NOTES

New Zealand Tablet, 23 October 1919, Page 27

NOTES

Familiar Quotations *■ - ~ ,„... < : •>■■■■,; \. * A writer in Harper's rightly points out how ridiculous it is to sneer, at, a quotation ; simply, because it is familiar and trite. He says with much reason that very often the explanation of its triteness is its .worth and beauty, which do not suffer and are not staled by frequent use. Familiarity with quotations is in itself usually a proof -of their value. , Those which have passed into common coinage and become household words are certainly not less worth quoting than new and strange lines that will be forgotten in a decade. Age is a qualification rather than a fault; if a saying, or a line of verse, has stood the test of time it is because it has something good in it. Many common • sayings of the people have a beauty which we do not see because we are so familiar with them that we do not examine them at all; in many a homely sentence there is a mine of wit and wisdom, as well as a proof that our ancestors had the knack of putting things compactly and briefly, just as we have a tendency to become verbose and vapid. The proverbs are often of great beauty not a few of them have come down from the greatest masters of language; many people daily quote the Bible or •Shakespere" without knowing it. Henri Barbusse -Most of us have read a translation of a remarkable war novel by Henri Barbusse. War is a grim, terrible thing, and it would be difficult to find language to make it appear worse than the reality. Even in the English version of Under Fire we can see that Barbusse has painted a true picture of the war in all its splendor and all its sordid He has written another book which lias not been translated into English. We are certainly in no hurry to see it translated. We read it on account of the extravagant reviews it had in certain American and English papers; and we were sorry we read it. It had all the power of Under Fire; and all the strength and genius; but it had them in the same way that a fallen angel has the intellectual perfections of his former state even in his perdition. This book, L'Enfer, is a diabolical book if ever was one, and the man who wrote it ought to be in gaol. One can imagine what a picture of depravity a perverted genius could write were he to listen to the confession of a great sinner and then reveal what he had heard in a novel. One: can imagine what a horrible thing a scholar and a man of genius could write had he the instincts of a Maria Monk or ; a Slattery. This will help us to realise what a perversion of genius Barbusse has achieved in L'Enfer. A Peeping Tom finds a hole in a wall of his garret in Paris. He spends his days in looking at the people who happen to stray into that squalid caravansary. All unsuspecting, they reveal to his prying eye the miseries and the sins of their souls. And in the alembic of a degenerate mind the sin and the misery is made tenfold more horrible and filthy. It would be very hard to find a more revolting story; we can recall no novel inspired by so base a motif. The power and the misapplied genius that the book does reveal only make it worse, and we are at a loss to explain how any- reviewer could write a favorable notice of a book that is rightly called Hell. The moral is to beware of accepting the estimate of reviewers of books. There are a few periodicals in which you will find trustworthy notices; but very few. As a rule the reviews of new books in Punch are reliable ; better still are those found in the Irish quarterly publication, Studies. " " fi; The Demoralisation of .the Dictionary y - In old : times it _ used to be said that something % new was to be ever expected from Africa. In our age the old saying is - true of America. We picked up a curiously clever book: "the other day in Wellington, ? and among other, things found a chapter in it which j was suggestive of the heading of ; this note. ,;Under

the caption . "Educational," the author gives in a few half-minute .lesson for up-to-date thinkers the \ follow? ing "up-to-date meanings for old words: — .! , ■' '' '-''M * av CHILD, noun; a student of sex-hygiene ; a member, of a boy scout organisation or girls' campfire organisation V for - the. practice ■V of the kind /'of',r self-control that' parents fail to exercise; a student of the'phenomena of -alcoholism ; ; a handicap carefully avoided \by specialists, in child-study,;, one-third of a French family a human ; being under 13 years of age who. must be " taught everything, so. that he. may not be surprised J at ■ anything when he is 30 years of age. ", .• - . lv* - , MOTHERHOOD, noun; a profession once highly ' esteemed, but rejected by .modern spirits as out of date. '-. MOTHER, noun-; a female .progenitor a ' terra often employed by the older poets in connection with the ideas of love, sacrifice, and holiness, but now described by writers of the Harper's'. temperament as,being synonymous with cow. .::;.'• EUGENICS, noun;., condition of . intense excitement over the future of the human race among those who are doing nothing to perpetuate it. :- : . LITERATURE," noun ; see SEX ; . WHITE SLAVE. . There is as mordant a piece of sarcasm on Progress aiid Education, as understood by men like those who legislate for us and for similar benighted countries, as one could find. It explains itself; it is deplorably . close to the truth. . "•"' ■ ■'-■■'l ' ..'■ - H ;£:;■ Arithmetic * Arithmetic, is supposed to be a subject that does not lend itself to the imagination; but even here our author finds occasion for his satire. Take the following problems: - - ''" "A salary of a police-lieutenant is about §2500 a year. At what rate of interest must this sum be invested to produce a million dollars' worth of real estate in ten years? ./■' ... 'T "In a certain gubernatorial campaign several disinterested gentlemen contribute SIO,OOO each, to .the campaign funds; yet the total of campaign, contributions was a little over 85000. Explain this. \'.S----"A ship carrying 800 passengers and crew is in collision off the banks of Newfoundland, and 700 are saved. Describe the method by which the Evening ■Journal computes 400 souls lost. - "In a recent article on mortality statistics in the World, the writer omitted to divide his average deathrate by 2. Was his argument, because of that, , two times as convincing, or only half as convincing?" The problems were written for American readers but we suggest that others will also find, them interesting. We are reminded somehow by an unexplored subliminal process of the Jingo poet's doggerel : Who shall doubt the secret hid - Under Cheops' pyramid Was that old Cheops did .7: The contractor out of several millions? '' . Several problems connected with profiteering" and press propaganda may also occur to* the observant reader at this juncture. . Verily there is not anything new, under the sun. -,. ■'■". • ■-'