PASSING NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 3348, 15 May 1918, Page 3

PASSING NOTES.

(From Saturday's Daily Times.)

The questions of fact at issue between Mr Lloyd George and Mr Bonar Law on the one hand and Major-General Maurice of the Imperial General Staff on the other are a small thing; which side is right, which wrong, whether the politicians should be hanged or the soldier shot, these questions also are a -small thing; but it is not a small thing that officials high in the State should give aid and comfort to the King's enemies. Incited to garrulity by questions in the House of Commons, by newspaper criticism, by Heaven knows what, the two Ministers had made statements of which this is the type, namely, that "there was only one white infantry division in Mesopotamia, and there were only three white divisions in Palestine and ijgypt." Do the Germans shout from the housetop the disposition of their forces—so many of the best troops in this place, so many in •that? The Germans are not such fools. It is a piquant detail that the Director of Military _ Operations (no less!) declares these Ministerial statements untrue, but only a detail. The central fact that damns all is the Ministerial habit of blab. For _ that we may thank our history, our institutions, our Parliament, our press, ourselves —in the last analysis. We cannot escape from our past; we are what thepast has made us. Publicity has come to be the breath of our democratic nostrils. And so we mention as a matter of general interest, not to be missed, that British casualties for a week tot up to 38.600. Does the German thus proclaim his losses ? Pas si bete! We are running this war under handicap; it remains that we have to win it all the same.

It is part of our national and hereditary handicap that we suffer fools gladly. Or if not gladly, anyhow -we suffer them. The pacifist fool, for one. Here in Lord Lansdowne, the writer some months back of a pacifist manifesto which had the instant effect of sending up in value the German mark, a manifesto of tendency so mischievous that it has since been disavowed and repudiated by his own son, — in this week's cables we have Lord Lansdowne unrepentant and unashamed. Debating an an ti-pacifist motion in the

House of Lords, he said that we were invited to rely on a knock-out blow, " but the country had not been told how and when the blow would be delivered or the cost thereof." Could there be criticism more idiotic? Are we to think of Lord Lansdowne as a mumbling imbecile? Yet we report this stuff, and the value" of the German mark will go up again. "There was"—he went on to say —" a great and increasing respectable body of opinion in the Kingdom who were earnestly desirous to negotiate for peace." Of whom and of which is the eminently respectable Ramsay Macdonald, member for Leicester, who when attempting last week to address his constituents had to be rescued by the police and whisked off to safety in a hansom cab. But in the House of Commons —like Lord Lansdowne, his spiritual affirfity upstairs —Mr Ramsay Macdonald may talk treasonable nonsense by the fathom, and be reported. What a people! And yet we are going to win this war.

Lack of imagination,—to this negative quality how much do .we owe !. If before our mind's eye were presented what on Western battlefields would affront the bodily eye —the carnage, the agonised struggle, the horror, the hell, all- life's activities would stop. We should be unable to go on. As it is, these things affect us no more than films in a picture show. -%id, apropos, a writer in the Daily Times remarking that two picture show managers had been fined for overcrowding adds the shrewd comment that he had " not heard of any church authorities being charged with that offence." Quite so; people will pay for their pleasures and stand in queues to do it; they have to be hunted for their duties. " A German shell in their back yard" would help, thinks this critic. It would; — imagination, of which we all have a plentiful lack, yielding to experience. A week or two back, when affairs on the Western front looked blackest, the faithful were called to prayer. And the faithful responded. Hour after hour on a given day, night after night for many nights, their dirges, and their devotions went up. But the banks and the business houses were not affected—the hotels and the tea rooms, the picture shows and the theatres^— not a bit! Lack of imagination, though we owe it much, is a powerful aid to selfishness. Be it so; —honest men will try to do their bit though that lack be not supplied, and without the stimulus of a German shell in their back yard. The lunatic, the lover, and the poetAre of imagination all compact—'made up of it, so that each dwells with unrealities and inhabits a world of his own. The lunatic, the lover, and the poet" are "gey ill to live with." And no one of the three is necessarily a patriot.

Dear " Civis," —Discussing the Avar with a gentleman of good education and wide reading, and quoting your remarks of a week ago on " Tho Belgian Hell a German Paradise," I was amazed at his opinions on the war:—The invasion of Belgium justified ; the appalling atrocities denied; Lord Brj'co's damning report dismissod airily as incapable of proof; our own forces charged with equal or greater crimes than tho Huns; and a cynical belief that in less than 25 years Great Britain will be arm-in-arm with Germany against soma common enemy. This 13 suspiciously likft the 6tufT of which treason is made; but what can one do with a person expressing such opinions, except "shut up"?—lam, etc., Perplexed. There is little here to perplex. One comes occasionally upon vanity and affectation carried to this pitch. It is tho pretence of the would-be superior person, its tone cynicism, its habit disparagement. When one comes upon it there is nothing to bo said; nobody is deceived; —the would-be superior person is taken for what he is, a shallow fool.

Did I help to swell the Rev. Howard

Elliott's anti-Popery crowd the other night? I did not; —nor was I among the hundreds turned away from the door. A counter demonstration under the auspices of St. Vincent de Paul and organised by Father Coffey would equally fail to attract me, even though in courtesy to Civis the Rev. Father should offer the private entree. Here let me set down once more and commend for general adoption my profession of faith and rule of life ;

Anti-this or anti-that—l am anti everything and everybody that at this critical time is anti our solid unity. Seditious Sinn Feiners, whether under the banner of religion or not, will be shown no mercy. On the other hand, I have just as slender liking for tho Orange agitator.

I have read with full sympathy letters in the Daily Times descanting on the patriotic sacrifices made by New Zealand Roman Catholics in this war, and on the number of soldier-gravas marked by the sign "R.1.P.," which is short for "Resquiescat In Pace"—"May he rest in Peace," —a pious wish usually, but not necessarily, limited to those who die in the Roman Obedience. If it is a question of service rendered and suffering borne, the Roman Catholics stand fully and fairly abreast of their fellow citizens. But, in the most delicate way in the world, let me hint to the writers of these letters, M. M'AUen and Frank Whelan, that a sufficient explanation of the Howard Elliott phenomena is discernible in the poisonous politics of their own denominational press. If their own denominational press limited itself to preaching the Roman Obedience, tho Rev. Howand Elliott might whistle for his audiences. Just as little should 'we trouble about R.C.'s and R.C beliefs as about the theological vagaries of Strict Baptists or ■Seventh Day Adventists.

But it is an ill time for the seditionmonger. War pressure increases, anxieties grow; —let no talker of treason count too much on the public long-suffering. The proposal made in the House to give P. C. Webb leave of absence "as an act of grace" was shouted down, —"lost on the voices," voices loud and emphatic. And so "Paddy Webb"—as the Maoriland Worker, affectionately familiar, phrases him—not only remains in durance vile but loses place and JfSay, seat, status, honorarium, At Christchurch a resolution carried in public meeting, the >Mayor in the chair, has been pronounced seditious, —think of that! Which pronouncement, no mere academical opinion, otiose and negligible, bears surprising fruit:—tho jailing, not of the public meeting,—that would be difficult, —but of the man who w r rote the resolution, the man who proposed it, and the man who' seconded it, one of them for six months, the others for three. We are left to wonder why the Mayor who put tho resolution aiid declared it carried was not placed in the dock with the others.' In Australia the authorities have snapped up from his cure the Rev. Father Something-or-other (the name is of no importance) and interned him as a treasonable Sinn Feiner and pro-German. Apropos, a correspondent writes me thus:

Dear "Civis,"—The hand of Fate seems in the acrostic: GER-MAN. MAN-NIX.

Read it horizontally, read it perpendicularly, and accept the suggestion. _ If the interning of clerics is in question, the Australians who have begun with a priest may end with an archbishop.

From Waimate; a repudiation : Dear " Civis," —In last week's Passing Notes you made a slip which does us an injustice. Writing of tho Christchurch Second Division League's meeting you wind up by saying "They do these things better out of Canterbury." Now wo at this end of Canterbury do not care to bo bracketed with Christchurch We are proud to belong to Canterbury, but Christchurch I no, thanks! Our Second Division League—over eleven hundred strong—held a meeting and strongly denounced the attitude taken up by tho Christchurch League. Loyal resolutions were passed; after which a sporting man —we are all sports this way, and duck shooting had just begun—condemned the timidity of the Government in dealing with the German element in our midst: "I wish to goodness the Government would declare an open season for these (adjective) Germans. Why! duck shooting wouldn't be in it." Which pious wish was so much to tho liking of the audience that they cheered to the echo. Just because Christchurch —more by good luck than good guidance—happens to bo in Canterbury, pleaso don't imagine wo are all as mad as they. We may leave it at that. The Christchurch resolution inciting Second Division men to revolt, could have been passed nowhere elso in this Dominion. The psychology and pathology of Christchurch is a riddle never yet read. There is a cathedral, there are churches, there are schools, there is Christ's College, the very streets are ecclesiastically named t above all there is a double-banked and

highly intelligent daily press; and yet for fads and crotchets, cranks and charlatans, Christchurch is a byword. Even Wain mate lifts up the heel against it.

Short of a general gaol delivery, for which I have no space, I may deal with two correspondents, two only, both of them queer. First, a Christchurch 8.A., New Zealand University :

Dear " Civis." —The questions of tho prolixity of tbo New Zealand Educational Institute and the turning of beef into man and woman have been tem-

porarily dropped. Do you not think that the two sexes, male and female,

aro really identical, and that the structural differences are due merely to

specialisation of function? Milton says that "spirits," at their will, can either ~ sex assume, or both

What Milton said is not to tho point. The prince of darkness may " assume " the angel of light. We have nothing to do with assuming. Let us hear what Tennyson says—

Woman Is not undeveloped man, But diverse; could we make her as the

man, Sweet love were slain; his dearest bond is this, Not like to like, but like in difference.

Diverse she is, and diverse most in mind —our spiritual complement; -whereby it is we love her. The vagaries of certain Christchurch women in public meeting assembled—for which see this week’s papers —are in themselves a proof that woman is not undeveloped man but diverse, —• an inverted proof. “ Corruptio optimi pessima ” sums it up. The Christchurch B.A. will readily translate. Correspondent number 2, “ a despised eater of raw vegetables,” who says (touching wood the while, let us hope) —“ I never require the doctor, nor am laid up, nor take medicine,” begins his screed thus : “A few mornings ago, as I was enjoying with other things some sweet raw cabbage . . .” —whereupon I drop him. I have no time for a reincarnated Nebuchadnezzar. Civis.