OBITER DICTA.

Press, Volume LX, Issue 18219, 1 November 1924, Page 14

OBITER DICTA.

(By K.)

We are back to normal. The weather has become recognisable again as the pleasant and orderly thing so much easier to live with than the futurist or imagist stuff that has so long afflicted us—which we old-timers liked so much in 1855. Mr Holland has discharged his adjectives at "The Press." Mr Isit-t has denounced the newspapers as the organs of Moral Disease Extension and Reform Destruction Ltd. (generally alluded to more briefly as Hell Inc.) And Dr. Thaeker lias bounced again into print with an appeal to the Editor to go ou his knees and think sanely, for once, about Madras monkeys and tinned peas. Morning's at seven, the snail's on the thorn, all's right with the world. All that we need for completeness is the Rev. \ and Professor t, and Mr —.

The cloud on the horizon is the madness of the British electorate. Tired of its attempt to discover whether the Labour Government is discreetly pink or indiscreetly red, and whether it is Chauffeur JlacDonald or the Communist engine that makes the Labour car go, it has decided to got a new car altogether. Tips will distress our local Reds, who had counted upon being able to quote John Bull as a satisfied customer of Labour, but their sorrow "will bo as nothing to tho sorrow of our Liberals. Just as Mr Isitt cannot conceive that anyone can really like the flavour of beer, and believes that the mere force of circumstances must prevail for cocoa, so many Liberals have believed that when tho real crisis comes men must throw their arms about the Liberal Party as tho only dependable support. Yet the British Electorate has had a good long look at the Liberal Party and has decided that it can bo done without. Noinen et praeterea nihil. It is rather late in the day for Mr Wilford to change from a pendulum into something else, and yet pendulums are clearly not wanted.

In his preface to "Saint Joan," Mr Shaw says that not for worlds would he question tho preciso accuracy of the calculations of the modern physicist, or tho existence of electrons. The fate of Joan was a warning to him against such heresy. '' Saiut Joan'' not then having reached me, I did question the colour and shape of tho electron, and even doubted its weight, and as a result a local sciehtist addressed mo almost as Mr Isitt would address a glass of beer. This merely strengthened my conviction concerning Science, and disinclined me to look otherwise than sourly upon the proceedings of tho surgeons assembled in America. But this week there came. a broad beam of light out of tho darkness—Sir Lindo Ferguson talking about eyes. "Eyes," he eaid, "were not meant for Teading, but intended for use in jungles, looking out for wild animals and searching for food. It is only within the last two centuries th.it reading lina become a matter of course for the general public, and it is largely responsible for the great amount of eye trouble to-day. It haa taken mankind millions of vears to reach, through evolution, the present state of 'civilisation, and our eyes, in a hundred years, have not caught up with the changing demands made upon them."

Nor is it only his eyes which are unequal to the conditions man has'made for himself. He has been on the earth

for million!, of years, and it ftw., foro but yesterday that he ceaeed to be a savage, and, comparatively speak • ing, no more than five minutes ifeJ he learned to speak and write. Tfo. consideration should make those p auio who despair of mankind, and Jt shottld also bo weighed by those who believe that a few Socialistic measure, will iron out of man's spirit the creases made by a million years of animal struggle.

Turkey is discovering i n it, owu way that, the path of progrets is aot the broad, well-lit highroad that so many suppose. The Turks have got rid of the Caliph, and the veil and jh e harem are going or gone. Monogamy has been recognised, and, to snaunatije some other modem changes, "the*# jg talk of co-education—of women fcan. ing to be doctors and to dance the jazz. An air servico is opened the capital of the old Empire and of the new republic. Religious schools are swept away, and religions «o«rt» subordinated to tho Ministry of Jjj. tice. A prize is offerod for a plan fa reconstructing Constantinople on em lines. An American profesrtjbrought in to inspect the schools," That, is progress. In Turkey also yon find "postmen on strike, polittnttn beating arrested persons to extort e6n« fessions from them, poker being nounced not a game of chance, a men,, ber of Parliament boasting that he will kill any editor who attacks him, football being forbidden to youthi seventeen, visitors in Angora dwelling in tents and railway waggoat, hooliganism and the insulting of Western women increasing, and duelling possibly being legalised." That it pro. gross, too. Progress is perhaps nothing more, and nover wis or will be anything more, than man in motion.

We shall soou bo hearing ia, evefy accent from that of the angry bfcar to that of tho tearful and tremulous angel, the grand old truth that "Liberalism never dies." And while one may agree, ono may wonder that the Liberals do not realise what is signified by tho fact that the Liberals ftro becoming extinct. What it ' signifies is th»t other people have taken charge of Liberal principles and the Liberal! have held fast only to the label. I would not go so far aa a writer io {he Now York "Bookman" for Ocfcbor who draws a "portrait of a Llbfiitl," but I like the bricks which he htttvoe at this intolerable political nttiltnee; Poltically the Liberal is almost egHsct and oompJetely absurd. When tl* world war crashed through the giant of tMJMt* house in which he had drowsed so.wearely for a generation, when hie idewswere dragged out of the podded oelk WAW»;tnay had gyrated so harmlessly, he 4iWWI4 ft very wicked world, indeed, which fawned his nostrums beoatrt® of theif, wiojM futility. With the return of pe»oe? he found" his occupation gone. Since wo ns has taken refuge in a 6We*olencc, in the hope that this exhibition of the tenderness of his heart will dneW attention from the patioity ox his With a more or lies aufcconioicros relHii* tion that his politioal life is ebbing away, the Liberal ia beginning to turn t upon the object of hie solicitude an enquiring ««. What, he wondera, can be the e*p»n««« for the failure of hie Messiamo Mission? And in duo course he produces P*®™° scientific volumes of meditations upon WW crowd mind, the manufacture of WJUo opinion, and , the behaviour of herd, instincts. Having utterly toled f the macnes the Liberal feels himselt to M (in expert authority on th© ways and of impressing them .. . . . Hie brighter and brighter a<\y is aiWJH just about to break . . .

And Britain has at last discovered that it has had quite enough of him.