NOTES

New Zealand Tablet, 9 May 1918, Page 26

NOTES

George Wyndham To most people George Wyndham is known only as a man whose failure in Ireland broke his heart. But he was more than that. And because he was such a man that failure could break his heart he is worth knowing better. Failure may be better than success even though this world judges by success only and has no respect for those who die fighting bravely for lost causes. George Wyndham's whole heart was in the task he set himself of making Ireland contented and happy. The Land Act which bears his name was no small success, but the rest of his programme was unfulfilled. We have not forgotten how the Ulster "Carrion-Crows," as George Wyndham successor called them, raged and frothed when the policy of conciliation was introduced, only to be killed by the bigoted and self-seeking gang who killed every good movement when they could. As a politician he was a failure, because as a politician he was betrayed by his own party, but he will be remembered as one of the few Englishmen who honestly tried to do their duty to Ireland. As a Man of Letters To an inner circle he is known as one who might have made a great name in English literature but who left no more than a few writings to prove what he might have done. The little he did was memorable. His essays, his literary studies show that he was endowed with first-rate literary gifts and that he had in him the making of a great master of style. His work merited the appreciation of experts, but because of its high excellence and its very fulness of thought it has remained unknown except to the learned to the present day. He had a fine sense of words and a jealous exactness in their use which appeared to some akin to pedantry. As a French writer says he had the "tradition of style." It was not pedantry. It was aesthetic delight in doing his work as perfectly as he was able to do it. And this thoroughness was characteristic of the man in everything.- In an age when slipshod writing and speaking have become so common as to be unnoticed George Wyndham, in his speech arid in his writings, set before his fellows a high standard that even Lord Morley has not surpassed. The Man Let . his own beautiful words, taken from the familiar sentences of a letter, tell us what manner of man ho was: —■ "I am alone here with' memories and work. But I am not at all unhappy. I begin to see that it will not be so very terrible to be old and alone. We -are led on to understand the eternity of all fair things by intimate experience, and apart from metaphysical speculation. . •••

: "Now that -Westminster, that y kind heart and chivalrous: gentleman, is dead that A. is away; B. *. married; my little Percy going to -Eton in less than a year myself without a prospect beyond labor at the demands of the moment; the whole past twelve years rise up and sing together the loving-kindness and beauty which has been round me. No gentle act or graceful movement of those who have adorned my life . can ever die. "So I sit alone at the end *bf this year of travail and anxiety, rejoicing. And I thank you from a full heart for your gift and friendship." That was written in 1889. In 1906 he writes: "At last I finish this working year. "We buried the Education Bill this afternoon. I have won my election, made speeches, published my - little book, made new friends, fought enemies. I have lived, and life is wonderful." These extracts are not his polished prose, but the unstudied causeries of a man with his friends. Yet what a grace of clear, simple style they have. Here was a man who felt intensely, who cherished high thoughts, who had a heart that could appreciate the blessing of friendship and even break because of failure to right immemorial wrongs.

Newman John Morley, who could write himself, tells us that Cardinal Newman was the most winning writer of English that ever existed, and one of Morley's delights in moments of leisure was to read Newman's sermons for the sake of the aesthetic pleasure their high literary qualities and their elevation of thought afforded him. How many readers of the Tablet have read Newman? Have you read even his fiction, Callista and Loss and Gain 1 If not, for the sake of good literature and for the honor of the Church which was his mother and is ours, let the next book you buy be one of his—the Apologia, for instance, or Loss and Gain. In the meantime here are two sentences from a sermon which will show you if you do not know already what manner of man he was: "We mourn over the blossoms of May, because they are to whither; but we know, withal, that May is one day to have its revenge upon November, by the revolution of that solemn circle which never stops,— which teaches us in our height of hope, ever to be sober, and in our depth of desolation, never to despair. "Man rises to fall: he tends to dissolution from the moment he begins to be: he lives on, indeed, in his children; he lives on in his name, he lives not on in his own person. He is, as regards the manifestations of nature here below, as a bubble that breaks, and as water poured out upon the earth. He was young, he is old, he is never young again. This is the lament poured forth in verse and in prose, by Christians, and by heathens. The greatest work of God's hands under the sun, he, in all the manifestations of his complex being, is born only to die."

"The Irish at the Somme" One of the chapters of Mr. MacDonagh's book opens with a quotation from an Irish M.P. who gravely told the House that under Irish tunics there beat as brave hearts as under the kilts of the Scots ! ! ! Not being skilled in anatomy we make no comment. Of a Dublin Fusilier, limping back wounded from the trenches, aided by a war correspondent, the following : "It is a dreadful war," said the sympathetic correspondent. - "It is indeed, sir, but sure 'tis better than no war at all." A shy, inexperienced looking, sentry seemed fair game for an inquisitive officer : * N Officer: "What are you here for?" . Sentry: "To look out for anything unusual, sir." 'Officer: "What would you call something unusual?" to Sentry: "I don't know until I see it, sir."

. Officer ; (sarcastically "What would you do if you saw battleships steaming across the field ?''' ; Sentry: -"Take-the pledge for life, sir." , - " Gone West" - , 'V' : "" "- ' The pathetic phrase which has become universal coinage in describing the death of a soldier, comes, according to Mr. MacDonagh, from the Irish of Cork and Kerry:—• "In Kerry or Cork the word west'or wesht ' as it is pronounced locally, expresses not only the mysterious and unknown, but is used colloquially for 'behind,' 'at the back,' or ' out of the way.' So it is at the Front. A lost article is gone west as well as a dead comrade. ' When I tould the Colonel that a bottle of brandy had gone wesht, he was that mad that. l thought he would have ate me.' The saying, ' Put it wesht, Larry, and come along with ye, ~ may be heard in French estamineti as well as in Kerry public-houses. At parade a subaltern noticed that one of his men had anything but a clean shave on the left side of his jaw. ' 'Twas too far wesht for me to get at it, sir,' was the excuse. Another Irish soldier applied to the quartermaster for a new pair of trousers: ' The one I've on me is all broken wesht,' he explained. A dentist asked a Munster Fusilier where the bad tooth was. 'Here, in the wesht of me jaw,' was the reply. In the homely Irish phrase what joyousness and what pathos meet. It will raise a smile at the quaint humor behind it, but it will, too often, raise a tear for the friend who has. 'gone west' for ever." Gaiulii extreme luctus occupat.