PASSING NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 4049, 20 October 1931, Page 3

PASSING NOTES.

The election ferment in Britain is specially noteworthy in that a National Party is asking-'from the constituencies carte blanche. Guarantees and pledges are to be dispensed with, and the population at large is to pin its faith in nebulous formulae. It remains to be seen whether the people rise to the bait. Will they be sufficiently intelligent or merely suspicious and sceptical? To the devout upholder of orthodox tactics the idea of a National Cabinet made up of units from the different parties seems a hollow mockery and a misfit. Because it was necessary during a grave war crisis, is there a necessary analogue in things to-day, when it is a question not of external foes, but of internal economic stress? If granted a National Cabinet, he would argue that it is a mere masquerade unless permitted to remain sufficiently long in office to carry out its programme. One might concede to such protestant that co-operation is difficult and a National Government to a large extent a hypocritical combination and

that no one party has the courage to shoulder, per sc, the responsibility of imposing crushing taxation, or incurring lavish expenditure. Given all this, it remains clear to the minds of the majority of eminent English statesmen (with the- exception of Mr Lloyd George, who remains in the outer darkness) that the state of Denmark is parlous, and requires fresh orientation of party policies, and that shibboleths which have been mouthed consistently for the past fifty years have to be revised instanter. The gentleman in America who rejoices under the scarcely felicitous cognomen of Al Capone (which, with minor alterations in the native Neapolitan, becomes “il capone,” the blockhead, or “il cappone,” a defective of a different calibre) presents a poor figure Ixfliind the dock to answer an indictment of evading income taxes on a colossal scale. Like Napoleon, large scale operations seem to suit his peculiar genius. As gangster and gunman, racketeer and rum runner, he appears the beau ideal of the denizens of the underworld. Dumas pere would have made of him an engaging scoundrel, a d’Artagnan of banditry. What conditions reader such personages and deeds possible in the States? Is it a scorn for law and order engendered by the Volstead enactments, or a disposition on the part of venal police to connive? Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? The delinquencies of poets Burns and Ferguson, in their daft days, seem mere innocent friskincss to the atrocities of these modern savages or Mohawks. And thou, great god -of aqua-vitae Wha sways the empire of this city (When fou were sometimes capernoity.l Be thou prepared To save us frae that black banditti The City Guard.

Bank managers with their cohorts of accountants, ledger keepers, and tellers, buttressed, as in a citadel, by bullion, gilt securities and compound interest, appear a brood of officials whom it is obviously politic to placate. It has been said, of late, that they are a tribe of nomads, and, if so, then the stranger within our gates is to be entertained with the best we can offer, in case the vials of his wrath be broached against us. When one departs to make room for another of his kind, hospitality is dispensed, and fair dissembling words exchanged —“ relations have been invariably of the happiest.” A banker whose valedictory has been the subject of recent notice has given the palm to Dunedin in one respect. One might have expected to hear that we are the soundest city South of the Line, but perhaps this is understood, and at least we can flatter ourselves that we are the loveliest. The donor of this not undeserved favour is no mean authority. He has been an assiduous member of that eclectic sodality, the Trampers Club. Every week-end has added to his store from the inexhaustible thesaurus of our scenery. Experto crede!

We are now informed that as far as the records of Otago arc concerned, current ideas are a good decade behind the times. The centenary—an imposing and mouth-filling word! —of settlement in these parts falls in this year of grace. The whalers were a different breed from the Pilgrim Fathers, contend those against this notion, and would have the festival fall in 1948. Dr M"’Nab spent much time and money in assembling material as to these early mariners and lapse of time will soon add an appreciable vesture of romance. He has

related that the Otakou settlement was in the hands of the brothers Weller. One of the partners died of a consumption at Otakou during the decade of their venture, and his body was shipped back to Sydney, preserved in a rum puncheon. History does not say whether the cask was tapped. If not, there was ample precedent for this proceeding. The fo'cs’le hands must have been well supplied aliunde. Says Hotten: To tap the admiral is to suck from a cask by a straw; it was first performed with the rum cask in which the body of Admiral I»ord Nelson was placed after Trafalgar. On arrival at England the Admiral was found “ high and dry.” Our citizens seem fund of perambulat in? about ip spectacular guise, dramatic representations, and pageantry of all kinds. Recently there was a representation of the Geneva Conference. Just what the motive of the gathering was is not obvious, but to put the best construction on the meeting is to say that it was for the purpose of interesting us in the work of the League of Nations and to increase the membership of the local branch of the League of Nations Union. The prosaic proceeding of grave diplo mats does not lend itself as a favourable or attractive subject, but presumably the worthy citizens round the table or before the microphone did their best. They were in earnest and it was not a caricature, though we have it on good authority that even caricature carries an element of seriousness. That clement was undoubtedly present here, and no our- knowing tin reputable citizens who took part in the meeting would for a moment suggest that the entertainment was held to attract the limelight or woo notice from the press.

All of us. save the happy possessors of sundials and certain recalcitrant dairy farmers, have put our time pieces, watches, and clocks forward one half hour and adopted Summer Time. It is passing strange what objection people have to making any alteration in the established method of marking off the subdivision of time. When the Gregorian calendar was introduced into England and it was proposed to leave out some ten or eleven, days from the month of September, calling the second of the month the twelfth, what extraordinary arguments were put forward against the change I Some were definitely of the opinion that sb many days were being filched out of their lives; others thought that they wore to be rendered considerably older, propelled, as it were, forcibly along the road to senescence. In the end science and good sense prevailed. So it has been with regard to the introduction of daylight saving. An Englishman, a certain Mr Willett, advocated summer time for many a long year without anyone taking the matter at all seriously. No one would hearken to him and his persistent propaganda, a voice crying in the wilderness. Parliament adopted the measure and an appreciative people at long last raised a monument to his memory, a fitting tribute to a considerable social reformer. It was pointed out by the scientists of the day that the principle was not applicable to the Polar or Equatorial regions, but could with groat social and industrial advantage be maintained in the temperate regions. For the successful advocacy of Summer Time in New Zealand thanks be to Sir Thomas Sidey, who has rendered much quiet and effective service during his long political career. .

Murgcr and the purlieus of the Quartier Latin are hot required to be drawn upon for our recollections of the endearing

vagaries and eccentricities of the ways of Bohemia. "Every month seems to bring forth a fresh sheaf of anecdotes. Mr Graham Robertson in his reminiscences called “Time Was,” evokes amusing memories of the painter Albert Moore. In his Holland lane studios Moore's great obsession was cats and a depressed dachshund which would sit up with flapping ears and impersonate George Eliot :— Cats pervaded the whole house . . . they swarmed in the studios and passages. were born abruptly in coalscuttles, expired unpleasantly behind canvases. I turned out all I could find . . . then I banged the door aud started work again. Bump! A heavy object fell from the ceiling, smearing a long streak down my canvas and landing at my feet. “ Pr-r-row,” said the object, regarding me malevolently out of evil yellow eyes. It was a new cat —fallen through the skylight. Nothing in the way of papering, painting, or white-washing was ever done in the house; nothing was ever dusted, nothing mended. Once Graham Robertson called there with Whistler and found Moore surrounded by a circle of “ spoutless, handle-less jugs, each holding a large cornucopia of brown paper ” :— “What are the jugs for?” I inquired. “ The drips,” said Albert Moore laconically. “The drips?” whispered Whistler. “ }Vhat drips? Asfc him.” Luckily at this moment a fat waterdrop oozed from the ceiling and fell with a plop into one of the receivers. The roof leaked. It had probably leaked for months, perhaps years, but Albert Moore sat dreaming among his jugs and never thought of repairs. Civis.