PASSING NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 3566, 18 July 1922, Page 3

PASSING NOTES.

, (From Saturday’s Daily Times.) Gone to earth : De Valera's -whereabouts remains a mystery. The general impression is that the Government is hunting for him; but this is not so. There is no motive to dig him out. The longer De Valera lies Tow, hiding his diminished head, the less the mischief when he finds courage to crawl out again, the less weight will his name carry with the larrikin rabble calling itself the Republican Army. Larrikin is the word. A few middle-aged fanatics are at the top ; the rest are irresponsible young fellows who have learned that killing is not murder, that suicide does not forfeit the last offices of the Church, that banks may be righteously robbed, that pillage and sniping are patriotic amusements. Ousted from Dublin, these bandits have now set up a Republic in Cork. Fancy that ! On the other hand, at the opposite end of the country, in Belfast on the historic Twelfth of July, Battle of the Boyne, 50,000 Orangeiten marched in procession. and later at BHllylesson 100,000. If the Free Staters are not able to manage affairs, Belfast may yet have a word with Cork. The Russian Bolshevists at Genoa, Messrs Tchitcherin and Co., while asking from the Western Powers trade facilities, Government credits, and even cash advances, coolly announced their repudiation of old debts, and their purpose of sticking to the confiscated property of foreigners and neutrals. Restitution?— the answer is in the negative; on principle, can’t be done! The obstacle was Russia’s fundamental principle of the non-existence of private property. Thus the unspeakable Tchitcherin. To him Mr Llova George: “Principle!—we, too, have our principles in the West, or, prejudices, say, if you prefer it.’’ “The first prejudice we have in Western Europe is that if you sell goods to a man you expect to be paid for them. The second is that if you lend money to a man and he promises to repay you, you expect that he will repay you. The third is if you go to a man who has already lent you money and say, ‘Will you lend me more?’ he will say to you, ‘Do you propose to repay mo what I gavo you?’ and you say ‘No, it is a matter of pririoiplo with me not to repay’—there is a most extraordinary prejudice in the Western mind against lending any more money to that person !’’ An example in the art of putting things. Mr J. M. Keynes, an author of repute on

subjects international, reporting from Genoa for the Manchester Guardian and the London Daily Express, writes: Diplomatically speaking, it must be agreed that Mr Lloyd George has performed great‘prodigies. His own personal prestige here has been enormous. No statesman in Europe speaks to him on an equality, or even pretends to do so. ’ Politically there are people in his own country who hate Mr L,loyd George. But they are proud of him all the same.

Serving their country at the flat rate of five-and-forty pounds an hour or thereabouts, parties in the House are held up by a tangle about names. Neither side shows precisely bv what name it prefers to be invoked, nor by what name it may most effectively slang-whang the other. The Reformers are not less Liberal than the Liberals: the Liberals care as much or as little for Reform as the Reformers. Labour, with a blind instinct for the “‘lucus a non lucendo” precedent, is Labour on the principle that there should be as little labour as may be, —“go slow” the rule: the end, maximum pay and minimum product. Politically. Labour is not a party; with its Bolshevist ideals and instinct for disloyalty, Labour bears the brand that Gambetta used to fix on le clericalisme—“the enemy.” To our political system two parties are essential; there must be His Majesty’s Government and His Majesty’s Opposition, the Ins and the Outs, the Big Enders and the Little Enders, the Whigs and the Tories. Whig and Tory were excellent names. Nobody knew what they' meant: they had no meaning: nobody knew where they came from. “Whig, perhaps from Scottish ‘whig,’ to jog, urge on, of western Scots who came to Leith for corn,” say the books, —a lame account. And Tory no better: “Tory r , originally an Irish robber!” No matter; —a Whig was a Whig, a Tory r was a Tory; everybody' knew what that meant; the name a label, an indication, not a description. Liberal and Reformer are descriptive names, and the trouble with us is that they misdescribe. Distinctions factitious and fictitious—away with them ! It is time to concentrate in one Great National Party against “the enemy'.”

| While Smith-Wigglesworfch is still a I fond memory, and before we fall back re- | signedly upon our customary quacks and j quackeries, we are promised a new j healer, Church of England this time, at | present in Italy, but due in New Zea- | land next year. See Tuesday’s Daily' j Times. “I have no fixed plans at present for New Zealand,” he writes, “beyond : an invitation from bishops and clergy to ! come and hold healing missions in various centres.” In Dunedin a few lectures at the School of Medicine would be acceptable ; also a general clearance of the hospital, which boon, somehow, we neglected to suggest to Smith-Wigglesworth, and which, strange to say, he himself seems never to have thought of. Nor has the Maori Healer—just now in mysterious quiescence - signalised his powers by hospital work. But an outbreak of healing in the Auckland region is reported by a Baptist minister, and miracles are attributed to a Canon Williams. There seems reason to expect an extension of these phenomena;—any one of our ministers might begin to take the bread out of the mouth of the doctors. ! The thing is not new, —as I have said all ! along. At Lourdes, in the South of ! France, there is or used to be an annual ; influx of pilgrims by the hundred j thousand, all in search of miraculous heal- | ing. In Continental churches ex veto I offerings are common—the model of an | arm, of a leg, of an eye, of an ear, a ) discarded crutch, a walking stick—hung ( up on the wall in testimony of a miraculous healing wrought at that shrine. In a church south of Naples the ministry of healing goes on as a regular thing; I have seen it in process—moi qui vous parle. The wonder is that we have not a Smith-Wigglesworth in settled practice in every town.

Prohibtion meetings do not thrive in winter time. Wet nights, muddy roads, cold schoolrooms, and a cheerless theme—

O so cheerless! —nothing doing, says Pussyfoot, and shams dead. Unless, as in Dunedin this winter week, a Prohibition lecturer from overseas happens along; —at once the Burns Hall, which the other week was Smith-Wigglesworth, becomes Pussyfoot; a sympathetic crowd is not wanting, and the newcomer has a good time, preaching to the converted. In the Pussyfoot interest he had explored Prohibitionist America. Sending Pussyfoot to investigate Prohibitionist America is like sending a Socialist to investigate Bolshevist Russia. Each finds what lie set out to find. Lord Northcliffe when banqueted at New York or Boston fonnu the champagne flowing as freely as in London. Not the less real is the closing of street saloons, and the fact that there are fewer visible drunkards to the square mile than theTe used to be. On the other hand read this American item by the mail: NEW YORK. The fulfilment of a novel sentence has just been legally witnessed at Omaha, Nebraska, by a man named Roy Mahoney, who was unable to pay a fine of £2 for being drunk. Judge Wappiek, in deciding the alternative punishment for Mahoney’s offence, said: “Three thousand two hundred bottles of beer have just been seized in another man’s house. It shall be your punishment to empty each and every bottle separately into your bath. The plug must be inserted, and when the tub is full you may let the beer flow down the drain. Under no circumstances shall you touch a drop of the brew, and shall pour and pour until all is gone.” A police captain stood by to see the beer poured away. And to see that the delinquent didn’t jump in. The Duke of Clarence, under death sentence, being allowed a choice of method, elected to be drowned in a butt of malmsey. Rather than see a bathful of wholesome liquor put t-o waste the American soaker might have followed this example. A drunkard, but where did he get the drink? And where did the other man get his three thousand two hundred bottles of beer?

We are told with strained impressiveness that we spend seven millions a year in alcoholic liquors. Well, what of that? We can’t expect to have commodities free gratis. Table drinks must be paid for as well as table meats. How many millions might we save by prohibiting flesh foods and abolishing butchers' shops? We could subsist quite comfortably on vegetables. The ox and the ass with other beasts of size and strength are strict vegetarians. And how many millions do we spend on tobacco ? The Year Book would tell; but instead of turning up the Year Book inspect this picturesque array of millions : LONDON, July 5. Mr Henry Herbert Wills, a member of the famous tobacco firm. left £2,750,000. Mr Henry Wills is the fifth member of the family to die a millionaire. The other members left the following amounts: Henry Overton Wills, £5.214.000. Sir Frederick Wills. £3.056,000. Sir- Edward Payson Wills, £2,635,000. Lord Winterstoke, £2,548,000. The sixth member. Sir Edward C’hanning Wills, left £847,Ck)0. The profits of a single family in tobaccoselling ! No one pretends that tobacco is essential; there are authorities who affirm ft baneful. Anyhow, civilisation and Christianity grew tip without it. The glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome derived nothing from tobacco. And the Romans conquered the world without tobacco. Then there are amusements —seven picture theatres in this city, vaudeville, invasive opera companies, wandering prima donnas, —we spend half a million a year on amusements in Dunedin alone, not counting the racecourse. Again I ask, what of that? We must pay for what we buy. But suppose we can’t afford it? Ah, there you have me ! It may be that we are living bevond our means; but let that he proved. The mere fact that our New Zealand drink bill runs into seven millions a year proves nothing. Pussyfoot lifts up his hands in horror. But Pussyfoot’s logic -would carry us back to our remote , ancestors who lived the simple life: Tattoo’d or woaded, winter-clad in skins, Raw from the prime . . . A rotten logic this. Please understand that there are people going to vote against Pussyfoot whojpiave no league with the brewers, the publicans, the whisky importers, and who honestly want to get rid of drunkenness. On what do they rely? On the influences that have got rid of drinking habits sevenfold worse than ours, the habits of the eighteenth century six-bottle men and the Squire Westerns who went to bed drunk every night of their lives. “Influences I”—echoes Pussyfoot with a sniff; “nothing will serve but compulsion.” Yet it is not compulsion that has chastened the convivialities of the leisured class; nor that has substituted golf and lawn tennis for sports represented by this advertisement quoted by the Times from its own columns of a hundred years back :

Cocking. —To be fought, at the Royal Cockpit, Tufton street, Westminister, on Monday, May 13. 1822. and 5 following days, the Annual Great Main of Cocks, between the Gentlemen of Bedfordshire and the Gentlemen of Norfolk and Sussex, for 10 guineas a battle and 200 guineas the odds. To commence fighting each day at half-past 2 o’clock precisely. A hundred years ago cock-fighting was already an offence at common law ; but little did that count. Neither common law nor any other law lias changed the sporting tastes of the English country gentleman, but “influences,” the mark of Pussyfoot’s scorn. “The Bible in ane hand, the tawse in t'ither” was at one time the ideal of a Scottish schoolmaster. Pussyfoot's schoolmastering knows only the tawse. For the Bible and moral influences, good lack ! he has no use what* ever. Some small fry of correspondents:Dear “Civie,"- —The farming problem; is there not a story about a Scotchman who walked 15 miles to see a football match, and on his arrival at the ground he found the fence to l:e too high? What is the meaning of the story? The meaning of the story is—Scottish thrift. Having paid for the football match by walking 15 miles, he was not going to pay again at the gate. Scottish thrift is half the secret of Scottish greatness : and I particularly admire the frankness of the Edinburgh literary groun who, taking liberties with a line of Virgil— Silvestrem tenui ruusam merlitaris avena - —described themselves as “cultivating the Muses on a little oatmeal.”

Next, from Invercargill:— Dear “Civis,” —Allow me to tell you that, you should in future give us at least two pages of your Passing Notes, or if not two. then fill all of the front page of the Witness, at least. If I indulged the provocative element in mv correspondence I might fill volumes. This flatterer proceeds to discuss the Roman Catholics and their Ne Teinere decree. I\ hen I think of my opportunities I am amazed at my moderation. Next again: Dear “Givis,” —At this distance from the war do you think it a fair tiling for the Returned Soldiers' Association to penalise conscientious objectors by refusing to meet them in public games? I decjtne to judge. Sport is brotherhood, and it is not easy for a soldier who conies fufni the burden and heat of the war to feel brotherly towards a skulker. During the wav time a military chaplain of high repute had an opportunity of sympathising with a hatch of conscientious objectors. He heard their troubled story. And then, “‘After all”—he said—“you know \on are a lot of damned rotters.” The adjective may pass. This very week we have the Anglican archbishop adding interest to his new dignity by publicly “damning” political economy. As things go it will soon he no longer necessary for the clergyman at a nicnic who was responsible for the corkscrew and has forgotten it. to put a bridle on his lips, merely remarking, “Perhaps some layman will say something.” Civis.