PASSING NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 3610, 22 May 1923, Page 3

PASSING NOTES.

(From Saturday’s Daily Timas.) It must be the newspapers that are responsible for that ugly word “ultimatum” which would give an ill turn to our parleying with Russia. Surely nothing so provocative could issue from the British Foreign Office. “Ultimatum” means—“ This is my last word ; agree unconditionally, or my next word will he a blow. Parleying on that tone usually ends in fisticuffs. A Passing Note ;n this sense was in process of incubation for this column, when, 10, I find Mr Lloyd George saying the same thing! Great wits jump. Ho begged the Government now that it had agreed to a conference to take the fullest advantage of the conference and to think of the condition of the world. It was very grave—north, south, east, and west, and it was not a world to drop matches in. The word ulti- - matum had a nasty sound, and it had led to a catastrophe in 1914. He hoped it was not going to be used again. “They ought not to make the mistake of thinking it was just Bolshevism they were up against; it was the same old Russia. M. Tchitcherin was not a revolutionary in the ordinary sense of the word; he was as great air aristocrat as Lord Curzon” (Laughter). “And a great aristocrat may be a gi'.'at blackguard,” he might have added. An historic example leaps to the eyes —Philippe Egalite of the French Revolution time, a greater aristocrat than either. Of royal blood, he bad taken up with the Robespierres and the Dantons, dropping his title “Philippe, Duke of Orleans,” for “Philippe Egalite,” Philip Equality. In the Revolutionary Convention, at the trial of the King, Philippe’s near kinsman and the head of his house, each voter mounting the tribune to give his vote separately and audibly. “Philippe Egalite votes in ais soul and conscience Death ; at the sound of which and of whom, even Patriotism shakes its head ; and there runs a groan and shudder through this Hall of Doom.” Thus Carlyle. Then a sequent voting : “Delay: yes or no?” Men do vote it finally, all Saturday, all day and night. Philippe Egalite in his soul and conscience votes No. The next member mounting: “Since Philippe says No, I for my part say Yes, moi je dig Out.” The balance still trembles. Till finally, at three o’clock on Sunday morning, we have, “No delay, by a majority of seventy. Death within four-and-twenty hours!” Later, on the same guillotine, by the same axe, Philippe’s own head was shred

away. A great aristocrat may be a scoundrel, and sometimes he may meet his deserts.

If we had attended to Maori folk-lore we might have foreseen the Dunedin floods; also the Kaiapoi flood, the North Canterbury flood, and the Blenheim flood. The Maoris have a belief that when the kowhai blooms early floods may be looked for, and as the kowhai has already finished blooming, a spell of wet weather is being anticipated by the Natives. Months ago this was published in an Auckland paper. English fo'lk-lore looks to the characteristic English trees, the oak and the ash, noting which of the two in spring time is first with its leafage: Oak before ash, look out for a sp’a3h; Ash before oak, look out for a soak. It is not a splash that we have had in Dunedin, but a soak, and very much more than a soak. But weather omens may be neglected. Even Noah, with a flood beyond precedent or parallel actually upon him, was slow to believe, —merely thought that it “looked like rain.” So suggests Mr G. K. Chesterton : The cataract from the cliff of Heaven fell blinding from the brink, As it would wash the stars away as suds go down a sink; And the seven heavens were roaring down for the threats of hell to drink, And] Noah he cocked his eye and said, “It looks like rain, I think: “The water lias drowned the Matterhorn as deep as a Mendip mine, “But I don’t care where the water goes if it doesn’t get into the wine.” Noah tvas not a Prohibitionist, as the •sequel shows. But that is another story. It is certain that the city authorities who contrive drains, and build bridges, and regulate water-courses did not foresee our Dunedin floods, least of all the second “Not for a hundred years!” said the city engineer. And so said all of us, relying on the fallacy that Nature never fires twice from the same gun. Fallacy it was. It may be true that lightning never strikes twice in the same place; it doesn’t need to, says the American humorist. But it is certain that the murmurous Leith if roused to anger will roar head-long down the same age-worn channel, even as the pelting showers, if they come, will descend from the same surcharged heavens.

There remains a question—YVho is to be hanged? Not till now has this ques tion found expression,—l am the first; but it is latent, unformulated, in the breast of every man who is not a City Councillor. No blatant publicity, as yet! It might be of wholesome example to set up a gallows in Harbour Terrace, and another in YVoodhaugh Valley; but these monuments of justice would look in complete without a corpus pendens,—and whose should that corpus be? lou might take by the button the first householder you meet and say: Thou are the man: All alike, w r e are under condemnation. We saw with complacence the Leith gratuitously narrowed at its exit; we knew that its ccsarse all along was obstructed by unnecessary boulders and stony drift ; we were unwilling to spend money upon it. And now our sins have found us out. It is the whole ratepaying public that ought to be hanged.

Not in Parliament only, but wherever men assemble for discussion, there are restraints. A chairman is appointed, and the chairman must be obeyed; there are tilings that may not be said. On the other hand a street mob knows only one rule—Go as you please. If amenities pass between a soap-box orator and an objector in his crowd—“ You’re a liar!” and “You’re another!” —a free fight may follow to the general edification; nobody s any the worse, and the man on the soapbox may begin again. To Mr Newbold, a Communist agitator with much street experience who has got into Parliament, taking with him his soap-box and his soap-box manners, it was the most natu ral thing in the world to give to an honourable member opposite the !ie

direct. Thereupon eventuated an event long trembling on the verge—Mr Newbold was turned out. Later, he will be admitted again with apoligies, and in the end may learn his lesson. Which lesson is, that the Communist who wants the blood of the other side should want it with an excess of urbanity, with a smiling face, sleek tones, and an engaging manner. The political prospects of the British Labour party, now the official Opposition, would be improved if they had among them a Thomas Bracken, with his song “Behave Yerself Before Folk.” Once, in Wellington, he sang it to a delighted House. And at Westminster it would be an agreeable contrast to that howling hymn of hate with which Mr Newbold arid his friends recently affronted the proprieties—the Red Flag.

Mr L. F. Swift, chairman of a Chicago meat company, interviewed in Wellington : There are in the company no fewer than 45,000 shareholders, and of these 16,000 are employees. The employees now own twenty-one million dollars worth of company stock, and they are encouraged to buy shares on the instalment plan. This is the new way, and the true way, of exploding the bogey of “capitalism.” The anti-capitalist drops the anti an I joins the other side. In these days great industries and joint stock companies go together, companies whose shares are sold in the open market. Let the workman as often as he has saved a £5 note put it into joint stock company shares. If he buys with care his money will bring him in terest, and, what is more, he will have stormed the enemy’s camp. Then, when there comes along the Communist agitator, the workman shareholder will know what to say. “The capital you Want to confiscate is mine ; please let it alone. In my interest abolish the capitalist? Thanks, no! I myself am a capitalist.” Cadit quaestio.

“Bad English” specimens rain upon me this week—half-a-dozen of them from is many correspondents. I can give but scant notice to each. Rule of a Dunedin Club: “The members of this Club shall be (a) those persons, who are members thereof at the date of its incorporation.” The members shall be the members. Right in fact, but pleonastic. ..On the second section was the Bank of N.Z. —Mr —■ ——, manager, a man of fine appearance and fine character. and the same can be said about his wife. Like the intervening parent at the marriage: “I object; and I am his father; —and his mother, too." “He is his father and his mother, too,” laughed the would-be bride, impenitent. Inscription on a notice board: “Trespassers will be prosecuted irrespective of whom they are.” “Whom they are” and “of who” are equally impossible. Yet we say, “ 1 know who you are,” though “know” is a transitive verb and transitive verbs take the objective. “ I know, whom you axe ” would be ridiculous. If it is necessary to affirm on a notice board so flat a truism as the impartiality c.f the law, reconstruction is indicated: “Trespassers will be prosecuted without respect of persons.’ Instructions on the ballot papers for Parliamentary elections: “The ballot paper is to be folded up so that the contents cannot be seen ; and, having shown the official mark on the back to the returning officer, the ballet paper is to be put,” etc. This is something like: “YY T alking down George street Knox Church steeple meets the eye." The steeple walks! In the example above, the ballot paper itself does the showing. But in Acts of Parliament and the like—as Macaulay says of Robert Montgomery’s poems—we must take such grammar as we can get and be thankful. In the Educational Institute’s “Education leaflets,” No. 1:—-“Every boy and every girl has a right to an opportunity . . .” “Every” takes a verb in the singular: “Everv boy has a right.” If, however, the two “every” clauses linked by the connective “and” make a plural, we need “have,” —Jack and Jill have a right. But the classics are against us : Every boy and every girl That’s born into this world alive Is either a little Liberal Or els© a little Conservative. YVhy couldn’t the Educational Institute say simply: “Boys and girls have an equal right” . . . ? A correspondent desires to know whether the following verses ar© by Laak Walton of “The Compleat Angler”: Beside the river bank serene A fisher stood where all was green— And looked it! He. saw, just as the light grew diim, A fish, or else the fish saw him— And hooked it! He brought with high-erected comb The fish, or else the story, home— And cooked it!

‘ The Compleat Angler” does mingle seventeenth-century songs with seven-teenth-century fisher talk and fisher anecdotes, but these verses are not of them. They belong to an age in which, a man who goes out with rod and reel for trout may bring home to Iris confiding wife a barracouta bought of a fishmonger. Civis..