PASSING NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 3595, 6 February 1923, Page 3

PASSING NOTES.

(From Saturday’s Daily Times.) Out of harness, Mr Lloyd George is as the hind let loose, or even as the wild ass of the desert, flirting his heels impartially at friend and foe. It is the mere exuberance of new-found freedom ; nevertheless—ware approach! The French, who, spite of all, are still our friends in a world unfriendly,—what will the French think of this? France has once more jumped with her sabots on the prostrate form of Germany, and has come down with a thud that sickens the hearts of multitudes, on both sides of the Atlantio, whose friendship for France stood the losses and griefs of a four years’ war. Germany having been overthrown and disarmed, and her arms bound with the thongs of a stern treaty, the process of dancing on her when she is down can at any time be performed with complete impunity by any of the Powers alone. No doubt there is some joy to the unsportsmanlike mind in kicking a helpless giant who once maltreated you, and who, but for the assistance of powerful neighbours, would have done it a second time. At the date of publication Mr Lloyd George was making holiday in Spain, attending bull fights—with serious damage to his Nonconformist conscience, I should say (he is a Welsh Baptist, and occasionally preaches; but only in Welsh, which is a mitigation). From England the road to Spain is usually through France. But Mr Lloyd George will not' come back that way, I fancy—unless in disguise AH that the French are attempting to do in the Ruhr they are entitled to do, if only they can do it with success. And there’s the rub. If the invasion were war, designed to give the Germans a taste of

their own medicine, the inyaders, being French, might be entrusted to invade effectually. But the design is economic pressure; troops are there —40,000 of them—to calm the German mind while the pressure is applied. Unfortunately, the German mind refuses to be calmed, exciting itself, rather, by street '‘demonstrations” and “Deutschland über alles.” As there is not even martial law, the French are exposed to all the devices of insurgent Labour—strikes, sabotage, and the insidious “go-slow.” Railways and telegraphs, essential to the mechanism of modern industrial affairs, may be inter-rupted-rails torn up, wires cut. Nothing easier. Somehow, nevertheless, the French will push the thing through. Acquiescing in fiasco is not their way: nor, when a national Adventure is at r take, does it occur to them that nlaki ' a spoon or spoiling a horn are alternatives of equal value. We wish them well in their Ruhr a.dventure: in particular we wish them well out of it Wellington wharf. Gallant strikers under the lee of the goods shed: nothing better in hand than loafing and the sucking of cigarettes; brighten up at the sight of an ancient mariner, old school, who happens along. He has come for a look at the water and a breath of air (there is plenty of air in Wellington, not to say wind). “ Morning, daddy. How about Captain Cook? Got the lime juice out. of your bones yet? Shouldn’t come down here; too risky. Might foul a warp and go over. Don’t want a ducking at, your time of life. Get away home, daddy, and look after your old age pension !” The retired limejuicer turns about: “What do you call yourselves? Sailormen? You’re no sailormen? Ever tie a'reef point, or furl a royal? Ever round the Horn in a wool ship—turn in wet and turn out smoking? Do you know what a watch-tackle is? No, you don’t; wouldn’t know a marline spike from a serving mallet! Ever hear of ‘Helm’s a-lee! —Tacks and sheets! —Fore bowline!—Mainsail haul?’ I don’t think! What you’re fit for is washing decks and spinning a toy wheel under shelter on the bridge, with an officer alongside to see that her nose is kept straight. Sailormen ! You’re no sailormen! You’re a lot of blooming haymakers.” Idlers now, anyway. Sailormen or haymakers, two months ago, when on fall pay, they flung ud their job—walked ashore without notice or apologv. expecting. that the ships they left would of necessity be tied up. Our coastal and intercolonial trade was to be paralysed. Not thus did things pan out. The ships are running, manned by crews as good ; owners and their officers afloat are satisfied ; the public don't complain. After eight weeks’ disgusted contemplation of these facts, the original crews, now eager to return, are pained at a want of eagerness on the other side. And if I say that in this pain I sympathise, they will not believe me. It may not be sympathy, but it is certainly pity. And if these men have wives and children I pity them the more. Their strike was a damp squib from the start; now that it has fizzled its expiring fizz nothing is left but smoke and a smell of powder. Most pitiful it is that grown men should allow themselves to be bamboozled and befooled. It is a fool’s doctrine that the ships are theirs to use or dis-nse at pleasure. As unionists they have a monopoly, forsooth. The ships, they say, are now being run by. “unqualified men.” Unionism is the qualification. To qualify, he you seaman or haymaker, you must join the union. “Free labourers” are—ex vi termini—“unqualified men.” It matter® nothing that ships coastal and ships intercolonial are being run safelv and successfully by non-unionists; the non-unionist is none the less an “unqualified man.” These are the doctrines that have befooled and bamboozled the New Zealand seafarers into a ruinous strike, not the less ruinous because ridiculous. They rely on their right

to monopoly—ugly word. And the ugliest form of monopoly is preference to unionists.

The fox-chase, .-as cultivated in the English Midlands, “is the best adapted among all known varieties of hunting to the exhibition of adventurous and skilful riding, and, generally perhaps, to the development of manly and athletic qualities,” says De Quincey, a mere man of letters, who never bestrode a hunter in his life. Impartial this judgment, whether intelligent or not. But the -.port is cruel? “Not so!” cries the huntsman. l! The men like it, the horses like it, the dogs like it; and, by Jove, sir, the fox likes it.” A generous assumption; but the actual vote of the fox has never been taken. Most field spoTts mean pain to some sentient creature, horse racing among the rest. At Christchurch last week the Society for the Prevention of Grueltv to Animals (a society to which I punctiliously subscribe) prosecuted in the Magistrate’s Court a. driver at the Canterbury “Trots” for crnellv whipping his horse. There was evidence this wav and that. Said the worthy beak in dismissing the case : “If a child had been so treated it would have been cruelty, but when the horse was converted to the use of man discomfort had to be stood bv the animal. That was especially true in racing, and in a close finish a certain amount of oain had to be endured by the horses.” Whereupon a certain “Southlander” enters an appeal to “Civis” : Dear “Civis,” —I would muon like to have your comment upon this ease. Ts not there an element of “butchered to make a Roman holiday” about it? Mark the point ! i.e.. if a child had been so treated it would have been cruelty; it is not cruelty in the case of an animal converted to the use —i.e., sport and money-making of man. It was with reference to an instance of such misnamed “sport” that the immortal Wordsworth urged mankind never to blend their pleasure or their pride with sorrow of the meanest thing that feels. Wordsworth is immortal in spots. ThA couplet above, ouoted from a lengthy doggrel headed “Hart-leap Well,’’ is wellsounding sentiment, but none the less mawkish and impracticable. Whoever has to do with horses, riding or driving, carries a whip. The purpose of the whip is pain to the horse. More or' less is a detail; —too much whip would be cruelty and punishable. But our pleasure and our pride in the horse necessitates whip, and may even justify spurs. To dig the rowels of a spur into a child would be infamous; but it has never been thought Infamous to dig them into the flanks of a horse. My word to all and sundry is—Subscribe to the S.P.C.A., —punctiliously, as I do. Doubtless this “Southlander” already does. Not too soon did Mr Pussyfoot Johnson and his lady colleague return to their own land. A wider field is before them there, and a more urgent work. Percolating everywhere through Bone Dry America are rivulets of whisky, mostly bad. The people make it theniseives, and don't quite know how. From the British Bahamas, flanking conveniently the Atlantic seaboard, come gallons of whisky by the million, and again by the million, mostly good, perhaps, considering its origin. A smuggling fleet, swift and secret, distributes this contraband up and down the coast. Everywhere are hitherto law-abiding citizens who countenance this lawlessness and think no wrong. The more we learn—from official acknowledgments, mark you—about the Bone Dry horror in America, the more we bless our own escape. Since the referendum our local Pussyfoots have been Brer Rabbit—lying low and saying nuffin. But of the Pussyfoot persuasion is a North Island lady who has written me two or three times and would fain have the last word. Dear “Civis,”—Thanks for explanation re State Control votes, but the thing doesn’t seem any more equitable now than it did before. Those anti-“dry” voters who want reform are likely to want it as long as they consent to have their votes turned into the channel of Continuance. And “Civis,” it wasn’t fair of you to leave out the few lines at the beginning bf my last letter about the analogy between liquor and opium. I understood that it was on that subject you suggested that I should write again after the polling. Correspondents figuring in this column figure there for the column’s good, not for their own. Rights they have none. By courtesy I am addressed as “Civis" ; my true name is Procrustes; I lop or stretch admitted guests as may seem to me good. The question raised by this North Island lady-guest was the justice or injustice of adding State Control votes to the votes for Continuance. Her supposed analogy between alcohol and opium, being nothing to the point, I ruled out. Clearly, the State Control votes were votes against Prohibition ; clearly, also, they were votes for Continuance, since without Continuance there would be no State Control.

The few thousand voters who registeied for State Control may be interpreted as the outliers of a marching army which, when it arrives, will reform the liquor traffic root and branch, substituting the settlement which in Quebec Province comes nearer than any other to satisfying everybody. Even the Pussyfoots, if not satisfied, are silenced.. A correspondent would inquire about my seaside friend, the student of Einstein. Was the conversation reported in this column renewed? It was not. My appetite for more Einstein can wait. I have not yet assimilated his “curvature of space,” that is of emptiness, space being emptiness; —the curvature of emptiness. Thus are we to explain away gravity. What is gravity? Newton thought the apple fell because the earth exerts upon it an attractive force. Einstein considers that it falls because, wherever there is matter, space itself is curved, just as the space we can see in a very slightly concave mirror, where there are no straight lines at all, and where, if any body is in motion, it must move along a curve. Now, suppose a man in a closed room discovers that a marble placed anywhere against a wall rolls towards a hassock in tho centre of the room, it will appear to him that the hassock is attracting it. Yet. the fact may be that the floor is slightly concave, like a shallow basin, and the hassock has no connection whatsoever with the motion of the marble. Just in the same way, the earth ' may have no connection with the falling of the apple, though it seems to us to he the cause . of it. Ulear as mud. Pope’s couplet Nature and Nature’s laws lay hid in night ; God said: “Let Newton be,” and all was light, has been modified to fit the new situation : We thought that space was straight and Euclid true; God said: “Let Einstein be,” and all was skew. I think it no shame to confess myself beaten. To the Einstein fare —chops or steak, or what you will—my digestion is not equal. Thanks, no! I cannot eat but little meat, My ’tummick is not good. —“Gammer Gurton’s Needle," sixteenth century classic. Civis.