PASSING NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 3959, 28 January 1930, Page 3

PASSING NOTES.

“ A deep and extensive depression has been advancing rapidly on the Dominion.” It is in such terms, any morning, the official weather prophet cheers us up. Imagine w’hat would have happened to soothsayers of such misanthropic spirit under the glorious despotisms of the past. The inference is that New Zealand is being subjected to an elaborate meteorological attack. It is small consolation to know that the weather which we experience is not of our own brewing, but comes invariably from some other place. That is where we have a genuine grievance. Why does not Australia keep her own beastly depressions to herself? It is time our Government took the matter up. If a protective duty were levied upon all depressions entering New Zealand by way of the Tasman Sea the Treasury would do pretty well. A boycott would' be still better. In the matter of weather we seem to be always between the devil and

the deep sea. What time the Tasman is having forty winks, the Antarctic, a good deal provoked, as we quite understand, by Admiral Byrd, is sending up its blustering cohorts. Then some optimists must needs go and arrange a Dominion bowling tournament for Dunedin in January. Result, sunshine for week ending January 18—314 hours! Seventeen Lours of sunshine spread over six days! This prodigality is overpowering. And the irony of it! We can have our water supply augmented at a cost of about £400,000. Surely there is something to be said for tanks. No doubt we should be glad we are not in the United States, where the weather seems to be successfully keeping down the population. A great science is meteorology. If all the meteorologists of the world could be banished to some evil spot—Cape Horn or Deception Island would do—good might come of it. So we fret anil grumble Then comes a day like Thursday, 89 :n the shade, the jolly old sun making mock at our astonishment and melting the tar on our very best streets, and 10, it is a different world. Sumer .3 ieumen in—at last.

The great Naval Conference is in full blast —a noble spectacle. Three hundred reporters, a regiment of stenographers and “chirks” from the United States —chew they must, to be in the film tradition —experts, advisers, secretaries, interpreters, messengers, detectives, microphones, and what not jostle one another and make free with the furniture in St. James’s Palace, leaving barely room for a seorp or so of poker-faced statesmen of the five Powers. Nobody seems to have thought of the fitness of accommodating the conference in a battleship, the commander of which would, of course, have explicit instructions to proceed to the Bay of Biscay, and stay there till all is over, everybody quite satisfied, and a beautiful agreement signed and sealed Good is expected to come out of strange components. We must be optimists even J we do see the Fleet of England, that was her all in all, handed over to the tender mercies of Mr Stimson and General Dawes, and M. Tardieu, and Signor Grandi, and Mr Wakatsuki. Disarmament is a great ideal. But it is curious that talk of it always scCtns ‘o concentrate upon the one particular kind of armament upon which the British Empire depends for its security. Signor Mussolini has conceived the glorious plan of the abolition of all navies. That achieved. Italy, every black-shirted Fascist trained to arms, would leap at once into the position of a dominant Power. The troublesome British and French navies done away with, the re born Roman Empire would be able to advance the cause of civilisation in the good old way, from behind a powder cart. Of course, we all wish the conference well. But before it has done with quotas and parities, battleships, cruisers, submarines, aircraft carriers, guns, and armour plate, as like as not it will wish it had never been born. The nations have agreed never to fight any more. But their belts are still full of knives and pistols. In effect they say, “Five guns and seven daggers! Perhaps it is over much. Consider the weight and the expense. What about bringing it down to four guns and five daggers?” Possibly Lord Halsbury will deem it desirable to draw attention to the grin on the face of the Muscovite, and to offer one of his little reminders about chemical triumphs, and the neglect of the peoples of the earth to betake themselves, en masse, to bomb proof shelters.

A London paper has been appealed to by one of its readers to institute an investigation as to the source of the funny stories that are continually going

the rounds. Many of us have pondered that mystery. We are all very familiar with the type-of man that goes through life with a funny story on his tongue. He seems to find an enormous satisfaction in being able to regale his friends with one that they have never heard before or have forgotten. There are competitors in this line of activity. Personally, I have always marvelled at the man who, otherwise short enough in the memory, seems ever to have a supply of allegedly funny stories up his sleeve. Sometimes they are not in the least funny, merely vulgar, but you are ex pected to laugh. There is the man, too, with one dreaded anecdote. The gift for telling stcries, and there are persons who possess it, condoneth much. Of the late Sir James Taggart, an exLord Provost vf Aberdeen, who did so much to make Aberdeen stories famous throughout the world, it is said that he told over a thousand Scottish jokes a year. He shared with the Marquis of Aberdeen the reputation of being the greatest Scottish story-teller. They were matched against .each other on two occasions telling stories unremittingly for two hours. Sir James won the first contest, though he lost the second. His winning joke was: — The station master telephoned to the local minister and told him that some goods had come for him. “ Ah. yes,” said the minister. “ I expected a parcel of theological books from Edinburgh. I shall send for them at once.” “ The sooner the better,” said the station master, “ they’re leaking.”

He used to tell one story against his great rival: — When Lord Aberdeen was attending the Scottish Assembly in Edinburgh a drunken man collided with him. On being asked. “ Don't you know you have run into the Marquis of Aberdeen and Temair? ” he replied, “Am I as bad as that? Is there two of them ? ”

Yet, ruling out Aberdeen and her muni cipal enterprise, there is still a mystery

The cabled description of Indian pilgrims, a million and a-half of them, immersing themselves in the Ganges and crying “ Ram, Ram ” at the rising sun is brief but spectacular. A picture of a million New Zealanders gathering on the shores of Auckland Harbour or on the banks of the Avon —-both very sacred places—preparatory to a devotional paddle, simply will not materialise in the mind’s eye. The Anglo-Saxon, who has definite views on the standard of living, docs not understand people who endure long journeys, fatigue, hunger and every form of discomfort in order that, in a certain stretch of very dirty water, certain antics may be performed for the benefit of a fixed star ninety million miles away. Mr Aldous Huxley has penned an illuminating description of the manner in which Hindus react to such an occasion as a solar eclipse. And now the day and the hour had come. The Serpent was about to swallow the Sun. A million men and women had come together at Benares to assist the Light of Heaven against his enemy. The ghats go down in furlong-wide flights of steps to the river, which lies like a long arena at the foot • of enormous tiers of seats. Floating on the Ganges we looked up at acres upon sloping acres of humanity. At a given moment the eye of faith must have observed the nibblings of the demoniacal serpent. For suddenly and simultaneously all those on the lowest steps of the ghats threw themselves into the water, and began to wash and gargle, to say their prayers, and blow their noses, to spit and drink. A numerous band of police abbreviated their devotions and their bath in the interests of the crowds behind. The front of the waiting queue was a thousand yards

wide. But a million people were waiting. Ihe bathing went on uninterruptedly all day. .lime P as - se< i- The serpent went on nibbling imperceptibly at the sun. lhe Hindus counted their beads and prayed, made ritual gestures, ducked under the sacred slime, drank, and were moved on by the police to make room for another instalment of the patient million. We rowed up and down taking snapshots. West is west.

King Jazz and his rabble make pandemonium in the city of which Mrs Browning wrote —

1 have been between heaven and earth since our arrival at Venice. The heaven of it is ineffable. Never had I touched the skirts of so celestial a place. The beauty of the architecture, the silver trails of water up between all that gorgeous colour and carving, the enchanting silence, the moonlight, the music, tne gondolas,— I mix it all up together and maintain that nothing is like it. nothing equal to it —not a second Venice in the world.

Now the police are doing their best, pitching gramophones and loud-speakers into the Grand Canal. That is poetic justice. The gondolier had almost forgotten how to sing, but he will begin a hopeful lubrication of his rusty baritone, and bend new strings to his dusty guitar. „ The palaces of departed Doges will recede again into mystery and repose, the plash of ripples will again be heard upon their slimy steps. A brooding Byronic figure may again be seen upon the Bridge of Sighs. Night falls, the lights come out, a blast of strident mechanism tortures the startled air, intrigue pauses, the city listen 1 ”. Shouts, shrieks, blows and groans die in harrowing diminuendo. A fearful pause—then splash—another loud-speaker has gone into the canal. Voluptuous quietude resumes her sway, the serenader sallies forth, from balconies bright eyes glance, all is decorum and romance. Adown between the steep palaces the dark gondolas glide. Bang, Bang, Crack, Crack! The ear is rent by the fusillade — it is revolution, the Bolsheviks are out, with bombs and machine-guns. Panic flies and massacre pursues. More work for the police! It is their busy night. Another outboard motor boat has got loose upon the waters.

Marriage is a lottery. In the words of one of our sagesMarriage is a desperate thing. The frogs in Aesop were extreme wise: they had a great mind to some water, but they would not leap into the well because they could not get out again.” Possibly with a fine sense of matrimony as a leap into the unknown two young people in the United States recently secured attention from the newspapers as probably the first couple to substitute a parachute jump for the conventional wedding march. After the ceremony had been performed in a capacious aeroplane, at an altitude of two thousand feet, the blissful bride and bridegroom slipped out of the open door into the void. They fell about a thousand feet before they remembered to open their parachutes, and float to mother earth. Of the rest of the company at this atmospheric wedding the only one to follow the bridal couple, and drop like Lucifer, was the best man, and he is said to have narrowly escaped landing in a concrete mixer. The “get married and jump” idea may become popular. There is no telling. It is the hcrcic age, whatever the pessimists may say. But why bridal couples, being up in the clouds, should think to accelerate the process of being brought down to earth it is a little difficult to understand. That usually follows quickly enough. It seems easier to appreciate the impulse that would urge the newly-weds to spend their honeymoon in a balloon, refusing to come down. Besides the parachute business is very hard on best men, even if Liv'-s of “best” men oft remind us There are drops—of that elixir Drinking we may leave behind us Remnants in a concrete-mixer. CIVIS.