PASSING NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 3854, 24 January 1928, Page 3

PASSING NOTES.

'(From Saturday’s Otago Daily Times.)

The ill-starred Tasman flight is not less a problem as the days pass. There are still obstinate questionings. That two brave, aviators have perished is unhappily beyond doubt; but to.the.queries When? —Where? —How? there is no answer. There are credible ( witnesses who tell of a phantom airship ‘that appeared, passed across their field of vision,, disappeared. What are we to think? Did the adventurers actually reach New Zealand? Search by land and sea has yielded ho trace. Their arriving, if' arrive they did, should have been in daylight hours,' not in the dark, with the risk of over-shooting New Zealand and being lost in the Pacific. And it is an unhappy fact that at their starting they had been more than 20 hours without sleep. In our present state of mind we are beginning to ask whether the game is worth the candle, or even to say affirmatively, as Sir Leo Chiozza Money has been saying in the English bress, that “ aviation is not worth ‘ the bones of a single human being.” We constantly see tho suggestion ’ teude that the lives of aviators are not,

given in vain, and that when their machines crash or crumple, the consequent deaths, often by burning, are not spent uselessly because aviation has a great commercial future. A great thought for any clay. that. What if a nice boy or two be burned alive every week if mankind is to gain commercially? ! I suggest here, in the plainest language, that the economic argument has no foundation whatever, that aviation has as yet no sound scientific basis, and that nothing has been done either with aeroplanes or “ airships ” that gives the slightest encouragement to the argument that flying will ever be worth while commcrciallv.

Thus Sir Leo Chiozza Money, who is an authority on what used to be called Political Economy, and now calls itself Economics. But it is useless to argue. Though man was not meant to fly like a bird, do it he will, at all hazards. Aviation thrusts itself upon us and has come to stay.- There is no putting back the hands of the clock.

A snapshot in a recent number of the Otago Witness showing the final endearments of Mr Coates and Mr Amery—the. Premier of New Zealand and the Secretary of State for the Dominions —would make an historical picture for our Halls of Legislature. They had posed for the camera, evidently,—Mr Coates a fine figure ot a man, needing not to add a cubit to his stature, Mr Amery the pocket edition of a statesman, yet not without dignity ; — there they stand, a statuesque pair, each stretching out his hand to the other for a farewell clasp, and smiling significantly. Mr H. E. Holland when he sees that Machiavellian smile will feel that his worst suspicions are confirmed. As Leader of the Opposition he had already declared his “ complete dissatisfaction with the method of secrecy connected with Mr Amery’s meeting with the Prime Minister ”; “no one knew the object of his visit ”; “no one outside the Cabinet knew what the conversations between the two amounted to.” And now, when Mr Amery quits our shores returning on his tracks, it is with mysterious nods and becks and wreathed smiles. Most suspicious! Mr Holland awaits with interest the next Parliamentary Session. The Amery visit, supplemented by the Samoa deportations, will be meat and drink to him. On the other hand, the political prospects of the Government afford Mr Coates little to smile about. For reasons needless to particularise the Government has lost ground seriously in the South. I am a Government man myself, and I am sorry.

If there is one English sport more English than the rest, it is not football, it is not cricket, it is not the Turf, it is not shooting cock pheasants or any other bird. Older than the others and more deeply rooted in tradition and custom is the chase, the sport in which, oftener than he ought, the Prince of Wales hazards his neck. If there are people who would put an end to fox hunting—and the correspondence columns of some London papers show that there are—it is <_not out of regard for the Prince of Wales but out of .regard for the fox. Humanitarianism is growing, we are told —the kind of humanitarianism that would rob a poor man of his b6er and put his pipe out. Fox hunting js -cruel. So they say. Dean Inge, who contrives to have a finger in every pie, doubts whether “ blood sports ” will outlast the present generation. But the other side has something to say, in fact a lot. For example:

The death meted out to _ a stag at the hands of the huntsman is infinitely more merciful and swift than that re-

served for him t by Nature; whilst, in the case of the fox, his death, which sounds so brutal and bloodthirsty, when described by the humanitarian writers, in encompassed by the- hounds themselves in a second. I contend, therefore,. that the stag-hunters and foxhunters are the . true friends of tbe animals they hunt, not the humanitarians paradoxical aa it may seem.

There is more cruelty in one night's rabbit-trapping than in a whole season’s fox-hunting.

Take another aspect: — There is something about hounds that makes old horses young again. Let any old horse pulling a plough hear hounds giving tongue in a chase—it might be 10 fields away—he will try to gallop after them, plough and all; an experienced ploughman takes good care to jump off his seat when he thinks the hunt is coming near. I have seen a farmer come upon the start of a hunt and take his old poney out of the milk cart; and that poney would be ridden to hounds all day and finish up fresh. In short, the case for the defence may be summed up in the words of an old hunting squire of long ago:—“The men like it, the horses like it, the dogs like it; and I’ll be hanged, sir, if the fox doesn’t like it too ! ”

From Winton, down South:—■ Dear “ Givis,” —You are noted all over the country for solving mystic queries. Can you clear this one up? While hunting -about in my small collection of books for the root of the word “ Sabbath ” I at last happened to pick up a French dictionary, and found “ Sabbat.” “Ha ” I said with an excited satisfaction, “ here we are,” ‘ Sabbat —Sabbath: fearful noise, excited satisfaction, “ here we are, ‘ Sabbat —Sabbath: fearful noise, nocturnal meeting, witches’ work, row, dust, caterwauling, scolding.’ ” Being Scotch born, I used to speak of Sunday, but later in life 1 was told not to call it that, because it was wicked, but to call it Sabbath, the day of rest. Now, wise sir, if French is the root, there does not appear to be much restfulness about it. Would you kindly explain? When you say “ Sabbat ” in French or “ Sabbath ” in English you are talking Hebrew. Both words represent the Hebrew “ shabbath,” rest, and both words mean the seventh day of the week as a day of religious rest. But the French “Sabbat” has a secondary meaning which has well nigh ousted the first. When a Frenchman says of some indecent uproar “ e’est vn veritable sabbat ” the allusion is to the “witches’ sabbath ” of popular superstition, an orgy of witches, sorcerers, and demons under the presidency of Satan himself—- “ witches’ sabbath ” because beginning at twelve o’clock on a Saturday night. For the exact thing, turn up your Robert Burns and read, as doubtless you have often read, the midnight ride of Tam O’Shanter past Kirk-Aloway, “ where ghaists and howlets nightly cry.” Market night and Tam was fou; but what matter ? — Inspiring bold John Barleycorn I What dangers thou canst make us scorn !' Wi’ tippenny we fear nae evil; Wi’ usquebae we’ll face the devil! A timely philosophy, for “ wow! Tam saw an unco sight!”—“Kirk-Aloway seemed in a bleeze ”; seated on a window sill Auld Nick himself skirling the pipes for “ warlocks and witches in a dance.” A “ witches’ sabbath ” the French would call it, or simply *■ a sabbath,”--this use of the word ‘ having almost supplanted the other. The Scottish Sabbath is unknown in France. “The Schubert centenary is this year, 1928, and not next year,” a correspondent writes, correcting a statement in this column last week. Would I care for a few other particulars, he asks. Well, yes; apropos of the centenaty, why not? Schubert died in 1828, his age 31 years, his worldly possessions officially valued at 63 Vienna florins — £2 10s. The son of a village schoolmaster, one of fourteen children, he was nurtured in poverty; sometimes, when in want of a meal, a friend would bestir himself to sell a few of Schubert's songs at a shilling apiece.

“My music is the product of my genius and my misery,” he said. In 1816, applying for a post worth about twenty guineas a year in a Government music school, he was rejected as “imperfectly qualified.” Yet in the previous year, 1815, he had produced two symphonies, eight light operas, numerous compositions for piano and string quartette, -and 146 songs, one of them the “ Erl King.” His “ Unfinished Symphony,” now in honour, waited for a first performance till 1865, nearly forty years after its composer’s death. Critics to-day exhaust themselves in its praise;—“ a strange blending of peace and passion,” —“ vista after vista of beauty,” —the conclusion “ rapturous, wistful, remote from earthlj' struggle and striving.” There are now barbarians who propose to “ finish ” the unfinished and unfinishable.

It is well to hear about it and about it; but how much better to hear the thing itself. We have in Dunedin musical societies that could give us a Schubert symphony; why don’t they do it? And when shall we hear a Haydn symphony? There is no brighter orchestral music in existence. We may be thankful for the Choral Society and Handel’s “ Messiah ” —imperishable, inexhaustible. Sir Thomas Beecham lately gave a performance of the “ Messiah ” that made the London critics feel as if they were hearing it for the first time. Some of them hark back to old stories about Handel’s borrowed themes. “ The grand old thief ” they call him. Handel borrowed as an artist “ borrows ” his raw material. Or an answer may be extracted from Kipling in certain verses which alone, in the judgment of the Spectator, might be staked Kipling’s reputation as a poet: —

When ’Omer smote 'is bloomin' lyre, He’d 'eard men sing by land an’ sea ; An’ what ’e thought 'e might require ’E went an’ took—the same as me I

The market-girls an’ fishermen, The shepherds an’ the sailors, too. They 'eard old songs turn up again, But kep’ it quiet—same as you!

They knew ’e stole; 'e knew they knowed. They didn’t tell, nor make a fuss. But winked at ’Omer down the road, An’ 'e winked back—the same as us !

Another correction, and again on a question of art. Let us pass from Schubert symphonies to silk stockings; it is but a step. The other week I was sceptical about the gehuineness of “ synthetic silk,” and doubted whether any ladies of my acquaintance wore stockings of silk underived from the silkworm. I know better now. A drapery firm, with no desire for a gratuitous advertisement, offers to sell me stockings of artificial silk, with printed directions for their use; that they are to be washed gently in warm water, no rubbing, no squeezing, no wringing out, —their constitution wouldn’t stand it. A filmy thing is synthetic silk, delicate, I should say, as a spider’s’ web. Whether the neat ankles and shapely calves, flesh tinted, that grace our streets and fix the eye of man, are thus etherially clad is doubtful. Probably not. You seldom see a stocking out of repair. Not in my time has any new fashion in woman’s dress been more welcome than the short skirt. Extremes? —a good thing may always be pushed to extremes.

Half an inch, half an inch, half an inch shorter. Same are the skirts for mother and daughter. When the wind blows, everything shows Half an inch, halt an inch more than it oughter. A small matter. In the words of Lord Dewar, whose witticisms quoted in all newspapers may owe something to his own whisky, when a girl has paid 30 shillings for her stockings she naturally wants to show 28 shillings’ worth.

Civis.