PASSING NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 3342, 3 April 1918, Page 3

PASSING NOTES.

(From Saturday's Daily Times.) That wa-s an unhappy shot of mine last week in suggesting that the Germans on the West Eront were, perhaps, "in no condition to begin." It was a guess, and I guessed wrong. Now that they have sprung upon us a full-blast Armageddon, roaring from earth to sky, I guess again : —They were in no condition to wait. America was coming in, —a hundred-million man power, material resources past count, the- early zeal of a convert, a passion for democracy, a religious horror of the politics, the ambitions, the crimes that the Potsdam autocrat holds sacred, —all this each passing week brought nearer. An aeuteness less Satanic than that we attribute to the German High Command might have been trusted to perceive that the times were closing iu. And so—Now or Never! — Neck or Nothing ! —sums up Luoendorff, Hindenburg, and Kaiser to boot, —policy, strategy, tactics. Every available item of German man-power and gun-power is concentrated against the British and driven by the diabolic force of German hate. Fienohirari and Exisaian, they matter not ; A blew for a blow, a shot for a shot; England wo bate with a lasting hate; We will never forgo our hate; liato by water and hate by land, Hate of th* bond and hatfcof the hand,, Hate of tho h.untuar and hate of the Crown, Eato of seventy millions choking down. We leve as one. wo hate as one, Wo have one foe, .and one alone— England i It waa the .British intervention that wrecked the Devil's Time-Table of August and September, 1914, —a repetition of Sedan on the anniversary date and a goosesteppn>-.; entry mo Paris the week after. And so "Godj punish England!" became the Qennan pjassword. a motto, a legend to write up On bhvnk walls, exhibit on theatre curtains, print on bread tickets. stamp on Setters, broider on pocket-hand-kerchief and jbe\l Jinan. The infantile Hun arrived each day at school with tha greeting: "Good morning, teacher-; —God punish England I'.' Then js an advantage, then, in concentrating-against the British

lines. The whole moral (or immoral) energy of Germany is at once "on the job."

Now is the hour for the croakers, — croak, croak, croak, —brek-ek-ek-ex koaxkoax ! —though it is a slander on the Aristophanes frogs to quote them as "croakers" in the same sense in which Dismal jimmy is a croaker. The Aristophanes frogs—protesting with " brek-ek-ek-ex koax-koax" against the passing of the bloated and blustering wine-god across their home domain, the Acherusian Lake—were a humorous tribe. The chance coincidence of their natural note with Dismal Jimmy's in this his congenial hour counts for nothing. He is in chorus with the Woe-is-me's and the All-is-Losts (as Mr Maxse names them), —"The Germans have taken Peronne and Bapaume! —Berlin, beflagged, is ringing joy-bells!—German school children all have a holiday! —The Kaiser has found a new place on Hindenburg where he can hang a decoration! — Alack, Alas ! —Ah-i! Ah-oo !—Brek-ek-ek-ex koax-koax !" None the less, however, will this Long-Faced Brigade make the most of their Easter holidays. Confessedly it is a serious hour. The fate of the Empire seems to hang by a thread. Or to put it another way, -there is nothing between British democracy and jack-booted German militarism but the khaki successor of the historic " thin red line." To keep that line from breaking, men of our kin—in number perhaps equal to the population of Dunedin, men, women, and children—have.died within the last few days; others, as many, are dying or ready to die. All the same will Dismal Jimmy parade the C. J.C. racecourse or its nearest equivalent, his shallow-hearted Amy, fittingly bedizened, by his side.

Tho Germans ..-have taken from us Bapaume and Peronne with other warwrecked towns and villages beyond tally. It is but the other day that we took Bapaume, Peronne, and the rest from the Germans. I do not remember; that we hoisted any flags or rung any bells. It was all in the day'« work. It is within the chances of war that we shall take them from the Germans again. Back and forth sways the hundred-league battleline ; it is the miserable fortune of Bapaume and Peronne to be now on one side of it, new on the other. In the National Review, January number, Mr" Cope Cornford, a competent critic on matters military and naval, argues that if the Allies were jointly and severally defeated on land (" if, —there is much virtue in an " if ") — Great Britain alone might carry on the war at sea, might and must, —or perish utterly. The withdrawal of the British forces from Branca would not necessarily imply defeat. It might well be the opposite if ("if" again) "the war at sea were thereafter waged as it should have been waged from the first. That it was not so waged by our Whigs (Grey, Asquith, Haldane and Co.) is among the greatest betrayals ever perpetrated by a British Government."

. Thus Mr Cope Cornford. He continues : Has it over occurred to the British people that Germany is -beaten at sea? If not, it is because the submarine lias not been defeated. Nevertheless, it is a. fact. Germany has lost the whole of her Colonies; there is not a German merchant ship on the seas; and her fleet is shut up in harbour. If that position is not a position of defeat, what is ? "Britain could if necessary continue the war at sea for twenty years," —fighting the submarine, and all the time blockading Germany. Getting rid of the submarine may be no easier than getting rid of crocodiles in the Ganges or sharks in Sydney harbour. But. despite these nuisances wo contrive to exist. Moreover it is possible to threaten the one penalty which Germany dreads : America and Britain can tell .Germany that for every ship she sinks sho_ will bo deprived of all sea-borne supplies, and her ships denied the sea, for ampnth; '

and for every month the war on land continues Germany will bo deprived of all sea-borne supplies, and her ships denied the sea, for a year. Why is that announcement not made? Probably because the ability to make good turns on another "if" —the tremendous "if" now being debated on the Plains of Picardy. If Germany succeeds in beating to their knees the banded Allies she will laugh at threats of penalties to be exacted " after the war." Bunyan's "Holy War" as a book for wartime reading,—l suggested it in this column months back. Rudyard Kipling, being of the same opinion, has written a screed of verses, rugged and strong, setting forth that a pedlar from a hovel, the lowest of the low, the father of the novel, salvation's first Defoe, eight blinded generations ere Armageddon ' came, he showed us how to meet it, and Bunyan was his name. Most true. The text — Kipling's text—this sentence of Bunyan's: For here lay the excellent wisdom of him that built Mansoul, that the walla could never, be broken down nor hurt by tho most mighty adverse potentate unless tho townsmen gave consent thereto. This being so, it behoved Diabolus, bent on Mansoul's ruin, to begin by peaceful peneti-ation, quietly establishing his Diabolonians within the walls, —Mr Spy-Well, Mr Incredulity, Mr Carnal-Security, and the like, Mr Carnal-Security being a plausible and taking preacher. In duo course comes the clash of arms, and then " the craft that we call modern, the crimes that we call new, John Bunyan had 'em typed and filed in Sixteen Eighty-two."-Likewise tho Lords of Looseness Thai hamper faith and works, The Perseverance-Doubters, The Present-Comfort Shirks. And brittle intellectuals "Who crack beneath a strain— John Bunyan met that helpful set In iCharles the Second's reign. Emmanuel's vanguard dying For right and not for rights, My Lord Apollyon lying To tho Stall-fed Stockholmites, The Pope, the swithering Neutrals, Tho Kaiser and hia Crott— Their roles, their goals, their naked souls—' Ho knew and drew the lot. An anticipation of history, strange but true. And the moral : One watch-word through our armies, One answer from our lands: "No dealings with Diabolus As long as Mansoul stands!" Whatever to-day or to-morrow may bring us on the stricken fields of France and Flanders, this moral holds. From " The Mother of a Son who left for the War on October the 16th, 1914 " : Dear Civis, —You will have read, — with disgust, I hope—the" list of honours , conferred on New Zealand women for their part in war work; also letters of criticism to the editor. I ask, what about the mothers and fathers of our "boys" who have gone from our shores, and in so many cases given their lives? Are they not equally entitled to honours? Not "Brummagem" honours, however. Peace; good mother! The honour that pertains to you is a thing apart ? personal, intrinsic, incommunicable, indestructible. No king could bestow it, and it will remain yours for ever. The honours that appear in the official lists may or _ may not bo "Brummagem"; but certain it is that "a breath can make them, as a breath has made." Whose breath—is, in New Zealand, a problem. Perhaps if we knew who nominated Mrs This or Miss That all the glory and the glamour would vanish.

Dear Civis,—The Spectator's discovery of potato bread, as mentioned by you, is rather belated. Potato bread, or bread in which potatoes are an ingredient, is no novelty. The only question is how much potato you are to put in. Home-made bread J 3 of courso at the housewife's discretion; she may do as she likes. But the substitution of potatoes for flour in bakers' bread is adulteration. For a 41b loaf lioz of potatoes may be allowed,— po more, except in wartime and under famine rules, and with tho buyer's knowledge. The Spectator's potato bread —with which the editor is "so enchanted " that he feels bound to give the recipe (2oz yeast, 21b potatoes. 2 quarts of water, 41b flour) and to describe at length the kneading and the baking—has this wartime merit, that from a sack of flour (2801 b) 120 four-pound loaves of potato bread can be made, but only 95 four-pound loaves of ordinary bread. Pass for ihat, however, and let me hasten to announce a more startling wartime discovery, namely potato butter. Here is an extract from ''lnstructions by the Ministry of Fcod " : Pool the potatoes and boil (or stram) thorn till they fall to pieces and tecoms floury. Rub in through a fine sieve into a large basin which has been previously wormed. To every 14oz of mashed potatoes add 2oz of butter one teaspQo^LjJ^^^^^B

smooth. The butter may then bo made up into pounds or half-pound 3 and kept in a cool place. Butter from potatoes! Sunbeams from, cucumbers, next, as in Gulliver's Laputa. Civis.