PASSING NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 3384, 22 January 1919, Page 3

PASSING NOTES.

CFtobb Saturday's Daily Tim®*.)

Weird and wondrous are the doings in. Berlin. Civil war is endemic, machineguns are said to sweep the streets, yet the casualty lists run low, the two million inhabitants hovering round as at a spectacle while one brand of Socialists under Ebert, the ex-tailor, makes faces at another under Liebknecht, a desperado who is "prepared for blood." Street hawkers hardly trouble to shift their stalls, street musicians continue playing amidst the fighting (we know the singular persistency gf a German band), and even the street beggars remain at their posts. A peculiar feature is the strategic importance of newspaper offices. The Vorwarts office, barricaded by one party with rolls of printing paper, is assailed by the other with hand grenades and a tank;' similar hostilities rage around the editorial sanctums of the Rundschau, the Tageblatt, and the Wolff Bureau; when night falls the contending forces bivouac in and around " the newspaper quarter." What to make of all this it is hard to say. Chaos reigns, but it is a contemptible chaos—the imbecile rioting of an insurrectionary lunatic asylum. Hindenburg, it is said, "would not object to see the British in Berlin." Well, yes ; —their advent? -would not be without a 'dramatic fitness, nor would Unter den Linden seem an unsuitable place for the apotheosis of "It's a long long way to Tipperary." But, on the whole, one would prefer that the job of straightening out things in Berlin should be otherwise assigned.

An American rhymester on one of the Kaiser's later misdeeds, the dropping of a shell from his long-range gun on a Good Friday congregation in Paris : " You are old, Father "William," the Crown Prince remarked, "And your waistline shows signs of distress. But a church full of women, at seventy miles Is a very good score, I confess." " Four years book, Friedrich Willielm," the Kaiser replied, " We began shooting girls by tho lot; And thus bv sub-ca.libre practice grew fit For this last striking tribute to Gott." As pendant to this may come an English

newspaper's punning comment on the name of the murderer's Dutch retreat: The name of the castle where now in. duress Lives an Emperor is Amerongen; Had anyone ever a better addiesSi Or mortal more fittingly cause to confess Than Kaiser Bill "I'm a wrong 'unl"

" There never was such a day, and there can never be such a day again," as the day on which London celebrated final victory—all day and all night, until the small hours of next morning. As the November evening closed in the dark city blazed with a myriad lights, the first time for years,—" it was a carnival night .of life, light, and colour; strangers who had never set eyes upon one another before linked handstand danced Avild 'ring of roses' around lampposts and in the centre of the great thoroughfares; soldiers —young officers and dancing and cheering and singing; old men and young men, girls and women, of all ages and classes." Thousands of Dominion soldiers were in the streets; they had never seen London by night in anything but' its protective mantle of pitch black. . The sudden emerging of electric globes, row upon row, white, red, and blue, caught their fancy, and "the blaze infected them." We can imagine it. Also to be imagined are the simultaneous rejoicings in Paris, in Rome, in New York, and on the hundred leagues of Western front, where at the stroke of eleven, Monday, November the eleventh, "our bugles sang truce," and "there ensued such a celebration as is unknown to history." But nothing could beat the scenes in London when London let itself go. We had a good time here —a memorable time; but what had it been to be there!

"There were no navy men in evidence " —says the Pall Mall Gazette from which I quote, —"no representatives of the Grand Fleet seemed to be taking part." For reason good,—the Grand Fleet was holding a celebration of its own.

The villages and towns which skirt the shores where the Great Armada is at anchor were tiring of their jubilation when there bursts into the night the full-throated majestic voice of a thousand craft. The Silent Navy suddenly startled a radius of far beyond a hundred miles. Battleships and cruisers, torpedo-boats and mine-layers, " stunt " ships and motor patrols, mine-sweepers, coalers, trawlers, and pickets all at one synchronised moment gave voice.

This was the order of it: —at seven o'clock "splice the main-brace" —the serving out of the rum' ration (ah me! alack and alas!—tet the prohibitionist omit this painful item) ; at eight the ships broke out in sudden blaze—searchlights, star shells, flares great and small, fireworks new and strange; at the same moment " from a thirty-mile line there rose the myriad notes of syrens, from the deep hooter to the strange wolfish ' woof-woof' of the torpedo boats, there was every note in the scale." At-nine o'clock the syrens-suddenly silenced, the lights snapped out, _ and the Grand Fleet was again waiting and watching and ready, and scarcely had the last sounds died away on the chill November night than from the Admiral's ship there were winking from the masthead the orders for further duty. It was the Silent Navy once more.

We have pushed the rule of silence too far, —to the point of tragic absurdity indeed, says a Paris correspondent of the Westminster Gazette. "In all the last four years of misery and heroism, of suffering and endurance, of bad news and worse news, and now and then of good news, of distant cannon, of near cannon, of air raids, of casualty lists, the most dreadful sound I have heard has been one little sentence in French: ' Et qu'est-ce que font lea anglais?' It was bad that we should begin the war by shouting ' Business as usual!' „ It was almost criminal—no, it was wholly criminal—that we should ever let the French come

to wonder what we were doing." But all that has been put right. For one thing, Lloyd George made a speech in the Commons setting forth what Great Britain had done, to which setting forth Admiral Sims of the American navy with emphasis said ditto, and both " scored a bull's eye in the target-of French opinion."

When Mr Lloyd Geoi-ge points out that our navy, by defeating the submarine campaign, forced on this year's disastrous German offensive in France j that the British Empire has raised eight and a-half million men, of whom the greater part were volunteers; that in one month British ships engaged on escort and convoy duties must steam more than a million and a-quarter miles; that the arrival of the American troops depends by more than 50 per cent, on British shipping; that only for the British navy the war would have been won by Germany in the first year, he is stating Avhat may be plaitudes at home, but nobody can understand, save those living- abroad, that these things strike with the force of a neAV thing on the French.

Passages from the Lloyd George speech selected and italicised by the French press were happily those in which, "almost for the first time in history, the British, in the person of their Prime Minister, have consented to wave the Union Jack." By and by—hopes this caustic critic —" Ave may lose all sense of decency, and come to the stage where Ave mention that we love our country and that we stand by our friends." But to-day, the war ended, it is unnecessary to mention those facts. The war record shouts them from the housetops.

From Kahukura, East Coast, wherever precisely that may be, comes a remonstrating prohibitionist—totally. befogged, of course, but mild-mannered and civilspoken, so I let her in (it is a lady), merely commiserating her hopeless labour with "the. weary pund b' tow."

Dear "Civis," —May a Prohibitionist offer a *pav words by way of criticism, since criticism and not argument is your OAvn vein? You very rightly gave your support to the prohibition of the liquor traffic as a Avar measure, thus showing that you do not regard the freedom to drink a glass of wine or whisky as a sacred right, to be maintained at all hazards. But Avhat is Avrong Avjth The same prohibition now that the war is Avon, seeing that tho liquor traffic is itself a notorious enemy to our homes, in defence of which, largely, Ave Avere fighting? To adapt your own words: In that fact alone. its constant injury to the home, Avero there no others, trie liquor traffic stands condemned. You do not think Prohibition the Avay to temperance or good citizenship; the licensing of tha liquor business certainly is not. Starved, diseased, ill-treated, hopeless, Avhat heart or opportunity have thousands of Avomen and children, the victims of tho traffic, to be or to become good citizens ? In conclusion, let-me say that I don't knoAV of any Prohibitionist Avho Avishes to throw over St. Paul—St. Paul who Avrote: "It is good neither to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor anything Avhereby thy brother stu'mbleth or is offended or is made Aveak."

An excellent reason for voluntary abstinence, but no reason at all for compulsion. Says the same authority (and I am glad to find him still respected), "Let no man judge you in meat or in drink." Also he says: "Why are ye subject to ordinances —touch not, tastej not, handle not?— which things have indeed a show of Avis"dom in will Avorship, and humility, and severity to the body, but are ndt of any value against the indulgence of the flesh." Another saying of his—"Be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess"— carries an implicit permission to drink in moderation. Is it to be supposed that this legislator Avas blind to the evils, domestic and social, that drunkenness brings in its train? Not a bit! But he knew that prohibition was not the cure.

But, the Bible apart, and moral questions apart (let us drop all that!), prohibition Avill be "good business." And here we come upon that blessed word " efficiency,"—prohibition will make for "national efficiency.". An empty phrase, in this context an impertinence. Look at the Avorld-map and its blazonry of British red; —any lack of efficiency in eAddence there? Our people have colonised the waste places of the earth, north and south, conquered India, scored up a Trafalgar and a Waterloo, covered the seas with their commerce, and noAV Avind up a Avrestle with the champion bully of Europe by coming out on top. All this Avithout prohibition. Yet Ave have the New Zealand Efficiency Board, sager than the Seven Sages, affirming that New Zealand must haA-e prohibition for the sake of efficiency. I should smile! Wiser men than I may have smole a smile, knoAving that the prime essential of efficiency is freedom, and the remedy for abuse of freedom more freedom—a paradox that leaves the pettifogger gasping.

But the principle of prohibition—of restraint, limitation the strait vraistcoat—• finds favour with " business men." Even

at the annual cost of a quarter-million § sterling for ever—interest on the compen- w sa'tion gratuity—prohibition would be !&, " good business." Somehow the "business f man" sees money in it. "Common sense will tell you thb-t £lO worth of liquor * : ; poured doAvn a man's throat" will noi greatly benefit the community; nor—for J. the illustration may be extended—£lo worth of tobacco exhaled in smoke, nor fe> £lO squandered in feminine vanities whett " the " sales'' are on, nor £lO dribbled away at picture shows. Shall we in each case apply the strait waistcoat ? Apropos of picture shows, a -writer in the Contemporary Eeview for November affirms thai the British stage has * been ruined by] ' business men." At the moment there are 35 West End theatres in full swing . . . . . mainly occupied by entertainments which profess to do no more than show song and dance and funny men. •.• r Shakespeare has not been played in London since. the first year "of tho war. . . . What is the reason for this state of things? The Theatre has been converted from an art to an in- . ' dustry controlled by business men or > theatrical speculators. In fighting the Hun and in providing by] gift or loan national funds for that pur- ? pose, the business man nobly forgot thafe he was a business man. Patriotism as . "good business" would have sounded • queer to him. Prohibition as "good business" sounds queer to me. Business ia '}' business, and to business as business let the business man stick. In art, ia morals, in religion, as in patriotism, let him forget it. Ne sutor supra crepidanu

From an Auckland correspondent: IHELAND A 3 MRS GUMMIDGE. Dear "Civis," —In Passing Notes of • Deoember ,25, you say: "Though, lamenting herself as a 'lqvo lorn creator* with whom everything went 'contrairy', Mrs Gummidge was never tempted to violence." You know your Dickens so well—■ and so often bring .it in so aptly—that it is only with diffidence that I quote \ . from tho account of old Peggotty's visit from Australia/ —to David and Agnes:— "Mrs Gummidge?" I suggested. •■'■ It was a pleasant key to touch, for Mr Peggotty suddenly burst into a roar of laughter "If a ship's cook that was turning settler, Mas'r Davy, didn't make offers fur to marry Mrs Gummidge, I'm Gormed. . . . "And what did Mrs Gummidge say?" I asked "If you'll believe me,'\ returned Mr Peggotty, " Missis Gummidge, stead of saying ' thank you, I'm much, obleeged to you'. . . . up'd with a bucket as was standing by, and laid it < over that theere ship's cook's head till he sang out for help, and I went in and re skied of him." Pity that Ireland as Mrs Gummidge did « not respond in the same spirit, to overtures from Germany. But Irishmen at the front were Irishmen all over, nothing of Sinn Fein about them:—e.g., Paddy lying, wounded in hospital is asked by a visito* whether he ever killed a German: Shure, lady, I don't know. But I kin tell you .this. Just before I cops this -crack on the nob, Micky Plinn says to me,:says he, "Shake yer bay'nit, Pat. . Ye've a brace of boches hangin' to v it." • .. - ■• - .-;,,

About the Dickens citation I sit corrected. Also I meekly admit a blazing misadventure in the immaculate columns of tha Daily Times: The short, spare figuro of General Pau, in peaked hat and blue-grey tunic, ;• ' his sleeveless right arm across his breast, ', appeared on the stage. . . . «- "Sleeveless arm" or armless sleeve, it i* all one to the veteran of 1870. I make my compliments to General ]?au, "wishing him recovery to health, —somewhere up \ the line, responding in the rain to enthusiastic deputations, he caught a chill and did not reach the genial climate of Dun» edin early enough to avert the consequences. A pity 1 Bonne sante, et bon voyage I Crvis.