PASSING NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 3335, 13 February 1918, Page 3

PASSING NOTES.

(From Saturday's Daily Times.) Spectators in a theatre, perusing the drop curtain while the stage is being set for the next scene, are impatient of a long wait enlivened only by cat-calls and the rumbling of restless feet. Of course that is not quite our position. Analogies, similes, metaphors, never run on all fours, invariably limp on one foot at least. We do indeed await impatiently the next scene, peradventure the last, in a bloodcurdling tragedy, but not as spectators merely. We are actors in the drama. Our own part to play is clear, and we are sure of ourselves. But nothing else is either clear or sure. Except (and here good-bye to metaphor) that the other side is bluffing all it can. We ourselves are putting a good face upon it,» as our duty is, and with excellent reason. It is the other side that began a three months' war which is not.ended in three years; it is the other side that has been frustrated of every main hope; it is the other side that can have no expectation of a new ally, whereas on our side there comes in America with a million of men and a limitless purse. It is the other side that for many a month past has been whimpering for peace. But, as the London Times puts it, " The British bulldog has his teeth in the enemy's throat, and severe though the punishment has been which he has taken, he Avill never let go." To this chimes in. Sir Eric Geddes, who never exaggerates: 1 ask you to picture a fighting bulldog with his fangs clenched in his enemy's throat, with his body braced and his tail wagging. We have relapsed into metaphor, but may be forgiven. The picture will live with us—the British bulldog, much beaten about the head, but holding on, and-—" his tail wagging," a last detail which nobody would willingly miss. Lord Northcliffe, judged by the chorus discordant of English press criticism, is to his own countrymen very much an enigma. To the Americans, on the other hand, the TsTorthcliffe personality seems an open book. A book,' moreover, of vast interest and enormous importance. Mr Mark Sullivan, editor of Collier's National Weekly, (" circulation more than a million a

week"), in an article over his own signature says out roundly, " Estimated by the material standard Lord Northcliffe is the biggest man in the world." We gasp at that, but are straightway challenged to "name the exception," President Wilson has great powers; just now he has more power than Lord Northcliffe, for the United States, by virtue of its resources in money and men, is senior partner among the Allies. But the President holds his power with a limited tenure. Kings have power, the Kaiser has power—«as the Czar had power but "the wind passeth over it, and it is gone," and the Czar is ono with Rehoboam. But Lord Northcliffe owns his power. He owns it in the sense that the power is in him. His power is not the London Times and twoscore other papers; it is the driving thing within him that enabled him, beginning with nothing, to acquire these great engines. And that power is great indeed. One of his enemies, Mr A. G. Gardiner, editor of the London Daily News, credits him with owning more than half the newspapers that the English people read. Naturally the other half constitute them--) selves the Northcliffe Opposition. " Lord Northcliffe's energy is huge, cosmic," —continues this American interpreter. " He has the morning papers brought to his bedside at 6 a.m. ; by 7 he has half a dozen telegraphs and cables humming with his instructions and a houseful of secretaries busy with activities arising from what he has found in the news." 'Needless to say that the idler, the slacker, the society frivol have no place in the Northcliffe world. Ono of the causes of his decision to agitate for the overthrow of a recent English Prime Minister was the statesman's waste of his vitality at formal dinners, and the consequent inability to act masterfully on the momentous problems of the next day. Lord Northcliffe himself goes to bed at 9. If Lord Northcliffe went to bed at 11, the fate of Ministries, the future of history, would be different. There was a time when a habit of Mr Gladstone's in masticating his food had a political value. Thirty-seven bites to each and every swallow was the Gladstone rule; on its observance turned the Gladstone digestion, and on the Gladstone digestion the course of British politics. There exists an American newspaper magnate, Hear3t of the unsavoury', antiBritish, " Yellow Press," and Mr Mark Sullivan is minded to institute a comparison., A contrast rather, for "Northcliffe is a figure apart; there is no other like him." Hearst and Northcliffe are nearly the same age. Both havo spent their lives in journalism. Oddly enough, of ' the two, the Englishman is the self-made man. Hearst started with his money ready-made, so to speak. To-day both own a lot of newspapers. Measured by numbers and the size of financial opera-' 1 tions, Hearst's American newspapers and Lord Northcliffe's English ones are probably somewhere even,' but Northcliffe has a position in the world that Hearst has not. Moreover, Northcliffo upward in power. This last fact it is that concerns us. Here is a man who in the realm of national affairs can both do and undo, can pull down one and set up another, can kill and make alive. Barring accidents, his power will increase. A re-incarnated Warwick the Kingmaker may be little to our liking ; but it is idle to protest. Facts are facts. Let it console us, anyway it consoles me, that Northcliffe of the Northcliffe press is a good patriot, none better in the Empire, maybe, and not many who are more intelligent. Monday's Daily Times notes that " at 6.30 on Saturday evening a large crowd had gathered in Crawford street waiting for the doors of His Majesty's Theatre to open "; an indecency, which, the reporter adds, "would lead a stranger to conclude

that wo are about as far from ' the last shilling' as we are from ' the last man.'" In the same issue we havo the usual morning casualty list (served up day by day as a breakfast dish); we have a column headed " Bowling " ; and we have three columns headed " Sporting,"—a record of the Forbury Trots, However much concerned with things as they ought to be, a newspaper must also present things as they are, its duty identical with the duty which Hamlet assigns to the drama and which the drama not seldom forgets—" to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to Nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure." It may bo shame that things are as they are; we take no shame for reporting them. Haply that way may come the cure. Elsewhere are things better, or other ? Take up a London evening newspaper, and what do you find? On one page it is Apollyon and the Valley of the Shadow of Death: Then Apollyon straddled quite, over the whole breadth of the way, and said, I am void of fear in this matter; prepare thyself to die; for I swear by my infernal den that thou shalt go no further; hero will I spill thy soul. On the next page you have the booths, bazaars, and circuses of Vanity Fair in full blast. Listen to Bunyan again, and let no ono jib at his plain English: At this fair aire all such merchandise sold as houses, lands, trades, places, preferments, honours, titles, countries, kingdoms, lusts, pleasures, and delights of 1 all sorts, as whores, bawds, wives, husbands, children, masters, servants, lives, blood, bodies, souls, silver, gold, pearls, ■ precious stones, and what not; And moreover at this fair there is at all timc3 to bo seen juggling, cheats, games, playe, fools, apes, knaves, and rogues, ana that of every kind.' Here too are vo bo soen, and thaiffor nothing, thefts, murders, adulteries, false swearers, and that of a bloodred colour. . . . 1 Flanking the daily chronicle of tho war are advertisements of five-and-forty theatres and music halls—one of them with the reassuring detail, in view of air raids, "This Theatre is built entirely underground." In juxtaposition you have a Fashion Page where Dickins and Jones of Regent street W. show a " magnificent Fur coat which has been marked down, for Economy Week only, from 200 guineas to 160 guineas, a reduction substantial enough to" tempt all buyers"; together with other garments, little less magnifical, from 68 guineas downwards. The prototype and patron saint of all these Vanity Fair people is Nero who fiddled while Rome was burning.

For Nero, a music-hall artist born before his time, there are excuses. The Great Fire of Rome, a nine days' burning, which, as the authentic story goes, he had come in from the country to behold, appealed to him as a stage scene, magnificent and awful. Treating it accordingly, he called for his "fides" —a toy harp that could be slung from the shoulder—and chanted the " Excidium Trojae," the "Sack of Troy." Thus we get the legend of a Nero who fiddled while Rome was burning. But the "fides" was not a fiddle; the Romans had no such instrument. It is a mistake to picture his Imperial Majesty scraping* on a Stradivarius,. or shuffling a quick-step with a dancing-master's " kit " tucked under his chin. Nero was a singer,—as vain of his top-notes and as careful of his throat as a professional tenor. It was a throat that was cut in the end; but whilst it lasted the condition of that organ was matter of State concern. There is mention of one Paetus Thrasea, a most respectable man, who was put to death for omitting to sacrifice to the immortal gods " for_ the preservation of the Emperor's voice." When Borne was burning Nero ought to have helped to put the fire out, no doubt; instead of which ho " fiddled," and thereby has become a proverb of reproach to the end of. time. We are to think of him as a victim to the artistic temperament. His imitators to-day, who are all for jaunting and junketing when the world is in flames, can plead no such excuse. Dear "Civis," —There is nothing like being- well ahead of everything, from a. charging bull to- a wine bill. My own sketch of tho new B.'A. is sornothinsr as follows : Latin Optional. Greet Barred. History—l9l4 onwards. _ Geography— New Zealand. Science Plumbing, by experts; Washing, by amateurs; Lingerie, by a lady professor ; Baby Culture, by the head nurse; Cooking (no paper work), by the professorial staff. Examination for the degree in agriculture will include, it is understood, a ploughing match. That is, if the practice of conferring degrees is continued, a point on which the University" Senate appeared to be in doubt. In the view of one of tho Wellington professors degree-seeking was reprehensible, and he hoped that students —in tho fancy subjects at any rates—would be " above that weakness." Civia.'