PASSING NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 3556, 9 May 1922, Page 3

PASSING NOTES.

(From Saturday’s Daily Times.) The Lord High Chancellor, Keeper of the Great Seal, —does he carry that secret implement about with him? When yachting in the Mediterranean and delivering an undress speech to hungry journalists at Genoa—soo of them, all famishing for news, for hints, opinions, tips or winks from anybody who knew anything or seemed to know, had the Lord Chancellor the Great Seal concealed in his yachting “whites”? Anyhow he spoke with authority, even when uttering the platitude that the Russian Bolsheviks are ‘‘no fools.” The successful knave is usually no fool. He ceases to be no fool when he comes to be hanged. The Bolshevik knaves, having annexed other people’s goods and whatever they could lay their hands on, allege in explanation that they have abolished private property. Payment of debts, restitution of valuables confiscated from foreigners and neutrals, —can’t be done, says M. Tchitcherin: The obstacle was Russia’s fundamental principle of the non-existence of private property. Excellent! Not only for themselves have they abolished private ownership but for everybody else whose property they had grabbed. Reminds me somewhat of the man who started a new life after a revival. All his sins had been forgiven him. “Then perhaps you’ll pay that £5 vou owe me,” said a neighbour. “Oh no,” said the penitent; “the Lord forgave me that too.” Bosche and Bolshevik between them may wreck the Genoa Conference, the French President assisting as amicus curiae. And with the Conference may wreck Europe. Also, as a minor consequence, the immediate political future of Mr Lloyd George. If the Conference goes bung (I borrow the word from a free-spoken newspaper critic) Mr Lloyd George must face in defeat a disappointed public and a general election. But if in British politics there is any one man who better than another can ride the whirlwind and direct the storm, this is he. You never know when you have done with Lloyd George ; there is no getting to the end of him. On this point listen for a moment to Earl Balfour: Through those eventful years of war, through all the difficulties of the Peace Conference at Paris, and through the difficulties which have subsequently emerged, no man has had a greater burden to bear than Mr Lloyd George. (Cheers.) No man has more gallantly borne it. (Cheers.) No mar. has shown more courage, no man has shown more

resource. No man has been so little bound by any irrelevant past in dealing with a new and unforeseen necessity. (Cheers.) He has shown not merely courage, he has shown originality. He has impressed not merely his own personality, but the authority of his country, on all the nations of the world. He may be liked or disliked by r this or that foreign statesman, or, for the matter of that, by this or that domestic critic; but that his name will stand out as one of the greatest figures of one of the greatest periods of the world’s history I have not the slightest doubt. (Loud cheers.) What is the use of abusing him? (Laughter.) You will certainly not pull him down from the proper niche he is destined to occupy in the historic gallery. This is from a speech at the Carlton Club, resort of Die-hard Conservatives. It was prefaced by the remark: “I have led a long and combative life, and a good many years of that combative life were spent in combating the present Prime Minister.” At Genoa, —accused of guilty fore-know-ledge in the matter of the Russo-German surprise bomb, —Mr Lloyd George: “It’s a. damned lie” Emphasis, energy, indignation, temper perhaps, but not profanity. We may be pretty sure that Mr Lloyd George, who occasionallv preaches in Baptist Tabernacles, doesn't soil his lips with unnecessary curse words. In this case the word he used was precisely the word wanted. An archbishop might have said the same thing. Talking of archbishops, there is a clergyman in one of Mr A. S. M. Hutchinson’s novels who deals out the big big D right and left. And Mr A. S. M. Hutchinson, be it noted, writes for the socially elect. Besides the swearing parson, he has a young military officer whose talk is so richly interlarded with swear-words that neither in the home circle nor on the stage, nor on any public platform, could it be read aloud. Which is to say that Mr A. S. M. Hutchinson’s novel, though written for the socially elect, is written with abominable bad taste. There is a just and righteous use of the verb “to damn,” of its inflexions and derivations. Writing or printing it, don’t exhibit a shamefaced d and dash and n: —“d n.” Eviscerated thus, a profanity it is; —you have made it profane. There is an established literary use. A play may be damned; and the playwright may prefer that fate to silence : Better be damr.ed than mentioned not at all. You may “damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer.” When reading Macbeth, you needn’t in the least jib at Come on Macduff ; And ..damned be he that first cries Hold, enough ! But beware the mere expletive. It is bad form. It is a calamity if the Irish “Peace Conference” has finally failed. It started as a courtship between Mr Griffith, the Irish Welshman, and Mr de Valera, the Irish half-breed ; a courtship promoted by the Lord Mayor of Dublin and facilitated by a meeting of the Dail Eireann or Irish Parliament; a courtship started in the Irish way and according to rule, —the rule “Begin with a little aversion.” The president, Mr A. Griffith, cried: “I am not going to sit silent longer. Deputy de Valera came back from, America when I was in prison, and advised members of the Dail to ease off the war. When the delegates were going to London, de Valera said to me, ‘Neither you nor any man can bring back a republic,’ and added, ‘Get me out of this strait-jacket of a republic.” Mr de Valera, white with rage, rose amid tumult, shouting: “It is an absolute falsehood.” Mr Griffith replied: “It is true. De Valera cart go on denying it as long as he likes.” Strictly in order all this. Begin with a little aversion. Subsidiary to the main interest, there followed a flirtation with Mr Erskine Childers, the renegade Englishman. Note that the parties to this Irish love affair were not Irish really, not Irish through and through ; and that cue

of them is not Irish at -all. Which piakes the whole business more Irish than ever. Mr Griffith then accused Erskine Childers of having been in the secret service of England. When Childers indignantly denied this he said he would give Mr Childers’s whole history. If Mr de Valera drew off in jealousy, he had his reasons. My friend the spelling reformer whose letter (from Daylesford, Victoria) was noticed in this column last week, had in view the convenience of children in schools, particularly of children at the “a-b ab” stage. Why should the next stage plunge them into a Serbonian bog of contradictions and absurdities? There is no hope of reducing tile labour of learning the language as long as one sound (the long “i”) is represented by six different characters — thus, by ie in “tie,” by uy in “buy,” by y as in “my,” by igh as in “sigh,” by ye as in “lye,” and by i as in the prefix “bi.” Yes, it is a sad story. All English spelling ought to be reduced to the lucid simplicity of “a-b ab.” But things are as they are, and it is useless to kick against the pricks. A good many people do actually learn to read and write the English language, spite of the affront its spelling puts upon reason ; and, as written by Shakespeare and Milton, a noble language it is. But, besides the children in schools, there is the hapless foreigner ; how is. he to keep track of our spelling vagaries.' I care nothing for the hapless foreigner. Spell as we might, and however madly, the hapless foreigner would go his own way, regardless. As in this example from a Brazilian newspaper: Furnitured roms. —At bight and respectuc by family house two let two appartaments, beeing lach one of them possesses a magnify plain. Pension of first ordem. Tel. Ipanema 1977. * Here is the translation: “Furnished rooms. —A high and respectable family house has to let two largo apartments; one of them possesses a magnificent view. Meals of the first order.” No English spelling reform would help this Brazilian Portugee. In any case, the way we choose to spell is a domestic matter. and the foreigner has no rights. We shall have a good deal to do with Pussyfoot in the coming months. Here are two or three Pussyfoot stories—pro or anti, as you choose to take them. I hope they may be to Pussyfoot’s taste. Ought to be, for they are all American. The first, a stock joke with President Lincoln : Out in Sangamon county there was an old temperance lecturer who was very strict in the doctrine and practice of total abstinence. One day, after a long ride in the hot sun, he stopped at the house of a friend, who proposed making him a lemonade. As the mild beverage was being mixed the friend insinuatingly asked if he wouldn’t like a drop of something stronger to brace up his nerves after the exhausting heat and exercise. “No,” replied the lecturer, “I couldn’t think of it; I’m opposed to it on principle; but,” he added, with a longing glance at the black bottle that stood conveniently at hand, “if you could manage to put in a drop unbeknownst to me, I guess it wouldn’t hurt me much.” Mr W. M. Evarts, one time Secretary of State, was a good diner-out. A lady asked him if drinking so many different wines did not make him feel seedy next day. “No, madam,” said Evarts; “it’s the indifferent wines that produce that result.” At a dinner to Bishop Potter, several other distinguished men answering to the name of Potter were present. This fact prompted Mr Evarts to tell the company of a dazed clergyman who put up the petition : “Oh, Lord, let us never forget that Thou art the clay and we are the Potters.” The clergyman may have been drinking from the bottom of the bottle, — a perilous thing, as the next story explains : Among the guests at a Washington dinner was an eminent scientist. Late in the evening Mr Evarts attracted general attention by saying to the scientist: “Professor, I should like to ask you a question. Why is it that the liquid at the bottom of a bottle is more intoxicating than the liquor at the top?” The all unconscious of the fun lurking in the question, replied: “Why, I have never had my attention called to the fact.” “Yes,” rejoined Evarts, with a perfectly grave face, while the rest of the company broke into a buret of laughter, “I know men who have frequently found by actual experience that it is so.” Pussyfoot won’t see the joke. Top or bottom of the bottle, it is all one to Pussyfoot; the first glass of wine or the twentieth, he has only one word—“lntoxicating liquor!”—and throws up his hands. But the next story might be Pussyfoot’s own : President Hayes was of strict temperance principles. “While Hayes occupied the White House,” said Evarts, “the water at his dinners flowed like champagne.”

lo this complexion must we all come when Pussyfoot is set to rule over us. Civis.