PASSING NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 3829, 2 August 1927, Page 3

PASSING NOTES.

(From Saturday’s Otago Daily Tiruoa.) Though not Dunedin-born, Sir Robert Stout will be a Dunedin man to the end ©f the chapter. If Dunedin is not his native heath, it is the next thing to it. ’Twas in auld lang syne that he came to us a callow Shetlander or Orcadian, one or the other, anyhow from the upper rim of the world, Where the Northern Ocean, in vast whirls. Boils round the naked melancholy isles Of farthest Thule. Since then, undei milder skies, though we have wandered mony a weary fitt, and though seas between us braid ha’e roared, as it were, we have always held Robert Stout in affection. But it is with mixed feelings that we see him reviving the errors of his youth. In the Daily Times this week he has a two-column manifesto against Bible reading in schools which would equally avail against Bible reading in churches, and which an advertisement borrowed from an American paper might have headed:

don’t let the bible MAKE A FOOL OF YOU! Keep this Jew Scrap-book out of our Public Schools. Free our Children from Superstition, Ignorance, Bigotry, Hypocrisy, and the Mental Disease of so-called “ Christianity.” \Ae can’t help remembering that once upon a time Sir Robert invented a substitute for Christianity, “ In my salad days, "When I was green in judgment,” he would say. There was a meetinghouse which he called the Lyceum Hall, and a text-book called the Lyceum Gnu 1 ; t '.ere were selections from Holy Writ duly improved—Blessed are the so-and-so “for theirs is the republic of heaven"; and there was an acrobatic ritual outdoing the Anglo-Catholics - “Right foot forward; slap the chest with both hands; same with left foot.” Over this slapping of the chest with the let. foot Dunedin laughed loud and long. The Lyceum Guide, I am afraid, is out of print. Otherwise my advice even at this date would be, Read the book and ruin the doctors.

Correspondents who ask me leading questions on the subject of evolution*, with a view to discussion, will please understand that the subject of evolu--1 tion is banned in this column. It has I sufficiently infested other parts of the paper. So far as this column is concerned, the evolution question was settled half a century back, and indeed before that. The other day we had in the Daily Times a list of infant prodigies, from Mozart down, copied from an English paper. But there was no mention of an American example that beats the lot: “At the age of nine, Miss Queen Silver appeared on the public platform delivering lectures on evolution.” Probably in the Western States, and probably on’ the negative side. But that’s as may be. Is it possible that a nine-years old contributor has figured in the Dunedin controversy? Quite possible, and, looking to the phenomena, not improbable. To this oracle of tender years, if in Dunedin, I should deliver up all inquirers about Darwinism and the creation of the world, reserving my own five wits for questions less ambitious. Daily, as behoves me, I condescend to men of low estate, and to women. Here is a letter • which f(sr intelligibility might be Choctaw or Pawnee. Dimly I make out that it comes from Central Otago, that tne writer is of the feminine gender, and that she wants from “ Civis ” “ the Glasgow coat of arms, —something about the tree that never grew.” She adds, “ I am very much interested, my maiden name being ” (totally illegible). The Glasgow coat of arms—perhaps some kindly Galwegian, I think that is the word—will come to the rescue. I can remember when last I left St. Enoch’s railway station in Glasgow for Gourock, and Gourock in one of the Clyde boats for Lochgilphead, the Crinan Canal, and the Western Highlands; but Glasgow’s heraldic symbol, is not in my memory; nothing to the"point lingers there but Bailie Nicol Janie's repetition of the civic motto—“ Let Glasgow Flourish.” A pious wish. Perhaps that may serve in the meantime.

The advent of a Jewish orator to preach the return qf the Jews to their own land, and, incidentally, to pass round the hat, may set us thinking. It is told of a Prussian King that he asked his chaplain to give him’a short and simple proof of the truth of those things which, as one might say, Sir Robert Stout is chiefly concerned to deny. The chaplain answered in a word:—“ The Jews, yonr Majesty.” Certainly the persistence of this homeless people through so many ages of persecuv'.ew. “Uncle Sam mustn't forget that

tion and contempt, and the figure they now make in the front rank of civilisation, should prove something. Perhaps Sir Robert Stout might be asked to say what. The London papers, reporting the death of Lord Swaythling, remark that he was “ the first Jew to inherit a peerage in Great Britain.” That may be; but "the Rothschild peerage is earlier in date. The story of these two houses is the story i« miniature of their whole people from medieval times—abject poverty and then colossal fortunes. A near ancestor of the Swaythlings—whose family name is Samuel Montagu—was a Liverpool pawnbroker. The Rothschilds have no family name—so I learn from “The Romance of the Rothschilds,” a book which must have been compiled with their sanction and complicity: They derive from “ a poor hawker” who carried on a petty commerce in a shabby Jewish street in Frankfort on the Main. Heine, himself a Jew, sums up all Jewry as “that mummy of a people which wanders over the earth swathed in its ancient documents, a petrified piece of history, a spectre that maintains itself bv money-changing and the sale of old clothes.” These antithetical points, money-changing and the sale of old clothes, meet in the story of the Rothschilds and the Swaythlings.

Nathan Rothschild, the first of the name to settle in London, carried on his monevchanging in troublous times, but contrived to turn the times themselves to profit. When the clash of Waterloo was imminent, Nathan Rothschild hurried to Belgium, contrived to look on at the battle itself, foresaw the issue, and before Napoleon had launched his final attack, galloped to Brussels, then to Os tend, crossed the storm-swept Channel in a fishing boat, and posted to London, arriving half dead. Next morning Nathan was at his usual place at the Exchange, leaning against a column, looking like a man broken in body and soul, as if he hail aged years in a night. The hall of the Exchange was seething with excitement. Dismal news passed from mouth to mouth, the defeat of Blucher, Wellington overwhelmed. Stocks fell from minute to minute, securities were flung upon the market in panic. Meanwhile the deathly pale man at the column laughed in his sleeve; by means of secret agents, whom no one knew, he was quietly buying up all the securities .that offered. Next day the news of victory, and Rothschild had gained near a million sterling.

Such are the ways of the money-changers. On the Royal Exchange to-day, in Wall Street, on any Continental Bourse, it would be held that Rothschild had earned his million.

Our war debt to America, its payment, and questions related thereto—on this subject in its latest phase a corresjKmdent writes that he has “a strong feeling of indignation.” The story of the debt is simple. The borrowed money was expended in a joint adventure for the behoof of borrower and lender alike. We borrowed, from one ally to finance our other allies for the joint adventure and in the common interest. Why should there be any repayment? “ They hired the money, didn’t they?” says Mr Calvin Coolidge. This view has settled the matter. Britain is paying. “ But one gentleman doesn’t take interest from another,’’ says the North American Rehe is a gentleman.” But he does. Uncle Sam, as Uncle Shylock, will gather in both principal and interest—thirty-three millions a year for sixty years to come. Now my correspondent: — " There are honourable men in America who blush over this business, and are calling aloud for a cancelling of war debts. To quiet them, Mr Mellon, Secretary of the Treasury at Washington, has put forth a statement which amounts to —what shall I say?—an official mendacity. Britain loses nothing, he says, but from her continental allies and from Germany will collect more than she pays America. “ Not

retorts Mr Winston Churchill, Chancellor of the Exchequer;—Britain has already paid a hundred and fortynine millions more than she has received, and to the end of the chapter will not receive as much as she has guaranteed to pay. Whereupon the American officials back down with the lame excuse that Mr Mellon's indiscretion was for domestic consumption only; and Mr Mellon discovers that he is the victim of a printer’s error lie was referring to the allies generally and the important words “ Great Britain excepted ’ accidentally dropped out ! A miserable business this. Actually I am sorry for the Americans. Sorrow for the Americans is a Christian sentiment. Great Britain comes out of the affair as the honest broker.” Uncle Sam, wearing the cap the Americans themselves have invented for him, stays in as Uncle Shylock.

From M eston, which seems a sufficient Post Office address, a correspondent solicits my help in the suppression of goitre, no less! I might be the whole college of surgeons. Dear ’ Civis,”—ln the Otago Daily limes of 23rd Julj' Dr Baker M'Laglan lifts up her voice like a pelican in the wilderness on the Prevalence of Goitre,” and laments that, in spite of all she and others ha\ e said, the tragedy of public apathy remains. I have three girls of my ow_ at school, two of them at a wellknown High School, and one at the local public school. Periodically they are examined b. a doctor and nurse, lhe examination has something to do with the goitre question, but no report ever reaches me regarding their state. The doctor says M or N or Neuti 1 or something of that sort to the nurse, lhat is all the child hears, and that is what I hear from the child, who also assures me the nurse wrote down what the doctor said. This method of interesting parents is not bound to bear fruit an hundred fold. Could not the Education Department improve on the present methods by issuing to parents a card with the doctor’s report and with a line or two of printed advice about preventive measures und about remedies for those who are stricken with this dire malady?

The Goitre Report by the Education Department's Health Inspector (last Saturday’s Daily Times) should make Education Boards everywhere sit up. High School Boards no less. “ Public apathy!"—public blindness -.nd stupidity, say rather. Look at the facts, and apathy is impossible. “ When Dr Kerens and I visited the [Christchurch] Girls’ High School,” Dr M'Laglan said, “we saw 300 or 400 of the High School pupils, and found 89 per cent, of goitre, of which 79 per cent, was plainly visible.”

Yet nothing or next to nothing was being done. “Not more than five girls in all had made anything at all worth calling a reasonable attempt at prevention.” The position is tragic. Presently New Zealand, waking up and panic-stri?ken, will be demanding, Who is to be hanged?

Not often does an item in the commercial columns catch my eye; here is one, however, it would have been a pitv to miss:— The accounts of Messrs John Walker am’ Sons, whisky distillers, for the year ended March 31 show a profit of £838,425. Nearly a million sterling profit in a single year on the distilling of Johnny Walker whisky. And the Johnny Walker distillery company is only one amoiv many. No one will suspect me of Pussyfoot leanings, but to my mi '<l these figures as an index of whisky consumption imply a drop too much.' Mr Stephen Gwynn, a literary man of note, writing in the Fortnightly Review, says, “ T i Scotland, up to a century ago, claret used to be sold in the streets at fairs,” and “ in the great ..ays of Elizabethan England even the apprentices treated their ladies to qlaret and seek.” To-day, “the most p-actical step towards national sobriety would be to substitute wine drinking for spirit drinking.” I agree. In New Zealand hotels you can get .a small hot. I '’ of claret to your dinner if you call for it; but drink sold over the bar, what is it? Not wine, I fancy. Mr Stephen Gwynn continues:— A lady went to inquire for some Burgundy in a great emporium, and the attendant discountenanced what she suggested. “ Of course,” he said, “ we have that wine. But it is French made. Now this is real Burgundy. This is Australian.” And Australia is our next neighbour. Just now there is apprehension of tariff changes, and importers of dutiable liquor —spirits and the like—are all on the jump. If the choice were mine, I should take the duty off Australian

wines and clap it on to spirits. The Minister of Finance will kindly take note. Civis.