PASSING NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 3333, 30 January 1918, Page 3

PASSING NOTES.

(From Saturday's Daily Timca.) In the opinion of a German of distinction whose name lias escaped me, and is of no importance, success in this war is a question of " nerves." The nation to come out top dog will be the nation that has the better nerve, —therefore the German nation, since the German nerve will outlast the British. Therein he is wrong, hopelessly. The last weakness to be charged against the average Briton is a fussy nervousness. In one of Anthony Trollope's unjustly neglected novels a poverty-stricken parson, with a peck of home troubles, encounters in rain and driving wind a f hard-bitten hedger and ditcher of his acquaintance who is a few degrees more wretched than himself. They talk, and this is the manner of their communication as it closes: "Tell 'ee what, Master Crawley,— and yer reverence musn't think as I means to be preaching: there ain't nowt a man can't bear if he'll only be dogged. You go whomo, Master Crawley, and think o' that, and may be it'll do ye a good "yet. It's dogged as does it. _lt ain't thinking about it." Then Giles Hoggett withdrew his hand from the clergyman's, and walked towards .his home at Hoggle End. Mr Crawley also turned homewards, and as he made his way through the lanes he repeated to himself Giles Hoggett's words. " It's dogged as does it. It's not thinking about it." These are two types. For the classes and the masses alike, if there is any one formula that sums up the British character and temper under stress, the word is with Trollope's peasant: " It's dogged as does it."

And yet there have been times of late when the nerves of press and Parliament both have shown a regrettable jumpiness. For a week in the middle of November, after Mr Lloyd George's Paris speech asserting the necessity of a Central War Council, half the newspapers In England went crazy. " The man who could make a speech of fhis sort"—said the Spectator—- " is not fit to be Prime Minister of this country." The risks run by having jit the hoar! of affairs a man capable of such levity, such irresponsibility, such recklesoiicss,

such injustice, are beyond endurance. Unless the House of Commons marks its condemnation of the speech, and so dismisses Mr. Lloyd George, we shall be in hourly peril of national shipwreck. All parties must join to put the vessel and her priceless cargo beyond the reach of Mr Lloyd George's frantic egotism. What was this but to demand Mr Lloyd George's head in a charger? A week later, after the " frantic egotist" had answered for himself m the House, sweeping before him or along with him friends and foes alike in a tempest of enthusiasm, the Spectator repented and recanted with what grace it might. But in excellent company. Right and left, editors and Parliament men had gone down, —victims of a sudden, uncontrollable, but happily brief, attack of "nerves."

Not widely dissimilar is the catastrophe of Colonel Repington. As military critic for The Times newspaper Colonel Repington's mana was great. Unless in war matters the wisest of the wise, how could he be where he was? It is not that Colonel Repington added weight to The Times, but that The Times gave weight to Colonel Repington. Unexpectedly comes news that he has resigned. There are many ways of resigning, and a resignation may, like charity, cover a multitude of sins. We might have left it at that, wishing Colonel Repington a career with the Morning Post. But, unhappily, he has taken up the role of a common scold. Everything is wrong, from the Government, the military situation, and The Times newspaper downward. Wrongest of all is the censorship, which by covering up all other wrongs has brought the country to the verge of perdition. Well, at any rate, here is a wrong which the censorship has—inconsistently—neglected to cover up. Why is Colonel Repington's jeremiad for the oxhilaration of our enemies and the discouragement of our friends allowed to pass? Jeremiah is suffering from "nerves," no doubt, and is an object of pity; but not for that reason can the censorship be excused. When a distinguished military critic suddenly becomes a Dismal Jerry there is need of his instant suppression. Let no one suppose, however, Colonel Repington's case to be common. The nation as a nation is .solid. In the army, the navy, the gallant merchant service, nerves and neurotics are not. " Steady!" is the word on our battle fronts. We always are ready,—Steady, boys, steady ! We'll fight and we'll conquer again and again. y . '

There are signs that the Irish Convention, sitting in conclave for months past, is about to report. For one thing, Sir Edward Carson, apprehensive of events and desiring a free hand, has left the Government. Presently we shall know whether Sinn Feiner and Ulsterman are to fight or to fraternise, bludgeon one another or fall on each other's _ neck. Meanwhile speculation is idle ; —wait and see. That is what the Germans are doing. Not for a moment should we forget German keenness in matters Irish. An article in the Christchurch Press tells of a Berlin serial entitled "Irische Blatter" (not to be read as "Irish Blather," though It might;—"blatt" is German for "Ifeaf,") the" organ of a "German-Irish Society" formed "to supply visible proof to the Irish in Ireland as well as in America of German gratitude and sympathy." Gratitude for what? Amongst other things for "the heroic rebellion of . 1916," when heroic Sinn Feiners, besides shooting wounded soldiers in cold Wood, heroically opened fire on unarmed civilians and took a number of innocent lives. The Berlin view as set forth >n "Irische Blatter" is that Ireland must be developed "in the interest of the German as well as of the' Irish people." No doubt. New Zealand Sinn Feiners who are of the same opinion h.in better sa'y so. - Then we shall know whore we are.

When a University Senate that disparages Latin is dishonoured by its English we recognise and approve the eternal fitness of things. As determined by the pundits now in session, the subject of a competitive essay is to bo this: The Bearing of Political Co-operation and Federation of English-speaking States in the Past upon the Elucidation of the Present Problems of the Closer Union of the British Empire. Faced by this conglomerate of long-tailed abstracts and the "bearing" of one upon the "elucidation" of another, what chance has the dismayed undergraduate? Can he hope to bring forth anything worthy of so prodigious a gape?—as Horace would say ("dignum tanto hiatu"), if Horace may be invoked in so shabby a context. There is little propriety, in quoting a Latin poet to University authorities who hold Latin unnecessary to a University education. More to. the point will be a quotation from Mr G. K. Chesterton: ' If you eay, " The social utility of 'the indeterminate sentence is recognised by all criminologists as a part of our sociological evolution towards a morehumane and scientific view of punishment," you can go on talking like that for hours with hardly a movement of the grey matter inside your skull. But if you begin, "I wish Jones to go 'to jail and Brown to say when Jones shall come out," you will discover, with a thrill of horror, that you are obliged to think. The bearings of which lie in the application. Not all members of the Senate, be it said, hold with the Chancellor's dictum that "Latin is not much help to the study of English." We must distinguish between the sheep and the goats. Numerically, however, there are six of one and half-a-dozen of the other. Sad to say. Aftsr ruling out Latin the University senators, still jn session, are found listening sympathetically to an American "professor- of oratory," Professor Trueblood, from Michigan, present by invitation., Later, when addressing the Otago Expansion League, Professor Trueblood (whose name might have been borrowed from Dickens) 'talked English, and plentiful good sense to boot. Addressing the Senate, he talked dictionary, as was meet. Outlining the courses of American oratory as taught in Michigan, they were, he said, "on two main lines—self-expressional and self-interpretative," —letting his audience at once into the very thick of it. "Expressional" and "'interpretative" are doubtless dictionary words, —what words will you not find in a dictionary?—and they are capable 'of a barbaric development. Following its analogue "educational," the graceful adjective "expressional" may proceed thus:

Expressional. Expressionally. Expressionalist. Exprcesisnalistio. Expressionalistical. ExpressionalisticaUy. Self-expressionalistieally. When,the University Senate can turn out gas-bag orators innocent of Latin out able to talk self-interpretatively and self-ex-pressionalistically, it will die happy. Against the doctrine that tobacco dulls the fine edge of intelligence, and claps a brake on the wheels of energy,—in other words that a narcotic narcotises, —I have protests more than one or two. Tobacco merely soothes and steadies, I am told; and Calverley is thrown at my head: Thou who, when fears attack, Bidst them avaunt, and Black Care, ; at the horseman's back Perching, unseatest; Sweet, when the morn is gray; Sweet, when they've cleared away Lunch; and at close of day Possibly sweetest, —tobacco, to wit. Yes, I know all that. Also, I know that argument is_ wasted. People smoko because they like it. Not the less is it certain, however, that people who do not smoke are just as happy. Let the smoker explain away that fact if he can. " Just as happy " puts the case too weakly. The non-smoker escapes an expensive, unclean, and uncomfortable elaveiy. Which is another fact for the smoker to deny, if he can. From Oamaru: Dear " Civis," —In to-day's Passing Notes are references to pulpit utterances, including the experiences of Jonah "in the society of the whale." . I was prceeit in London many years ago, wjhen Dr Adeney, preaching on the subject of Lazarus, misquoted and improved on the text by stating: " Lord, by this time decomposition will havo set in." '"By this time he stinketh" being too coarse for an American divine, which, if I don't mistake, this Dr Adeney was. But English clerics can be quite as fastidious. When relief sermons were being preached in England during the Irish potato famine there was a difficulty. Grapes and figs, being Scriptural, may be mentioned in church, potatoes and cabbages, carrots and turnips, may not. This being so, the Irish potato was delicately alluded as "that esculent." . The

fashionable church of Alexander Popa'4 time was a place in which Light quirks of music, broken and uneven, Make the soul dance upon a jig .ta heavenj and. where To rest, the cushion and soft dean invite, Who never mentions hell to ears polite. Such a "soft dean" it may have been who, preaching before the Court, wound up. thus: "In short, if you don't live up tq> the precepts of the Gospel, but abandon yourselves to your irregular appetites, you must expect to receive your reward invi certain place which 'tis not good manneri to mention here." On the other hand, &$ a commentator remarks, the circumlocution lends force. This may have been ai plucky dean. *», . Civis.