PASSING NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 3383, 15 January 1919, Page 3

PASSING NOTES.

(From Saturdays Dafly Tiia«*4 Autocrat, aristocrat, plutocrat, democrat —one. begins to feel at a loss among these words in -crat; uniformly they have acquired or are acquiring what the dictionaries call a- "bad meaning." The appellation "autocrat" would not flatter President Wilson, autocrat though he be. With the laudable purpose of honouring Theodore Eoosevelt who was President before him he "directs" that for thirty days flags on public buildings shall be half-masted. The Emperor of India might perhaps in lordly aloofness venture a similar direction; but assuredly the King of England could not. "Aristocrat" would be a stigma on Sir Joseph Ward, "plutocrat" on Mr Carnegie, beneficent dispenser of organs and libraries to the unworthy. Not distant is the time perhaps when the Hon. J. T. Paul will refuse to be ticketed "democrat." The Bolshevists, who are democracy's bright consummate flower, have had Mr Paul's good word in the past, but are not likely to get it again. Democracy, perfected in Bolshevism, means that every man does as he pleases, or, to be accurate, as he dam pleases,—which is the mot juste, and I decline to apologise.

Bishop Julius prophesies of Bolshevism, with its habit of robbery and massacre, as a peril in these southern lands. I doubt whether Mr Paul would contradict him. Mr Paul can read the signs of the times as well as a bishop. Throughout the war the sailors of the British Mercantile Marine never refused to "sign on." Mines and torpedoes went for nothing. They manned their ships and kept the sea. But the Australian sailor, who is sometimes a New Zealander, won't go to sea unless insured for £SOO against influenza ! Bolshevism is a worse infection, and the Labour lords are catching it. Russian democracy is a reeking scandal because it has never found its President W ilson - A Trotsky it has found, and a Lenin.—the one now treading the other under foot; also it has found a she demoniac more devilish, than either or both. For this phenomenon see the cables. The moral

of all which is that democracy in extreme form must develop an autocrat or perish. Ah God, for a man with heart, head, hand, Like some of the simple great ones gone For ever and ever by, One still strong man in a blatant land, Whatever they oall him, what care I, Aristocrat, democrat, autocrat —one Who can rule and dare not lie. A prayer for the times. The Hon. J. T. Paul will please join in. President Wilson's " Freedom of the Seas " as understood by a leading London newspaper: The effect of President Wilson's pro- ' posal strictly interpreted, would be that a belligerent could use the sea as a safe highway for his troops up to the threemile line which is the boundary of territorial waters. The Germans, for example, would be at liberty to organise a gigantio fleet of transports loaded with men and munitions, and these transports might move up and down the coasts of England and Scotland seeking a safe landing-place, and as long as they kept outside the three-mile limit they would be immune from attack. This i 3 how the Spectator (November 2) understands, or imagines that it understands ;. but, the result being sheer idiocy, we may assume that the Spectator is really in no better plight than Colonel Repington, who protests that he neither understands the Wilson doctrine himself nor has met with anyone who does. Indeed, the Spectator virtually admits that its interpretation yields sheer idiocy, for it continues: —"To expect Great Britain to look on with her arms folded while enemy transports'were bearing down upon her coasts is to ask a great nation to commit suicide." And so say all of us.

We have to face also the companion doctrine (it is with a double-barrelled gun that Yankee-Doodle comes to town) —the League of Nations to police this terraqueous globe East and West, from Vladivostock to Vancouver, North and South, from Petrograd to Capetown, —a magnificent idea, of which nobody would say an ill word, or hardly anybody. It is true that the French Premier, M. Clemenceau, a grand old man, declares that he will have none of ft; also there are sceptical or hostile manifestations in the British press —the political writer in Blackwood, for instance ("Musings Without Method ") fulminating after this manner: "We are convinced that the proposed League of Nations is not possible; we are convinced also that, were it possible, it would be undesirable." Possible or impossible, desirable or undesirable, the scheme seems pretty sure of trial, such is our attitude of complacency, not to say of subserviency, towards President Wilson. The existing League of Nations found Prussian kultur a tough job; its successor will make Bolshevism its peculiar care, and after that Sinn Fein. If there is a row in the Balkans or on the Afghan frontier, it will send armies; if there are piracy troubles in the China Seas, it will send' ships. Part of the dream is that there shall be no secret treaties, no hidden understandings, no divisive tariff walls; all shall be unity and brotherly love. There remains, however, the intrinsio nature of things, including human nature. It may be that in these unreckoned elements the Great Medicine Man from Washington will meet his match.

If in his uneasy Dutch retreat the Kaisei- reads the English and American papers he will find irresponsible scribes discussing the manner of his execution, by rope or by firing party, and to what circle of Dante's inferno he may be finally committed. Dante's inf erno !—he is there alreadv. Contrasting the things that -were with tlfe things that are, his worst enemy must pity him. Here 13 a vignette from the authentic hand of Lord Morley, date 1911! Yesterday I sat next to the German Emperor at luncheon at Haldane s (Lord Kitchener on the other aide of

him), and it may interest you (Lord Minto, Governor-general of India) to know that H.M. (his Imperial Majesty) oponed our talk with vivacious thanks for the kindness his son (the Crown Prince) had received in India. ." . . I don't think I ever met a man so full of the zest of life, and so eager to show and share it with other people. . . . Ho talked to me about some recent book of Bishop Boyd Carpenter, which he liked so much that he had it translated into German, and in tho > evening often read pieces aloud to his ladies while they sat stitching and knitting. I said something of Harnack (Professor of Theology), and his negative effects. " Not at all so negative," ho answered, " since. I got him to Berlin." How much of hi 3 (the Kaiser's) undoubted attractiveness is due to his being the most important man in Europe, who can tell?

Consider this domestic interior—the ladies of the German court stitching and knitting, the Kaiser reading to them from an English bishop, or haply holding a skein of wool; —it is a sweet picture. But less impressive than that of the Kaiser unbending at an English dinner table, the Minister for India next him on one side, Kitchener on the other, the Minister for War (but with a "spiritual home" in Germany) presiding. It is a stage grouping, we should say, too improbable even for the stage. But ironic destiny so contrived it, and only three years before Armageddon. Note the touch about Harnack, Professor of Theology. Tc "tune the pulpits" was an ambition of Queen Elizabeth; Bismarck s did actually tune " the reptile press," —his own expression. The Kaiser tuned the Universities, every professor learning to dance to the Potsdam piping that Might is Right.

Another glimpse. Four years earlier, 1907, the Kaiser was paying a visit to uncle and cousins at the British Court. " Superficial —hurried—impetuous —badly balanced"—the verdict of those who saw him at close quarters—was not quite John Morley's;_ e.g.—(but the brackets, please, are mine) : I saw much of him at Windsor, and was surprised at his gaiety, freedom, naturalness, geniality, and good humour —evidently unaffected. He greeted me with mock salaams and other marks of Oriental obeisance (I, Morley, being Secretary- of State for India, and he, the Kaiser, being in Yankee phrase a playful cuss). Seriously he put me through my paces about India. When I talked, as we all should (and as I. Morley, being a philosophical Radical of the doctrinaire school, am accustomed to talk) about the impossibility of forecasting British rule in the Indian, future, he hit his hand vehemently on his knee, with a vehement exclamation to match, that British rule would last for over. . . . Ho asked how our Radical labour men treated Indian things. I said, "Without ground for ;.i: gu'arj-el" He again struck his knee, ' praying that his own Socialists would only show the same sense. In your most private ear (Italics, the private ear being that of Lord Minto, Governorgeneral of India) I confide to you that important talks took place about tho Baghdad Railway. " Superficial, hurried, impetuous, badly balanced" —this diagnosis reads convincing, and may explain all the later tragedy. But always and everywhere the Kaiser had an eye to business. Those " important talks about the Baghdad Railway " :—all unwitting the Secretary for India was being subjected, more Germanico, to "peaceful penetration."

Letters to the editor against "Civis" on Prohibition continue; —I haven't counted 'em. Let the heathen rage!—it is all money in my pocket. But metaphor is risky, irony a mere trap. Swayed and governed by sentiment, the prohibitionist has scant imagination and —as the Americans say —can't reason worth a cent. Occasionally he'tries to be rude, suggesting, for example, thatmy interest matter is all a question of "thirst," —I object to being deprived of "the privilege of a drink." These gutter-snipe amenities are not usual, or I should say that prohibition and politeness have nothing in common but the initial p. Also I am accused of believing in "moral suasion.' I have not used the term; but of the Law and Gospel alternative Gospel is mine; Law and the parish constable I leave to the prohibitionist. May he be happy with them! "Moral suasion won't keep my cows off tutu" — says one critic; neither will it keep the returned soldier out of the public house, (elegant comparison!); what you want is a fence, and a hedge-stake wherewith to wallop them. Next I have an amiable simpleton who asks me to explain "how It is that a blessing is pronounced on the total-abstaining Rechabites in Jeremiah xxxv, 19." Why, I am prepared to bless the whole tribe of prohibitionists on the same terms. Let them totally abstain; let them teach others to totally abstain. Which, so far as I can maks out, they totally neglect to do. Where are their Temperance Societies, their Good Templar Lodges, their Bands of Hope? They prefer the short cut, the easier way,

handing over the whole business of moraj reform to the law and the policeman.. t . ■ \ Next, I am called to the stool of repentance fqr saying—" The recommendations of the Efficiency Board . . .had in' $ view war time economies, not peaca time gratuities. Compensation is a sheer gratuity unasked, ivnlooked for."_ This statement is true and I repeat it. The Efficiency Board had not in view peace . time gratuities, yet has contrived for the liquor trade a huge gratuity, "unasked, unlooked for." As the law stood, New, j Zealand, if it so willed, could have I brought in prohibition without compensa- j tion. Invercargill—to take a near illustra-. j tion—is under no license. Was any com- j p&nsation paid in Invercargill?—or in any, i other no-license district? Not a penny.. On the same terms might all New Zea- \ iand have been brought under no-license. / But, as recommended by the wise heads of the Efficiency Board (their very names unknown to most people), this privilege ha 3 been taken away. New Zealand can now have prohibition (if it wants it!) aft p the cost of four and a half millions ster- ' ling —a huge gratuity—or at the cost of four years' continuance granted -to fcho liquor trade, which is the huge gratuity . in another form. Repent?—it is for other \ people to repent,—mea virtute me involvo. F Further, and finally, I am admonished in r grave tones that the prohibition movement I is a movement by "business men." Most ) impressive, or, that is to say (irony being,; barred in this context) not impressive as , all. "Business men," taken strictly as j "business men," are poor patriots. All j the profiteering in New Zealand during) the war—-and it was considerable—was ■ profiteering b"v "business men." It i«; "business men" who run the luxury trades, —tobacco, which lowers the pocket blunts? the wits of half the population (consult Sir Robert Stout on the cigarette habit!), fur coats for factory girls, motor cars for the idle or would-be-idle rich—all this is the business of "business men.' . The cost of living, so far as kept up facti* tiously, is kept up by "business men. , If prohibition is being engineered by "business men," that' alone suffke3 to damn it. Look for the nigger in the woodpile. / Chvi3. (