PASSING NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 3994, 30 September 1930, Page 3

PASSING NOTES.

Mr Low, the famous cartoonist of the London Evening Standard, who has risen meteorically from a boyhood on the Taieri Plain to the heights of a from, rank among the world’s caricaturists, is meeting trouble. Some writhing victims whose noses he has further elongated and whose chins he has further reduced are criticising him as vulgar. They have found that his cartoons are not a lookingglass, and they are proportionately disgusted. There are many dangerous trades in the world. Some of them are recog nised as such by the public and by Arbitration Court awards. The marine diver, the coal miner, the worker in white lead, the schoolmaster —each of these takes his life in his hands, and occasion ally lets it drop. Less known to all of us, but nevertheless deserving of Arbitration Court recognition, are the hunter of ivory, the collector of dragon’s teeth, and the bottler of crocodiles’ tears. Prominently placed in this category is the occupation of the political and social cartoonist. It is his lot to meet with disgust and indignation where he expected gratitude. He brings his subjects out of the obscurity that irks into the - limelight that blinds. He gives full credit to the unearned increment of a facial feature, or confers merited fame upon the aristocracy of eccentricity, only

t> find that his victims ; refer to wallow in the obscurity of communistic equality To his detractors Mr Low replies:— There are, of course, people who think all caricature is vulgar. They think that when you deal grotesquely with the facial beauty of persons you are being insulting—progressively insulting probably, with the extent of the exaggeration. A nose one inch long is offensive; two inches outrageous; three inches criminal; and so on. There are others in whose opinion the personal appearance of great men is public property, their faces being regarded as component parts of the social or political scenery, but who hold that, on the other hand, the personal habits of these great men are their own private and domestic concern. There seems to be strange wrong-headedness about this view. When Mr J. H. Thomas was caricatured wearing his dress-suit there were many protests. But if to draw Mr Thomas's dress-suit was vulgar, then how much greater a degree of vulgarity was there in drawing Mr Thomas himself within it? ... It is . becoming recognised that the private lives and habits of statesmen are of the utmost importance to a democratic community. . . . The poor cartoonist cannot please everybody.

When Sir William Harcourt was cari eatured by Harry Furniss he did not lik< it. When Disraeli first saw a caricature of himself he exclaimed, “Now I am famous.”

Irresponsible, irrepressible, incorrigible imbecile are some of the adjectives that rise to the mind from reading Mr Lang’s policy speech in Sydney the other day And the same adjectives seem to be applicable to the party bosses who met Mr Hogan, Labour Premier of Victoria, a week before to demand that the Government should at once find twenty millions for social services. At the same time the Government of Victoria was “broke,” and the Victorian Railways De partment had not a penny to meet its pay roll. Even Mr Hogan, Labourite though he is, characterised the report of his party bosses as “ three pages of moonshine and nonsense, some parts of it false, others stupid and ridiculous."' Mr Hogan also was once a wild man, and probably would still be but for the steadying effect of office responsibility. To Mr Lang, not steadied by similar responsibility, moonshine and nonsense come naturally. His electoral promises, says Sydney messages, would involve an expenditure of two hundred millions! While all Australia is, or should be. tightening its belt, he promises a programme which includes borrowing enough money to build roads and new railways, to finance hydro-electric power schemes, erect schools, guarantee wheat prices, relieve soldier settlers, complete bulk wheat handling, and build ’ agricultural colleges. Simultaneously Mr Lang promised to make the railways and tramways pay, to abolish the rationing of -work, solve unemployment, and maintain wages. Political promises are among the easy things in the world. During the last Australian Federal elections Mr Theodore promised that, if his party came to power, he would settle the coal strike in a fortnight. When elected he did nothing. Some politicians in Australia are still at the stage of the policy of “ boom and bust.” At the head of the German Fascists Herren Hitler and Goebel are showing a grave lack of originality. The heady wine of electoral success has filled them with a truculence which is not a new phenomenon in certain types ot humanity. Here extremes meet. For the truculence with which we are familiar from the mouths of Communists and Bolshevists et hoc genus omne is the usual everyday style of Mussolini. Thus

Herr Goebel before a cheering crowd of Berlin Fascists: —

We have the courage to plunge the German Republic -into chaos. . . . Our object is to checkmate the Republic, and when we have won that game we can begin our game with the world in this dung-heap state. • • • YJe enter Parliament to rule alone. Whoever joins us must submit to us. We shall march through open doors; but if the doors are closed against us we shall smash them.

Whether it be transalpine or cisalpine the tone is the same. And the only difference in methods is the substitution of brown shirts for black. Adolf Hitler himself, the Viennese decorative artist or house-painter, does not learn from past fiascos. In Munich seven years a<m he tried much the same—announced himself as leader of all Germany, with Ludendorf as his Commander-in-chief. Deluded by the cheers of his immediate followers, he. set out with his henchman on a triumphant march through the streets of the capital. He got what tie asked fot Napoleon’s whiff of grapeshot. With rifles and machine guns the Bavarian Reichswefir made the two chain pions scuttle away in a motor car. Their chief obstacle on this occasion will he even more effective than grape-shot—the great mass of the German people and staunch old z President Hindenburg, neither of whom will stand any nonsense.

I A correspondent forwards me a cutting a northern - paper revealing the fons et origo of the newly-aroused interest in England in “ The Siege of Belgrade ” —the alliterative poem quoted in last week’s Notes. A man in far-off Delhi had written to the Poet Laureate inquiring the authorship of th e poem. Mr Masefield, taking his newly-invested duties seriously, confessed his ignorance, and passed on the inquiry to the people of England. A deluge of conflicting and contradictory theories flowed in, until he had to cry, “Enough.” The most that can be said is that the poem belongs to a bygone age of laborious indefatigability, literary trifling, and Arcadian leisure. Base utility was then not the chief aim of literary labour, nor was “ value received ” its true object. No thought of profit was in the mind of the man who, as Pliny relates, wrote the 15,000 lines of the Iliad in so small a compass as to be enclosed in a nutshell —and in those days people knew not the cocoanut. Or of the man of Elizabeth’s day who enclosed the whole of the Bible in an English walnut no bigger than a. hen’s egg. ‘‘ The nut holdeth the book; there are as many leaves in my book as in the great Bible, and I have written as much in one of my little leaves as in a great leaf of the Bible.” Or of Peter Bales, in the same reign, who wrote “ The Lord’s Prayer, the Creed, the Ten Commandments, two short Latin prayers, and his own name, motto, day of the month, and year ” —all within the circle of a penny, and all perfectly readable. Reverting to the subject of alliterative poems, one can find better examples than “ The Siege of Belgrade.” One is entitled “An Artful and Amusing Attempt at Alphabetical Alliteration Addressing Aurora”: Awake Aurora! and across all airs -By brilliant blazon, banish Boreal Bears, Crossing cold, Canope’s celestial crown, Deep darts descending dive delusively down. Entranced each eve Europa’s every eye Firm fixed forever fastens faithfully. Greets golden guerdon gloriously grand. And so on. The following has a more modern ring about it—brings in telephone conversations, high heels, and a flood of amatory troubles:—

Arthur asked Amy’s affection; Bet, being Benjamin’s bride, Cooiy cut Charlie’s connection ; Deborah, Dicky denied. Eleanor’s eye, efficacious, Frederick’s fatality feels Giles gained Georgiana-—good gracious ! Harry hates Helen’s high heels.

Among both politicians and motorists there is such a thing as “ driving short.” As far as motoring is concerned “driving short” consists in keeping one’s eyes on the ground immediately in front of the bonnet, and ignoring either from habit or from various personal inabilities objects that lie in the further field of vision. The personal inabilities in question are either shortness of sight, or the nervousness of a novice. The habit referred to is shortness of mental vision. Whatever be the cause, the effects are identical. “ Driving short ” makes a motorist a danger to the road and a menace to the neighbourhood. When at the same time he drives fast—hell is let loose. The pity is that the defect is not discovered till the damage is done—if then. Now, parvis componere magna—as Virgil says. Let us compare great things with small. Many men whose task it is to drive the political Lord along the economic road are afflicted with the calamity-breeding vice of “ driving short.” In their political judgments they are peering myopically either at to-day or to-morrow, and the later future is left to take care of itself. Hie paltry stone or pot-hole on the road immediately ahead is of more moment than the man or woman or child on the next corner. The result is that a community founded on economics is governed by politics, and the laws of the one are defied by the flaws of the other. All this is inherent in Democracy, and would be not a whit different were Democracy perfect. Probably this is what made Burke say: A perfect democracy is therefore the most shameless thing in the world.

Dear Civis, —On the subject of literary trifles—vide your note last week—have you heard of the famous anagram of the letters of the word Christianity—“ I cry that I sin ”? Or the equally famous one of Florence Nightingale—“ Flit on, cheering angel ”? These are so apropos that I fear there is some catch in them. Is there? There are many other well-known anagrams equally striking. Here are a few: Revolution—“ Love to ruin”; Presbyterian—“ Best in prayer”; French Revolution—“ Violence run forth ”; Sweetheart—“ There we sat”; Masquerade—- “ Queer as mad ”; Lawyers—“ Sly ware”; Old England—“ Golden land”; Telegraph—“ Great help”; Parishioners —“I hear parsons”; Paradise Lost—- “ Reap sad toils”; Paradise Regained—- “ Dead respire again ”; Horatio Nelson —“ Honor est a Nilo.” In the course of last century there lived in London the celebrated Dr Abernethy—famour both for his medical skill and for a brusqueness that was often indistinguishable from rudeness.

A lady afflicted with a nervous complaint went to consult him. The rough and caustic manner in which he catechised her so discomposed her that she was thrown into a fit of hysterics. When she had recovered, she put into his hand the usual fee — a sovereign and a shilling. Dr Abernethy presented the shilling to her, saying gravely, “ Here madam, take the shilling. Go to the nearest toyshop, buy a skipping rope, and use it every day. If will do you more good than all my prescriptions.”

The anagram of “ John Abernethy ” is “ Johnny the Bear.”

Civis.