PASSING NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 3870, 15 May 1928, Page 3

PASSING NOTES.

(From Saturday’s Otago Daily Times.) The education of King Amanullah proceeds apace. When and how it began there is no knowing; but it had made considerable progress when he conceived the idea of leaving the land of his fathers, crossing the vasty deep, and making a tour of Europe. The sea —he had never clapped eyes on it. His wife, Queen Souriya—no one of her countrymen, though true believers all, had been permitted to see her face. Yet her face—which, judged by portraits in the illustrated papers, is good to see—was to be exposed to the lawless gaze of infidel Franks, millions of them. Amanullah’s pluck in facing the conditions of a European tour shows him to have been something more than an Afghan and a Mussulman. To see and to be seen has been his rule in England. He hap been up in an aeroplane, and down ii*» a submarine; a degree-confer-ring ceremony at Oxford left undisturbed his Oriental calm; he would have gone to a Salvation Arinv prayer-meet-ing if invited. He did go' to the

University boat race, and the London papers are moved to a reminiscence: A previous Oriental sovereign—the Shah of Persia, was it? —at the Jnivereity boat race was informed that a special launch would be placed at his disposal in which he and his suite could follow the crews. “ Follow the crews! ” his Majesty exclaimed, and looked round for his High Executioner: ‘’Let the crews follow me, or . . ! ” On second thoughts it was deemed advisable to provide a window for his Imperial Majesty in a riverside hostelry. But King Amanullah, less an Oriental and more a European, accepted the launch and followed the crews. For his adventures in Soviet Russia, see the cables, —noting that “ when his train arrived in Russia two trunks, containing most costly furs and dresses, were missing; Soviet railway men are suspected.” The Soviet does not recognise private ownership. The Presbyterian Church is troubled in conscience about conscientious objecting, and needs sympathy. Any other church might be in the same plight. No one of them seems to have any clear idea of conscience, what conscience is, and what respect is due to it. Am I to respect the conscience tl at, forbids a Roman Catholic to eat meat in Lent, and equally respect the conscience that authorises a Presbyterian to reject Lent and its restrictions as a pitiable superstition ? We have just now four divinity students who, as conscientious objectors, refuse military training, and are in danger of durance vile. '’’There has been a deputation to the Minister of Justice: The Minister: Do you assure me that the Presbyterian Church is behind these men who defy the law of the country ? Hie Rev. Dr Gibb said that he would stand behind every one of them. . . . The objector denies his Lord and Master if he does a thing against his conscience. This is nonsense-doctrine. It is notorious that in cases innumerable one man’s conscience condemns what another man’s conscience approves. Is the “ Lord and Master ” to be quoted for these contradictories, each and every one of them? The long and short of the matter — hidden it would seem from the churches —is that conscience about right and wrong is what a man thinks, and that what a man thinks derives from what he has been taught, and, ju cases not a few, from what he desires.

There are signs that the Presbvterian Church, not at all to its discredit, is divided in mind. On the case of the four recalcitrant students a committee of the Auckland Presbytery after a sitting of two hours “announced that no decision had been arrived at.” The Christchurch Presbytery, moved by an energetic protest from one of its clerical members, shelved a “ peace manifesto.” So says the Press Association. Listen to this protesting divine:— “We should not be said to endorse a manifesto which states that we are assured that war as a means of settling disputes between nations is entirely opposed to the mind of Christ. I am not prepared to endorse such a sentiment.” The liberty of the Dutch Republic was obtained by the struggle against the tyranny of Spain. Were the actions of those men opposed to the mind of Christ? Could it be argued that we would not be justified in bearing arms to resist the menace of Russia to-day? “The setting of our seal on the manifesto would prohibit a Presbyterian from bearing arms for-'any purpose whatever,” he concluded. “ You may form your societies and deck the members with olive leaves, but let anything touch the liberty of the Britisher

and in a moment your peace uniform will be changed to khaki.” This is not far from Wordsworth’s mind when he wrote the audacious lines—

For God's most dreaded instrument In working out a pure intent. Is man—arrayed for mutual slaughter— Yea. Carnage is his daughter I Not quite in this mood was the Christchurch Presbytery, but near it—awfully near it. Here is a story that will please Pussyfoot;—it is little enough pleasure that he gets out of this column. The story is from Michael Sadlier’s “ Trollope, a Commentary,” a book that is or ought to be in every public library. Anthony Trollope when an official in the Post Office Service, and at the same time a successful novelist and an intrepid rider to hounds, was sent across the Atlantic to the West Indies and the Spanish Main, there to inspect and reorganise postal affairs. He came in his round to British Guiana.

Trollope was determined to prove that a certain distance could be covered on mule-back in two days. The local post office authorities declared that the journey would take three, and to support their claim purposely provided their troublesome visitor with an uncomfortable saddle. In consequence the first day’s ride' reduced the missioner to the extreme of raw discomfort. The morrow (if he was to carry his point) must be another equally fatiguing day. Only one remedy was possible, and that a drastic one. He ordered two bottles of brandy, poured them into a washbasin. and sat in it. So alcohol has a use; —and such a use!

Dear Civis,— 1 notice by the papers that Browne, who has been sentenced to death for the Essex murder, has attempted to commit suicide. I cannot understand why a man who has been sentenced to death should not be allowed or even encouraged to commit suicide, if he wishes to do so. It seems quite a logical thing to do. In the Army it used to be the custom in the good old days that when an officer did a dishonourable action, he was left in a room with a revolver. I would like to have your ideas on the subject. In the view of British law’ the man who takes his own life is a “ felo de se,” —a felon in his own case or against himself; and it is the office of law to prevent felony, or "to punish it. The ease is not altered when the man is already under a judicial sentence of death. He is not entitled to hurry by a felony the course of justice. That is. the view of British law. Is there a wider view? Hamlet, when inclined to suicide, wishes That the Everlasting had not fixed His canon ’gainst self-slaughter. There is a similar passage in “ Cymbeline. But the Shakespeare commentators allege that nowhere in the Bible can they find chapter and verse for this “ canon.” We can only fall back on the general sentiment that self-slaugh-ter is murder, and that murder is a crime. Why should the man under sentence of death rush on his fate? Anything might happen. At the last moment he might get a reprieve. From Waitahuna: Dear “Givis," What is an “anti-cyclone?” This is the substance of a letter that runs to length and may be shortened down. Thus: Dr Bates’s successor in the Meteorological Office seems to have a weakness for anti-cyclones. We know what a cyclone is, and that “anti" means against or opposite to; are we

to infer that “ anti-cyclone " means the opposite of a cyclone, or calm weather? I have not a cyclopedia, and am referring the matter to you. Meteorology—a hard word to say—is not germane to this column; nor am I amateur weather prophet. For that form of quackery look elsewhere. But, always willing to advise, I turn up for this inquirer the text-books. “Cyclone: an Itrea of low barometric pressure with winds rotating round it in the opposite direction to the hands of a watch." Anti-cyclone: an area of high barometric pressure with winds rotating round it in the same direction as ihe hands of a, watch.” Why are these things thus? Don’t ask. Nat knowing, I cannot say. And I doubt whether either Dr Bates or his successor knows. The Anglican General Synod — Rhymes from the Back Benches When Low in Mind. First, on the proposal to substitute an Administrative Board for a Maori bishop. Next, on the proposal to get rid of “ Fundamental ” clauses in the Constitution by putting <a Bill through Parliament. ’ THE INTERPRETATION CLAUSE. The Canon from Christchurch defined the word "Beard,'’ And said that all boards are of wood ; In Christchurch we gather, they look at the heads. And define Board as only they could. But as he considered that Bishops en bloc Are called in our. language “ the Bench," And benches are wood, so perhaps we must call Our Bishops “ the Banque ” (which Is French). But “ deal " may be part of the Synod itself—(Where what can't be answered's Ignored) ; And bishops and clergy and laymen alike All frequently feel . themselves bored.” THE FUNDAMENTALISTS. Musicians are ruin, we’re agreed as to that. Quixotic and temperamental, But aren't some ecclesiasts frightfully flat When they toot on the flute “ fundamental "? It can't be that clerics are scared of the law— The clerical garb’s accidental :— And no quibbling lawyer could ever do more Splitting straws on the term ” fundamental.” But when these poor clerics have finished this job. Then the lawyers—who're not sentimental— Just pull into b'ts—they’re a hardhearted mob— What the clerics have deemed “ fundamental.” The clerics and lawyers may squabble all night, No layman cares one continental ; They leave it to clerics and lawyers to fight. Whilst they just remain “ fundamental.”

At Ennis, which is in Ireland, a bishop is levelling against immodesty in dress the censures of the church. Women are not to wear dresses shorter than four inches below the knee or lower than the collar bone. The sleeves must be wrist-long and transparent materials are banned. So the cables. The collarbone is an anatomical detail that might have been spared; and I don’t easily picture the bishop or his officers measuring pettieoats by the foot-rule. But in Ireland there is no gainsaying a P.oman Catholic Bishop armed w'ith”tlm censures of the church; he may even achieve the miracle of regulating woman’s dress—a miracle impossible elsewhere. The Paris correspondent of a London paper says of chorus girls on the Paris stage:—“One might think that part of the get-up hud been forgotten, only for the embroideries of crystals and beads. Nothing above the calves is visible behind, but in front the skiit provides for one's knowing, long before the wearer sits down, how far hei stockings extend.” In Russia the all-powerful Soviet can regulate the dress of men, but what about the dress of women? The official Pravda of March 7 publishes an order which an English payer paraphrases:—“Down wTh’the insidious dinner jacket! Off with the servile swallow-tail! To Tophet with the topper!—signs of the bloated bourgeois.” At the same time the Chief of the Soviet Secret Police reports that the wife of Comrade Lunacharsky is “queening it at Berlin dinners, balls, and concerts covered with diamonds and uncovered with silks.”

Shell shock would be the effect mi men of such an apparition in New Zea.land; but in time we should get used to it. For my own part, the feeling into which I have subsided about woman’s dress is expressed bv the lino of Alexander Pope—“ Whatever is,, is right.” For the moment I fall back mi some philosophical reflections by the editor of the Morning Post: —

Certainly from the day of St. Paul, probably from the beginning of human history, women and their ways have been the subject of admonition and exhortation: and never, it may be asserted, with the slightest effect. Woman continues to go her own mysterious way with the imperturbable persistence of an elemental law. " Her own mysterious way.” Yes woman is a riddle, but—it'has been aptly said we will never give her up. Civis.