PASSING NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 3868, 1 May 1928, Page 3

PASSING NOTES.

(From Saturday’s Otago Daily Times.) Fizzling out in the manner of a damp squib, the Royal Oak affair brightens up agreeably in its dying spurt. The captain and the commander dismissed from their ship are declared eligible for further employment—if they can get it. Admiral Collard, fons et crigc malorum, already “ severely punished ” in being left to public opinion, was also left to the Admiralty, and the Admiralty has come down upon him with a pole-axe. A flag officer of the Mediterranean fleet, he has no longer a flag either to hoist or haul down; —he is “ retired.” Grounds for this judgment not stated; but we can supply them. An admiral in the Royal Navy ought at least to be a gentleman. That said, the inference is easy.

It is told of Nelson that he* cultivated and maintained kindly relations with his executive officers. Before the clash of Trafalgar all captains were summoned to the flagship, there to hear explained the plan of attack. They received’ it with enthusiasm, —all happy together, “ a band of i brothers.” On the day when the. British in two columns, line ahead,

were bearing down upon the enemy’s serried line to meet a raking fire, the Temeraire, next astern to Nelson’s Victor}’’, the leading ship, crept up nearly abreast, —sailing better in the light wind. But there came a hail, quarter-deck to quarter-deck: “ Captain — Keates — I — will — thank — you — to — keep — your—station! ” Instantly the Temeraire’s topsail sheets were let fly; the big sails ceased to pull, and the ship dropped astern. Discipline was not harmed by brotherhood and kindly feeling. Dear “ Civis,” —You quoted from “ Midshipman Easy ” the clause in the “ Articles of War ” forbidding profane swearing on the King’s ships. Bearing on this subject, here is a brief extract from another Marryat novel, Peter Simple.”, Perhaps you can find room. “ The first lieutenant has a foul tongue; but he has a good heart. It is a pity, for he is a smart officer; but the fact is that junior officers are too apt to copy their superiors, and that makes it very important that a young gentleman should sail with a captain that is a gentleman. Now our first lieutenant served the best of his tipie with Captain Blankety-blank, who is notorious in the service for foul and abusive language. What is the consequence? That many who served under him here learnt his bad habit.” Shellback in Retbeat. It will be said that the swear-word flies to the lips in an explosion of temper; also, temper apart, that it serves for emphasis. In either case it is bad form. If the grand old name of gentleman,—' defamed by every charlatan and soiled by all ignoble use ” —counts for anything, the blankety-blank forms of speech are ruled out. As the result of a strike in the galley department, Huddart-Parker and Co. gloomily reports five vessels of its fleet —22,020 tons in all—tied up and the crews paid off. It is a question of cooks, —whether or not there should be one cook or two cooks more in the galley. If it were not a question of cooks, it would be a question of stewards; or, more easily than either, a question of firemen. Any rope to hang a dog with!—any pretext for harassing the shipping companies. Mr Burns, of .Burns, Philp, ahd Co., a familiar name on the Sydney waterfront, after an exploratory tour of Europe and America affirms that “ the cost of loading and discharging cargo at Australian ports is greater than in any other part of the world.” So also in New Zealand, I fancy; where, by way of paradoxical comment, we hear of distressed seamen out of a job,—seamen, not sailors; they never tied a reef-point or furled a royal. But even shore labourers who go to sea ought not to be out of a job. Nor need they be, were it not that every now and then, at the bidding of their union secretaries, they spring upon us a grotesque surprise. This week read their latest, —and smile if you can. Apropos, an Otago farmer “ whose talk is of bullocks,” yet keeps an eye on the Australian press, asks me to reproduce a paragraph: In a plaint before Judge DrakeBrockman a Melbourne manufacturer gave the familiar brand of evidence: “ I told the men we would pay them for anything they produced over what they were then producing. In the first week we paid them about 50 per cent, extra for extra production, but they subsequently came to us and said the union would not allow it. It was therefore discontinued.”

Then an editorial comment: “It is pretty safe to assume that it wasn’t the union which really objected but the salaried

(and often imported) persons who run unionism. The men were offered more pay without any extra hours, more comfort for their wives and children, and the chance to help in making this a better land for these children to live in. It is lack of local production which causes the overwhelming mass of imports, and it is payment for the ridiculous surplus of imports which leads the nation to go another 20 to 50 millions into external debt in a single year. But boss-cockies of unionism announce that more pay and comfort are ‘ contrary to union principles,’ and threaten dire penalties unless these benefits are rejected.” “ The boss-cockies of unionism ” —these be thy gods, O Israel!

From Palmerston North—a Jacobite manifesto in. angry tone; but prefaced by a personal note: “I landed in Dunedin in 1863, and have been a reader of the Otago Witness more or less all my colonial life, and to me ‘ Civis ’ has been, more or less, a household word.” Good man! But what is "the Jacobite trouble at Palmerston North? Let us hear: As a native of Scotland and a Highland man, I would like to express my views on a cable message wherein it is stated that the King had bestowed on one of his sons the title of “ Baron Culloden.” I am certain that the vast majority of the Scottish nation—especially the Highland portion of it—must look on the bestowal of the title of “ Baron Culloden ” on one of the King’s sons as an insult to the Scottish nation. At the battle of Culloden Scotland was bled white, and every clan in the country had to mourn its dead by hundreds: slain principally by Hanoverian—German—troops, commanded by a damned German, the Duke of Cumberland, who, to the day he died, could not speak English properly. And, mind you, they bled and died fighting for the rightful King or Britain, Prince Charles Edward Stuart, whose name is to this day a household word in Scotlarcd. At Home in my days—which is over 65 years ago—most Highland men, when using a stamp, always put it on the envelope head down, and from this date I shall never omit doing so. When you reifd this you may say I am too old and prejudiced. May be. But until I am six feet below flowers I cannot smell I must, metaphorically speaking, draw the claymore for my country and Prince Charlie. He adds: “I suppose this is not fit for publication.” Well, it isn’t, except as an example of inveterate nationalism, bigoted and blind. The other day there was a Jacobite discussion in this column, when I had the pleasure of showing that George V, now reigning, is in lineal descent from Mary Queen of Scots through the daughter of James I and VI, Mary’s son, instead of through James 11, Mary’s great-grandson—the female line, instead of the male. Th'af is the whole difference. What a thing to fight about! From Carlyle’s “ Weisnichtwo,” otherwise the Never-Never country: Dear “ Civis,” —As a very old reader of your column I have found much to admire and thank you for. You ring so true on all that pertains to King and Country, give so much interesting information, turn your sentences so aptly, and you are a rare authority on literature, grammar, and many lines. It will be difficult to refuse anything to this flatterer. Of course he is expecting something. What is it? John the Baptist’s head on a charger? Then he can’t have it. When a general election is looming up, and the liquor question is in debate, a journalist must keep his head, and aye he talking. Else why a journalistt “The word ‘Pussyfoot’ has

been a veritable gold-mine to you,” says the Never-Never man. Reason the more why I shouldn’t drop it, as he would have me do. Let it suffice that to the Pussyfoot tribe I concede simplicity of heart, good intentions, pure motives, a desire for the public weal. They mean well, but they do not know. Civis.