PASSING NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 3400, 14 May 1919, Page 3

PASSING NOTES.

(&xom S?atarday's Daily Tin&M.) No mouse is it that is the product of the labour of Peace Mountain. Germany's whining has left the Allies cold. Her bluff has met with contempt. She may rend her garments and hide her face. Her aim it was to become the hammer of the world. She has become the anvil. The terms of the Peace Treaty justify the description " stem and stringent." There were some in Britain who loved the text " Don't humiliate Germany." Possibly these good sentimentalists are now, like the Germans, a little upset. A reckoning that requires the return of the Koran of Caliph Osman to the King of the Hedjaz, and the skull of the Sultan Mkwawa to his Britannic Majesty's Government, is certainly searching. It may be -the "brutal fact" that Germany is incapable of making complete reparation. That will reveal itself. Now is the time for her, at all events, to /begin in earnest the fulfilment of von Bethmann Hollweg's undertaking when her legions burst through Belgium. " The wrong that we are committing we will endeavour to make good " quoth he, with a proviso not worth mentioning. A correspondent describes the pale and pinched appearance of the German envoys. Not all their tears will wash out a word from the Treaty. For they have sown the wind and they shall reap the whirlwind, sang the prophet of old. The blind wild beast- of lorce has met its master. And the sequel is not exactly a sight to shake the midriff of despair with laughter. But a study in contrasts for all time is afforded. The supermen of yesterday, the invincible heroes of the mailed fist and shining armour, who were to hack their way to world domination —where be they ? Where is the vast fabric of German arms and theatricals? Conquered and brought low by Powers, that set store by a "scrap of paper," and a word, "neutrality." Perhaps Germany, Bernbardi notwithstanding, is les3 sure, now, that w r ar is a biological necessity. The knell of her great Empire is sounding With a voice that lfke a bell Tolled by an earthquake in a trembling tower, Rang ruin. So the whirligig of Time brings in his revenges. A Church of England bishop writes to The Times complaining that in British politics the seats of the mighty are not

at present occupied by Englishmen. He might have added that in the English Church these desirable seats are at present occupied by Scotchmen. If Nationality counts, the Archbishops of Canterbury and York ought to be Presbyterians. _ Passing that, he points to the very obvious fact that the Prime Minister is a Welshman and that his principal colleagues are Scots; further that "England is almost unrepresented in the greatest political Conference in all history." Whereupon a London editor chimes in :

English people cannot reflect without a certain chagrin that of the few men who together with Marshal Foch dictated the terms of the armistice only one was an' Englishman. Admiral Wemyes, Sir Douglas Haig, Sir Eric Geddes, Mr Balfour, and Mr Bonar Law are Scots, Mr Lloyd George is a Welshman, and Lord Reading is an English Jew.

The one intrusive Englishman I take to be Lord Robert Cecil, Had he been awanting, the true position would more clearly appear, namely, that the sovereign English rule and the others merely serve. In the matter of the Premiership, for example, the English have a certain piece of work to be done j they are too big or too busy to do it themselves, and they pay a Welshman to do it for them.

In this context the Spectator, conspicuous amongst London newspapers for moderation and fairness, has some gracious remarks to the address of the Irish Celt. By a happy coincidence the Dunedin Tablet has just been summing up the Spectator as "that dustbin," and affirming it to be "incapable of a sane judgment on any Catholic or Irish question." With this in mind read the following sentences :- The problem of Ireland, which fills the ordinary Englishman with alternate rage, remorse, righteous indignation, and bitter laughter, has not ruined us, whether by "us" we mean both islands or either one of them, and it will not ruin us because of a strange factor in the problem for which there is no precedent. As individuals we love the Irish. We real liking always does exaggerate—the wit of the men, the beauty of the women, the charm of the peasantry, the valour of the upper class, the quickness of Irishmen's sympathies, the poetry of their beliefs. Is this hate? Do wo not make more excuses for any Irish scoundrel whom we know in private life than for s any English scoundrel? Can all thi8 Sbe denied?

A scrap picked out of the anti-Irish "dustbin." It is true that we do not hate the Irish. It i 3 also true . that a "certain kind of Irishism obtrudes which we do not love —a compound of religion and politics. Like salt and sugar it may, be, —each good in itself, but in union in- ' supportable. Let as distinguish between the Irish and the Tablet's Irishism. The Irish that we really love are, I fancy, the Irish of Lever's novels.

Erom a correspondent who occasionally sends me literary stories, i.e., genis of humour that he'has picked out of books. "Mr Romany Rye " of whom we are going to hear is George Borrow ; and if the nature of the story throws doubt on the anoral respectability of George Borrow, let it be mentioned that he was the author of " The BiWo in Spain,"—other books as well but that in particular.

A famoii3 Yorkshire horse-dealer onco asked him: —"Now, how would you, Mr Romany Rye, pass off tho veriest screw in tho world for a flying dromedary?" "By putting a live eel down his throat; as long aa the eel remained in his stomach the horse would bo brisk and lively in a surprising degree." " And how," contnued the knowing Tyke. " would you niako a regular kicker and biter appear as tame and gentle that any fat old gentleman of sixty who wanted an easy goer would be glad to give fifty pounds for him?" "By pouring down his throat four pints of generous old ale, which would mako him so happy, and comfortablo that he would not have tho heart to kick or bite anybody for a season at least,"

Mr Romany Rye is romancing, no doubt. But to the second of these two horsecoping prescriptions his own personal habits corresponded:

Borrow loved old Burton alo and '37 port; but nevertheless he would drink whatever ho camo aoross on the road as if, out of perversity, to insist on his iron constitution bearing whatever he chose to impose on it. And oh I how he hated the'teetotallers! "Some cants are not dangerous," he once said, "but a.more dangerous cant than the temperance cant, or, as it is generally called, teetotalism, is not to be found."

Rather late, this, for the prohibition wrangle, but not too late. Wo shall have it all over again.

The New. Puritanism, held up for the moment, will forge ahead again presently. The snake is scotched, not killed. There is nothing new to hear about liquor, for or against (thanks be!). Next comes the turn of tobacco. I have already quoted the sentiments of a Dunedin prohibitionist who would put the smoker's pipe out and is ravening to get at it for that purpose. In America, as a Daily Times paragraph instructs us, there exists a No-Tobacco League,—its object "to prohibit the use of tobacco." Why not? The same aggregate vote —mainly a» woman's vote—that suffices against drinking would suffice against smoking. In this country there are more women than men, be it remembered, —a few thousands more at least; and women do not smoke, —not as a rule. The American anti-tobacconists warn all and sundry that they mean business:—

Our opponents at first took the tobacco restriction campaign as a dream, but now they aro awaking to tho fact that we are in earnest. Iho anti-nico-tine crusade will bo prosecuted vigorously, for tobacco evils are greater than those of liquor.

A sentence to ponder—" tobacco evils are greater than those of liquor"! Then think of the money to be saved. Our " efficiency " cranks cannot too soon get going.

The desire to restrict the liberty of your neighbour is an appetite -which grows by that it feeds' on. : Stop his glass of beer, stop his pipe of tobacco; then, nest, stop his cup of tea. Whatever arguments for prohibition axe good against beer, or against tobacco, are good against tea. Expert opinion, do you ask for?—there are tons of it. Dr James Wood, of America (it is usually to America that we must resort for light and guidance on subjects of this kind) asserts the prevalence of " tea-drunkenness." He says: "Some, people are profoundly intoxicated by indulging in two cups of strong tea per day ;—an ounce of tea leaves used daily will soon produce poisonous symptoms. ' Here is a specific case (from America, of course) y. — Several years ago two Boston girls were arrested for drunkenness and dis-

orderly conduct. No one could prove that they had drunk any liquor, and they daolared they had not taken a drop. On investigation it was found that they had become drunk on tea. They had a formed the habit of chewing tea leaves. On this day they absorbed so much of this toxic stimulant that it made them

drunk. The intemperance of liquor-prohibitionists may, not improbably, be explained as due to thi3 cause. Notoriously they are tea drinkers. Mr Weller, senior, when present at a meeting of the Brick Lane Band of Hope (was it?) observed one young woman.who drank sixteen cups of tea on end and was " swellin' wisibly." If women abolish the pipe and glass, it will remain for men to turn upon them and abolish the pot and cup. The other week to oblige a correspondent I hunted up a specimen of that rare form of Law Court rhyming,—" A Woman Having Settlement" it began. From a competent legal authority I now learn that the law as laid down by Pratt, C.J., was found to be bad and his ruling was reversed. The story is immortalised (for the profession) in lines known as " The Lawyers' Glee," of which I gave only a part, and I am asked to give the whole: A woman having a Settlement, Married a man with none. The question was, he being dead, Was the Settlement gone? Quoth Pratt, 0.J.: " The. Settlement Suspended did remain. Living the husband, but, him dead), It doth return again." Chorus of : Puisne Judges: Living the husband, but, him dead. It doth return again. Tho subsequent case is: A woman having a Settlement Married a man with none: Ho flies and leaves her destitute, "What now is to bo done? Quoth Ryder, the Chief Justice, In spite of Sir John Pratt: " You may send, her to the Parish Wherein she was a brat. _ Suspension of a Settlement Is not to be maintained; That whioh she had by birth subsists Until another's gained." Chorus of Puisne Judges: That which she had by birth subsists Until another's gained.

Hard law, surely. The " settlement " sh* had by birth was merely a right to coma on the parish. However, it is not the law, good or bad, that interests me, but tb» blooming of this small poetic flower in eo arid a soii;—that, and the humour of Sir John Pratt's judicial English: Living the husband, but, him dead, It dbth return again. This is real literature. Civis.