Current Topics

New Zealand Tablet, 16 November 1916, Page 21

Current Topics

Health Hints Here are a few gentle hints which may improve the health of some of our subscribers. They appeared in a Western Kansas paper, but apply with equal force to the climate of New Zealand: ' If you have frequent headaches, dizziness, fainting spells, accompanied by chills, cramps, corns, bunions, chilblains, epilepsy, and jaundice, it is a sign you are not well, but are liable to die any minute. Pay your subscription a year in advance, and thus make yourself solid for a good obituary notice.' Enlistment in Ireland As we pointed out a week or two ago, it is absurd and utterly misleading to calculate the rate of recruiting in Ireland up to and covering the after-period of tho insurrection, and to compare that figure with the rate in countries where conditions have been entirely normal, or perhaps even specially favorable to recruiting. Up to the time of the rising, recruiting in Ireland was entirely satisfactory, and far in excess of what might have been expected. It is ridiculous to suppose—or to pretend to suppose—that recruiting could flourish at a time when innocent men were being shot down without charge or trial, and when hundreds, and even thousands of people were being deported to English prisons who were guiltless of any wrong. In such an atmosphere, accompanied as it was by ruthless martial law all over the country, the spirit of recruiting could not draw the breath of life. The state of affairs, in these later unhappy days, has been well summarised for us by a North Island correspondent Mr. Ch. O'Leary, who is, we understand, in close touch with the Old Land and with the condition of things prevailing during the time referred to. *■ Our correspondent writes ' 1 notice a great deal of newspaper talk about conscription in Ireland and Mr. Asquith's statement regarding the low percentage of enlistments. It should not be forgotten:—(l) That Ireland, owing to emigration due to bad government, is a country of the very young and the very old. More than 35,000 young people, between the ages of 16 and 22 years, annually leave its shores for America and other countries, and these are principally males. (2) That Sir E. Carson, when speaking of Ulster recruits, uses the word ' Ulster ' in a geographical sense, as distinguished from the political Ulster of some six counties. (3) That the political Ulster before the war, owing to the wealth of employment, produced very few soldiers, the bulk of the Irish soldiers being Nationalists from Minister, Leinster, Connacht, and Outlander Ulster. All the famous Irish regiments whose doings we read of in the papers —the Ministers, Connachts, Dublins, Royal Irish, Leinsters (Royal Canadians), Irish Guards, etc., —are Nationalists to a man. (4) That even before the war there was a serious shortage of agricultural labor, the area under tillage undergoing a marked diminution. (5) That in those countries where the Irish Volunteer (Sinn Fein) propaganda produced little effect the excesses of martial law, executions, murders, imprisonments, deportations, breaches of faith, etc., have completely changed the good feeling of the people, with the result that enlistments have naturally decreased. (6) That Sir E. Carson knows that Ireland has done more than her part in supplying soldiers ; he knows the estranged feelings of the people owing to recent events ; and yet he wishes to make political capital out of the present state of affairsa state produced mainly by himself. If there were no armed Covenanters there would have been no revolutionary Sinn Feiners, but there would have been more soldiers.'

Electing a President *'.' lii view of the excitement aroused—at least in Americaby the neck and neck contest between Messrs. Wilson and Hughes, a brief account of the method of the election of an American President may be of interest. By the American Constitution, the government of the nation is entrusted to three separate authorities, the Executive, the Legislative, and the Judicial. The executive power is vested in the President, who holds his office during the term of four years. He, together with the Vice-president, is nominally chosen by a system of double election through an electoral college, but in practice this system operates merely as a roundabout way of getting the judgment of the people, voting by States. The Constitution directs each State to choose a number of ' presidential electors equal to the number of its representatives in Congress ' (both senators and members of the House of Representatives). Members of Congress and holders of Federal offices are not eligible as presidential electors. These electors at present the total number is 531—meet in each. State on a Tuesday next after the first Monday in November, every fourth (leap) year ; and give their votes in writing for the President and Vice-president. The votes are transmitted to Washington, and there opened by the president of the Senate, in the presence of both Houses of Congress, and counted. A majority of the whole number of electors is necessary to elect. These electors constitute what is called an electoral college, and the plan was expected to secure the choice by the best citizens of each State, in a tranquil and deliberate way, of the man whom they in their unfettered discretion should deem fittest to be the chief magistrate of the Union. In fact, however, the electors exercise no discretion, and are chosen under a pledge to vote for a particular candidate. Each party during the summer preceding the presidential election holds a huge party meeting, called a national convention, which nominates candidates for President and Vice-president. Candidates for the office of presidential elector are also nominated by party conventions, and the persons who are in each State chosen to be electorsthey are chosen by a strict party vote— expected to vote, and do in point of fact vote, for the presidential candidates named by their respective parties at the national conventions. The Constitution leaves the method of choosing electors to each State, but by universal custom they are now everywhere elected by popular vote, and all the electors for each State are voted for on a 'general ticket.' The polling for electors takes place, as we have stated, early in November on the same day over the whole Union, and when the result is known the contest is over, because the subsequent meeting and voting of the electors is a mere matter of form. Nevertheless, the system here described, being an election by States, is not precisely the same thing as a general popular vote over the Union, for it sometimes happens that a person is chosen President who has received a minority of the popular vote cast. The Re=election of President Wilson At. the moment of writing, it seems tolerably certain that Mr. Woodrow Wilson has been re-elected President. The Electoral College figures- -that is, the respective party numbers of the presidential electors above referred to —show only a small majority, 272 to 259, and it is stated that a judicial investigation of alleged election frauds will take place, but the indications are that the present verdict will stand. The result is not of a nature to arouse any enthusiasm in this particular corner of the planet. Throughout the searching and testing period of the world war, and throughout, also, the hideous happenings in Mexicowhere innocent priests and nuns have 'been amongst the worst of the sufferers President Wilson has shown himself the embodiment of weakness, vacillation, and inaction. Few sensible people, either in America or

out of it, would have desired that he should embroil his country in the war, but it is difficult to have even a modicum of respect for the head of a great nation who loudly proclaims that he will hold a certain country ■'' to strict accountability ' if certain things are done, and then, when that country promptly proceeds to do those very things; takes no measures whatever to give effect to his high-sounding threat. President Wilson has kept his country out of trouble, and that "is probably, when, all is said and done, the explanation of his re-election. But such a policy has its drawbacks as well as its advantages. Both Germany and England know, not only that President Wilson has kept his country out of trouble, but also that he will continue to pursue this policy to the end no matter what provocation he may receive; and both Powers will, in consequence, do whatever seems good in their eyes in the matter of naval policy, without the least regard to America's feelings or opinion. It is something to have kept the country free from anything in the nature of a serious rupture with either of (he belligerents, but the exemption has been purchased at the cost of an almost, irreparable loss of prestige. ' * A rough general idea of the policy issues involved in the recent presidential contest may be gathered from Mr. Hughes's arraignment of the Wilson administration, and from the counter programme submitted by him. His speech of acceptance indicted the administration on the following counts: For allowing partisan demands to weaken our diplomatic service, ' notably in 'Latin-America ' ; for a record in dealing with Mexico ' which cannot bo examined without a profound sense of humiliation ' ; for failure to safeguard the rights of American citizens at the hands of the warring European nations for not promptly putting a stop to the plots and conspiracies on our own soil in the interest of foreign nations ; for our present ' shockingly unprepared' condition even to protect our own border without calling out untrained citizen troops ; for ' living in a fool's paradise ' in resting content with our present ' temporary prosperity ' and not preparing to protect our industries from the severe competition which will follow the close of the European war for having ' shamelessly violated ' the Civil Service laws : and for 'reckless extravagance' and 'profligate waste.' Aside from his arraignment on these eight counts. Mr. Hughes briefly outlined a policy of his own that embraced ten items, namely international arbitration : a regulation of the American transportation system that would be less hampering to its development ; the destruction of monopoly without 'hobbling enterprise or ' narrowing the scope of legitimate achievement': building up the'merchant marine ' conservation of the just interests of labor': workmen's compensation laws; rural credits; ' wise conservation of natural resources' government of the Philippines ' in the interest of the Filipinos ' and without partisanship' ; a national ' businesslike budget.' As Germany is displeased with the re-election of Mr. Wilson, the Allies ought, presumably to be pleased. It seems clear, however, that the German-American electors voted for Mr. Hughes, not from any assistance or sympathy which they expected from him, but merely to square accounts with Mr. Wilson. As the Xcir York Tribune put it, if Mr. Hughes had been elected, ' no American agitator would derive any aid or comfort from the White House' or 'get anything more substantial than the possible gratification of an ignoble and alien grudge.' The Pipe as Preacher The sway of ' My Lady Nicotine ' is now so powerful and well nigh universal over the modern male world — and over a not altogether negligible portion of the female world— that it is waste of breath to denounce it. If denunciation could have killed the tobacco habit it would have been dead long ago. Everyone remembers the splenetic outburst of King James I. : It is a custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black fume thereof, nearest resembling the horrible Stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless.' Coming:

to more modern times, Swinburne once ? got off' the following at the Arts Club, London: < James the First .was a knave, a tyrant, a fool, a liar, a coward. But I love him, I worship him, because he slit the throat of that blackguard Raleigh, who invented this filthy smoking.' Buskin had unmeasured scorn for those who ' pollute the pure air of the morning with cigar-smoke.' And in his Autocrat of the Breakfast lable, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes gives the following bit of friendly advice to budding youths who fancy manhood is incomplete without the adornment of a pipe:—' I do not advise you, young man, to consecrate the flower of your life to painting the bowl of a pipe • for, let me assure you, the stain of a reverie-breeding narcotic may strike deeper than you think, for I have seen the green leaf of early promise grow brown before its time under such nicotean regimen, and thought the umbered meerschaum was dearly bought at the cost of a brain enfeebled and a will enslaved.' Nevertheless the fascination of what Ben Jonson calls Mho most sovereign and precious weed persists, and oft times secures an absolutely dominating hold upon its votaries. The famous French caricaturist, Gavarni, for example, was an inveterate smoker. When in his sixty-fifth year (in 1866) he lay on his death-bed, he is stated to have made this verbal will to an old friend : ' I leave you my wife and my pipe. Take care of my pipe.' • * Seeing that denunciation has failed even to check the practice the censors and moralists' may as well make up their minds to take it for granted, and extract what good they can out of it. 'Everything has a moral,' says Alice in Wonderland, 'if only you can find it'; and a higher authority still was able to ' find tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, -sermons in stones, and good in everything.' An old-time poet named Thomas Jenner—a friend, by the way, of Samuel Pepys —found both a moral and a. sermon in the pipe, and he expounded them in the following quaint moral lyric on the weed. It was published in 1631 in one of Jenners works, entitled the Soules Solace: This Indian weed —now wither'd quite, Though green at nooncut down at night, Shows thy decay, All flesh is hayThus think and smoke tobacco. The pipe so lily white and weak Doth thus thy mortal state bespeak, Thou are e'en such Tone with a touch — Thus think and smoke tobacco. ' And when the smoke ascends on high Then dost thou see the vanity Of worldly stuff Gone with a puff ! Thus think and smoke tobacco. And when the pipe grows foul within, Think of thy soul begrimed with sin; ' For then the fire It does require ! Thus think and smoke tobacco. And seest thou the ashes cast away, Then to thyself thou mayest say That to the dust Return thou must:—■ Thus think and smoke tobacco.