PASSING NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 3397, 23 April 1919, Page 3

PASSING NOTES.

(From Saturday'* Daily Tuaec)

It is an easy reflection to-day that if the great soldier who ended the war and made the armistice had been permitted to make the peace, we should have had peace by Christmas, —a real peace with solid guarantees and all things conformable. Entrusted with the powers of a Napoleon, * Marshal Foch would have moved with Napoleon's celerity." Leaving to Germany, stunned and helpless, no breathing space wherein to recover, Foch would have gathered up the fruits of victory and closed the chapter. But between the armistice and Christmas there arrived the Wise Man from the West, President Wilson, with his Fourteen Commandments and his purpose to make the world safe for democracy. The advent of President Wilson meant not peace merely, but= the Millennium While You Wait, and on that lure we were content to wait. * Easter has followed 'Christmas, a late Easter moreover, and we are still waiting. The drift of the cables- is that the millennium may be announced next week, but with poor prospects. In France there is a sceptical sniffing and a shrugging of the shoulders; only at the point of the bayonet will Germany accept it; the Americans are resolved that it shall not apply to America; and Japan, refused permission to go up higher, may go off in a huff. It is a commentary on these aspects that more than once during sessions of the Peace Congress President Wilson retired with a chill, or, it may be, with a diplomatic head ache, and is now about to wash his hands finally of a world not too willing to be saved. His Presidential yacht, the George Washington,, has been summoned for the 27th. • A correspondent sends us a characteristic mot by a French wit, which better than any phrase we have seen sums up, French feeling about the League of Nations. "Tha League," he said, "is impossible and indispensable." (Spectator, March 1). To this column a "mot" not altogether bad on this subject was sent in by a correspondent some weeks ago: —" League of Nations—League of Notions —Yankee notions." There will be "mots" enough, good and bad, before the League is done

with. Already in existence and with armies on foot, it is unable to keep the world in order. Half Europe is in revolt against it. The things it proposes to do are things heroic. Regions west of the Rhine are to be " internationalised," —government everybody's business, proprietorship nobody's. Cologne, Bonn, Coblentz, Mainz, with a hundred other places big enough to make trouble, are in this area. Is it credible that they -will contentedly cease to be • German ? In another limbo of the vague is placed the Saar Valley containing the richest coalfield, in Europe, once French but Prussian since Waterloo. No one of Germany's lost colonies is so well worth fighting for as the Saar coalfield. And the germs of a fight are there, as well as coal. In the far East, Japan, snubbed at the Peace Congress, says nothing but thinks more. The Japanese are a busy 60 millions of civilised people in an area no bigger than New Zealand. They have armies, and ships of war, and the colonising instinct. Conveniently opposite is North Australia, equal to half-a-dozen New Zealands, empty, and of no use to the white man. When you bring Japan and North Australia into the same field of vision you at once -put two and two together and opine that the last word on that subject has not been spoken. For many a year to come the League of Nations, if destined J,o police this planet, will be a League not of Peace but of War.

O, "Civis," guide and helper true, What make you of our change of view? Once, Heaven our witness, we were willing . To spend our last man, our last shilling. Truth, Honour, Right we offered all for, Yet now indemnities we call for.

Throw light, I pray, on my confusion — Which is the truth and which illusion? (Personally, I think the last, the silly cry for .indemnities, i 3 the illusion. I never expected to see England make absurd demands of that kind, and, so far as indications go, she is not about to make them. Ido not think we overseas English are any more mercenary than our co-nationals in. the Motherland ; it seems to me to be but a sudden thoughtless catching up of a phrase. "Sovereigns for sixpences" is a cry that has a momentary glamour, and may sweep the sensiblest off his feet for a few moments, make him ask: "Why. shouldn't I get some as well as others 1")

This is from an esteemed correspondent, with whom not to agree is pain and grief. I am of the opinion of the Spectator that "a penal indemnity has not of necessity any immoral aspects whatever, as it may be as wholesome for a criminal nation to be fined as it is for an*individual offender to be fined in the courts." But a penal indemnity—such as Germany the invader exacted from France the invaded in 1870 — is not in question. Reparation is a better word than indemnity. If Germany is guilty of the war, Germany must repair the damage done.

The principle which would exempt a nation from • the consequences of its felonious cast would exempt the individual felon. By what rule of right could we hang a murderer if the writer of the letter here following is to escape?— My soul is torn, but everything must be put to fire and sword; men, women, children, and old men must be slaughtered, and not a tree or house be left standing. With these methods of terrorism, which are alone capable of affecting a people as degenerate as the French, the war will be over in two months, whereas if. I admit humanitarian considerju-tiona it will last years. In spite of my repugnanco I have, therefore, been obliged to choose the former system.

This is the Kaiser of Berlin to his accomplice the Kaiser' of Vienna. His soul was torn; —it would be no worse for him if his neck were twisted, and it would be better for the rest of mankind to the end of time.

" Tho Allies stirred up the Russian

Revolution, and now they cannot calumniate the rebels sufficiently. Some of the Allies compare very badly with the worst of the Bolshsviki."—(N.Z. Tablet, April 10, 1919.) Dear " Civis," —Could you oblige an earnest inquirer with your candid opinion concerning the above. Is it a specimen of " that figure of speech called tho bletherumskite f or could it be more correctly described by a word of three letters, with an expletive as a prefix? It is preceded by nearly two columns on the subject of religious education; but what are we to infer concerning the religious education of the editor of the Tablet when this is

the result.—l am, etc., Backblocks,

My candid opinion? My opinion is that of every honest man/ whatever his nationality. But it is useless gibbetting the Tablet. On this point let me quote from a classic—to wit, Passing Notes of date some-months back:' —"The Dunedin Tablet, secure of impunity within its own special constituency, > and almost unread beyond it, permits itself on certain subjects a license of tongue which, if exhibited in anv public place in this city, would inevitably provoke a breach of the peace." That is to say, the Tablet presumes on its sectarian obscurity. Once in' a while, perhaps, it is well to let in a little light. Thanks, therefore, to my Backblocks correspondent. On such malignant absurdities as the Tablet purveys here is Sinn Fein fed in Ireland.

After losing heavily on his prohibition gamble, Mr A. S.* Adams is in the mood to find " Civis " guilty of every known wickedness, from pitch-and-toss to manslaughter. See Daily Times of Tuesday. It is a bathos when the counts in his indictment come down to two, and they vague—" an unpardonable literary crime," and " a grave offence against morality." Why stop' at that? . Wasn't the whole Newgate Calendar open to him ?—and doesn't he borrow approvingly from Serjeant Buzfuz—or Mr Skimpin, his junior, it may have s been, anyhow a brother chip—when trying to palm off a lie upon the jury? There was no reason why Mr Adams should hold himself in, except the certainty that the last word would be with me—if I chose to take it, and the possibility that to-day I might exhibit him twirling like a cockchafer on a pin. In reality, however, there was no ground for alarm. Hanker after the last word?—not a bit! As soon as the'crank; the faddist, the misdemeanant of any type or hue becomes a bore, I drop him. "Ne quid nimis '' —not too much of anything—is a sound rule; upon no other terms could the public and I get on. The prohibitionists would have scored better in Dunedin had they known how to stop short of irritating and nauseating by a tooinsistent propaganda. Onlv when amusing is -Mr Adams of use to this column. _As Serjeant Buzfuz, or a clumsy imitation, he must betake himself to, another part of the paper.

Though the last figures are not in, it seems pretty clear that prohibition is disposed of for the time being,—that is, prohibition of liquor and the liquor trade. There remains tobacco and the tobacco trade. Nicotine and alcohol are twin enemies of the human race; as damaging a case could be made out against the one as against the other, as hot a frenzy could be worked up. And only the other day a Dunedin prohibitionist was showing how to go about it. With an eye to the effi-ciency-mongers he begins with statistics, and like others of his kidney he quotes America:

Take the cigarette, which is tobacco at its worst. In 1916 duty was paid on 25,000,000,000 cigarettes, which gives 250 cigarettes for every man, woman, and child in the United , States, an increase of 40 per cent, over 1915. Professor Farenck, of Yale, estimates the cost to the consumer of " not less Jjhan twelve hundred million dollars! which is* three times the amount paid for education in the country." If this amount of property were being burnt up in one year we should regard it as one of the greatest catastrophes the world had ever seen. Yet we talk of hard times and the increased Cost of Living!

This is the cigarette alone; add cigars and the pipe, and "we are face to face with an almost incalculable economic waste." Then " nicotine is one of the most deadly of poisons; two drops will kill a dog, eight will kill a hese;" thß smoke «from half a ounce of tobacco contains a fatal dose for a man. The Journal of the American Medical Association declares "that the cigarette contains a poison fifty times as deadly as alcohol. One cigaretto contains as much of it as two ounces of whisky." Let these facts be grasped, and there is still some fun ahead. Our liquor prohibitionists have been barking up the wrong tree.

Dear "Civis," —As (according, to you) there are so many ways of sooiling a potato, all easy; and as (on Ihe same authority) the girl who marriss from the factory ,*, or the tea room, or the office desk, or tho typewriter, is bound to hit on them every one, perhaps in the

publio interest you might condescend to give a few lessons in plain cooking. An Admirable Crichton, you could do il with the best, and our Home Science School would take second place. la Canada, where the social conditions are much the same as ours, & cookery manual, versified to aid the memory, has been going the rounds of the press. It might serve you as a text-book, or, at least, as a starting-point:— Always have lobster sauce with salmon. And put mint sauce your roasted lamb on.

Veal cutlets dip in egg and bread crumb; Fry till you see a brownish red com*. Grate Gruysre cheese on macaroni, Make the top crisp, but not too bony. In dressing salad mind this law! With Wo hard yolks use one that's raw. Roast yeal with rich stock sfravy serve. And pickled mushrooms, too, observe!. Roast pork, sans apple sauce, pas* doubt, Is " Hamlet" with, the Prince left out. Your mutton chops with paper cover, And make them amber brown all over. Broil lightly your beefsteak—to fry It. Argues contempt of Christian diet. To roast spring chickens is to spoil them j i Just split them down the back and broil them. It gives true epicures the vapours To see boiled mutton without capers. Boiled turkey, gourmands know, of course, Is exquisito with celery sauce. The cook deserves a hearty cuffing Who serves roast fowls with tasteless stuffing. Appetising this,—l feel it so, distinctly,— but beyond the range of the Dunedin • housewife, new style. It would be easier to give her leesons in Sanscrit. My own vocation to the culinary art is not clear] nevertheless, if put to the pinch, I should not despair. Plain roast and boiled meant plain roasting and Boiling. , Nothing simpler, and enough said. In the composition of puddings and pies, of hashes, stews, fricassees, and made dishes generally, I should mix as Opie, the noted E abater, mixed his .colours. • When asked ow he mixed them hi 3 answer was—- " With brains." Crvrs.