct of the war, albeit himself but a pjov creature who "sees it through" only in the sense that he succumbs to a hcaped-up sense of misery as the war blunders on, misery capped by the death of his son> killed in the trenches. Mr Britling is a family man, but not the less does he conduct an illicit love affair—his eighth—futile, laborious, absurd, with a woman 20 miles away. This episode, strictly' incidental, introduced, enlarged on, dismissed, forgotten, contributes nothing to anything, least of all to Mr Britling's " seeing it through." It is a gratuitous smear across the face of the story, a dirty-fingered smear in the Wells manner at its worst.

A smouldering discontent with monarohs and monarchy pervades the pages of Mr Wells, We abandon to his invective "this journalist emperor with the paralysed arm," together with the emperor's "common-fibred, sly, lascivious son.' But one doesn't see in what the English Royal house offends, if .a royal house there is to be at all. Nevertheless, as seen by Mr Wells, "British life has long been corrupted by tho fiction of loyalty to an uninspiring* and alien Court." Uninspiring

if you like, —the Court lias evidently not inspired loyalty in Mr Wells; —but alien, no. George V is English of the English. ■George I, with whom cam© in the House of Hanover, was great-grandson of that slobbering Solomon ("the wisest fool in Europe") James. I and VI. James was the son of Mary Stuart. Mary was' the great-granddaughter of Henry VII and of his wife Elizabeth of York, both descended from Edward HI. How much, further

back need we go? It seems a pity that Mr Wells as a novelist of distinction has not figured in a Birthday Honour List. Perhaps he would not have consented; on the other hand perhaps he would. It id to be remembered that Mr Keir Haifdie, although denouncing assent to monarchical institutions as national lunacy, had a grievance against King Edward for neglecting to invite him to a royal gardea. party. Civis.