PASSING NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 3395, 9 April 1919, Page 3

PASSING NOTES.

(From Saturday'* Daily Times.)

"Having won the War, shall we lose the Peace?" asks the National Review. We shall jiot lose the peace, but it is on the cards that we may have to_ fight for it. Indeed we are fighting at this hour, — in the Archangel region, round about Vladivos'tock, on the . Balkan frontier Y>f Hungary, British, French, and Americans are fighting and getting killed. British monitors sent up the Danube to do something or other at Budapesth —and a British monitor's guns could lay Budapesth even with the ground —are returning, re infecta, with loss of officers and men. A flat-bottomed monitor, laboriously plugging up stream, offers good sniping from the banks, I imagine. Add to these things a new truculence in Germany. " From arrogance to humility is but a single step,"—says the National Review; —" let us ncjb forget that it is only another step backward from humility to arrogance." Dilatory, slack, divided, chasing shadows, we, the Allies in Peace Congress assembled, have given excuse for* this backward step. From across the Rhine we hear that unless this, and unless that, Germany will renew the war; and Maximilian Harden, whose voice can usually make itself heard above any confusion of tongues, announces that the Kaiser, if not a coward, may come back and reign! Absurd, no doubt; but if we had never heard of a League of Nations this and other absurdities would not have risen up to shame us. The business of the Peace Congress was to enforce peace. That done—peace enforced, restitution, reparation, guarantees against repetition exacted —we might have romanced at our leisure.

Waiving for a moment as doubtful the question of paternity, it is certain that the League of Nations -was first preached from America. To how small an extent America believe 3 in it may be seen in the shocking proposal—shocking, strictly, for it has delivered shocks all round—tha'fc America should build a war fleet big enough to tackle the fleet of Great Britain. It is an official proposal, Mr Daniels, Secretary for American. Naval Affairs, its sponsor. "Let us be brethren and love as brethren," says America; —"but I must

be able to crack your crown as readily as you mine; —let us see that our shillelaghs are a match, mine not less hefty than yours." Alas and alack a day! From a correspondent comes to me -with commendation a Sydney Bulletin analysis of the eidolon, phantom image, essential idea suggested to mankind by the name " President Wilson." The dissection is neatly done, logical, reasonably convincing, and its- conclusion this:

•So far there have been three Wilsons.

The first was the prophet with the halo, the apostle of justice and light, scorning greed, injustice, revengeful things, secrecy, and compromise. That was the Heavenly Wilson. The second was the Earthly Wilson, getting down with agility and a cloud of words from his pedestal. Next there was an almost Jingo Wilson, who overdid his part in the effort to placate the hostile party which has captured Congress. This one deliberately sooLa on the United States in its career as the only country with a huge warship-building programme, and gives assurances that his League of Peace isn't intended to prevent his own country arming as it pleases, and that while the United States, as a member of the League, may interfere elsewhere, any Leaguers who interfere in the two Americas will get the surprise of their lives. Probably a fourth or Hash Wilson, being a mix.ture of the other three, will resume the debate in Paris. Also there are signs of a Retiring Wilson, who scorns such tinsel honours as a third nomination for the U.S. Presidency or a r-each-out for the Headship of tiie League of Nations, and who retreats with dignity, like Diogenes, making the best of a confused job and retiring with a book under his arm to his hogshead. We may leave it at that.

If the question of paternity was -worth pursuing, it would be well to consult the North American Review, New York, February, 1919 (Athenaeum and Public Library). An article headed "The Genesis of the Fourteen Commandments'' shows in detail and with documentary proofs that the said "Fourteen Commandments" of President Wilson are fourteen plagiarisms, no less, most of them from speeches by Lloyd George. This setting forth of the fons et origo of the Fourteen Commandments explains the President's otherwise strange unwillingness, or at least hiß failure, to

elucidate to his own countrymen, the more precise meaning .of such of the Commandments as seemed to the Man

in the Street a trifle cryptic. Didn't understand them himself, —is that the suggestion? Verily it is a queer world we live in, and things are not what they seem. Certain it is that the Peace Congress would have moved faster and to happier ends had the influence guiding it been more that of its President, Georges Clemenceau, and less that of its deus ex machina, Woodrow Wilson. Of Clemenceau's way, take an illustration by a Paris pressman: In the history of Parliaments there

are few, if any, Prime Ministers who would have treated the episode of the Emperor Carl's letter as Clemenceau did. It will be remembered that Czernin said that Clemeneeau's statements were falsp. This was ibid him as he

was leaving for the front, in his capacity

as Minister of War. "Czernin was lying," said he, and started for the front, where he was overtaken by an agitated message to the effect that he had made no formal and publishable reply. "Yes, I have," said he. "I said Czernin was lying." This _is perhaps the shortest and the healthiest chapter to date in the history of diplomacy.

Working up the agony till the final spasm of April 10, our dancing 'dervishes can afford themselves no remission. The true believer must be kept in heart, the wobbler saved from thinking. Even Mr A. S. Adams, in sober moments putting 2 and 2 together—(as he can —witness

his latest letter to the Daily Times) —finds it a bewildering thought that if prohibition is to be had this year at the cost of millions and millions, it could be had nest year for nothing. This year or next year, the same majority would serve, —: and only a majority is wanted. But why dwell on these painful heart-searchings ? As Shakespeare says, " There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so." Therefore avoid thinking. Then there is a risk that the wobbler may go to church and hear the Bible read. And the Bible is a dangerous book. The Outlook, an intelligent denominational weekly, does indeed talk of " Paul the Prohibitionist." But imagine Mr Isitt or Mr Adams announcing as axioms of the prohibition platform—" Be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess," and "Not given to much wine." These are the precepts of "Paul the Prohibitionist," and they are a measure of the extent to which " Paul the Prohibitionist " was himself a prohib. I repeat that * from the dancing dervish point of view the Bible is a book to be shunned. The same holds of all other authorities, sacred or profane. The Encyclopaedia Britannica, for instance, a witness competent and impartial,—article "Liquor Laws" (edition of 1911),:

American experience is an impressive warning against the- folly of trying to ooerco the personal habits of_ a largo section of the population against their will; —what suffers is the principle of lav/ itself, which is brought into disrepute. Again, article " Temperance " :

Tlie absolute condemnation of alcoholic drinks has never been endorsed by public opinion or by ths medical profession, because it is contradicted by their general experience. Sir Jarnea Paget, than whom no man was mora completely master of his appetite or more oompctent to judge, drank por*t wine himself because ho found that it did him good. Ho represents the attitude of the medical profession as a whole and of temperate men m general. t

What is asked of the wobbler, as of the true believer, is that he should shut his eyes to all this. Whirling in the -wake of the dancing dervishes, he is to dance to the poll and there—Strike out the top line.

Capping other good reasons for voting down and voting out the prohibition craze and the "efficiency" delusion is the obvious fact that "if alcohol were a destroyer of civilisation, civilisation would have come to an end, would have died in delirium tremens, ages ago." On this text discoursing to edification, the Christchurch Press quotes Samuel Butler (not the "Hudibras"*' man, but his namesake, the author of "Erewhon")—"No one can hate drunkenness more than I do, but I am confident the human intellect owes its superiority over that of the lower animals in great measure to the stimulus which alcohol has given to imagination." Commenting, a, writer in the Spectator of February 1 asks : " Can it be denied that man's upward progression from lower forms has been pari passu with his invention and use of alcoholic beverage?" And the Christchurch Press follows cuit: "Man's intellectual development would not have reached its present stage without the stimulus of alcohol." The prohibitionists will reply by vproudly calling attention to themselveo, and, when wo have admired them as much aa they wish us to, thsy will crush us with: "It was all done on tea and coffee." But it was not, —for thoy are the product of ages in which free men did not conceive themselves bound to abstain, or to force abstention on others in order to eliminate the drunkard.

Prohibition is for the primitive races. In Fiji a police notice faces you at every turn —Give drink to a Fijian and be fined £5. In the Transvaal give drink to a Kaffir and you go to prison without the option of a fine. Our choice on April 10 is between civilisation and savagery. For savagery, strike out the top line. %

A chaplain back from the war, addressing divinity students at Knox College:

It was the function of the chaplain to introduce God to the soldiers, not,

so to speak, as a staff officer with red tabs, but as one of themselves (! !). — Daily Times, March 12.

Something amiss with the report, you think? Then you think wrong. Report and reporter alike may be Moreover, one queer utterance is kept in countenance by another: —"When the men came back it would be necessary to remember that the moral standards of tiw people amongst whom they had lived were lower than those in New Zealand. In

London, for instance. . . ." The correspondent who picks out these gems and sends them to me adds yet another: "When our boys arrive in London they arrive in hell" —(Mr W. Jameson at 0> Y.M.C.A. meeting). And then, not witb' out reason, he lets himself go:—"I am sick to death of this railing against the Old Country; as a Londoner I very much resent this singling out of London as a specially wicked place." But tin trouble

is not the special wickedness of London \ the trouble is that some people at thi| end have prayed too successfully, "Lord gie us a gudo conceit o' oorsels." Thera is such a thing as being too good for thi» world, and if prohibitionist dreaming comes true we shall have approached that condition. No outsider will come near us that can help it; no young New Zealander will go abroad except at peril of his soul. Assailed by the drink evil he will go down before it as the non-immune South Sea Islander goes down before the measles, t believe I said this last week. Take care J

how you vote next Thursday, or there will be occasion for saying ft again and again.

"Here we suffer grief and pain," mourn* a victim of rising prices' and fixed income. He is incoherent, but intelligible:

To "Civis."

Is not thi3 tho labour circle, as novr going on? Workmen: As things are dearer, we must ask for higher wages. - Employers: These extra wages mean an additional Is to each articlo; so we will ohargo 2s, and' have a little to ourselves. Middlemen: Two shillings extras-well, our price is 2s 9d.. Shopkeepers: Oh, 2s 9d each risen! Let us > charge 4s, so at sale time we can advertise great reduction to 3s 3d or 3s 6d. , Workmen again: We must have another rise, etc. • Note.—ln view of a child's boots cost-

ing manufacturers the sailing orice of 7s 9d, and tho retail price being 18s, the above is very moderate. For thii last see recent court case.

Of course we are not at the end. Wages will rise because prices have risen; prices will rise because wages have risen, tha "rise!' In both cases being taken out of the unfortunates who do not form unions and whose income does not come within the purview of Mr Justice Stringer. . In due time we shall reach the state of things reported from Paris; —correspondent of the Westminster Gazette, January 13:

Ae for domestic lifo, the hardest war-time conditions were never so severs as are our present ones. Butter, when it can bo obtained, is 6s 8d a lb; nameless wine, the cheapest that can be had, is half a crown a bottle; half a crown a day must be paid to tho man or boy who brings up the day's supply of fuel from the collar. Cheese varies from 5s to 7s 6d a lb. Rabbit is 5a a lb. . . .

"Thanks to the influx of visitors" —all this. A trouble *ttiat will never come to us should prohibition carry the day. Not "influx," but " efflux " will be the word. None the less, however, will tho cost of living rise. Add together the four and a-half million gratuity to the liquor people, the £225,000 a year consequent interest, the annual £BOO,OOO surrendered beer and spirit duties—all this to be clapped on to the Customs and other taxes, direct or indirect. Oh yes, prices will rise all right! And wages, though with halting foot, will t*y to keep pace.

This week as last I admit one correspondent on the drink question, just one. I select (naturally) one who signs himself " Ardent Admirer." He tells of a woman at Hastings who -applied for a separation! order on the grounds of her husband's habitual cruelty. " Does he drink?" queried tho magistrate. " No, your Worship," replied the woman, "ho /neither drinks nor smokes ; I wish he did, for then perhaps he would not be so cruel." Also he cites the example of Sir James Paget mentioned in a note above. Sir James 'Paget, often > quoted in food reform controversies, said, "Longevity is not the only or the best test of the value of the things on which we live." This great physician believed in alcohol. "That which is most to be desired is a national power and will for good working and good thinking, and a long duration of the period of life fittest for these; and facts show that these are more nearly obtained by tho people that drink alcohol than by those who . do not." All good this, and*all thrown away. Prcn hibition devotees are like the deaf adder that stoppeth her ear and will not listen to the voice of charmers, charming never so wisely. The sum of the matter from our side is this: —Like aE good citizens we hate drunkenness and would reform the drunkard, but are persuaded that prohibition is not the way. It is not the Bible way, nor the science way, nor the common sense way. But if on Thursday next every one who has a vote goes to the poll all will be well.- New Zealand, escaping betrayal, will be saved fronj wasting time, eneygy, _ money in tha idiotic exploring of a blind alley. Cms.