NOTES OF THE DAY.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1326, 2 January 1912, Page 4

NOTES OF THE DAY.

One of our provincial contemporaries records with approval the reply sent by Mn. K. M'Nab to an elector who sent him a telegram after the return of Mn. Buick. The elector was a Mr. GoaaiN, and on behalf of himself and a number of his neighbours ho informed Mn. M'Nab that they were glad Mn. Buiok had won. Mn. M'Nab replied to the effect that the telegram ought to have been signed "Groggin." This is our contemporary's story. If the story is true, we feel we ought to congratulate Mr. M'Nab on the fighting spirit in which ho has taken his defeat. As to his little joke, however, it is as- bad in manner as one perpetrated by a London magistrate the other clay, and lias not oven the excuse of point or relevancy. An old woman, charged with drunkenness, smellcd strongly of nun. Her excuse was that she only had a little liquor, and that sjic was suffering from rheumatism. Whereupon the magistrate said: "Btimatism, you mean. You're old enough to know better. You can go." Upon which thu (lazclle mildly observed: "Why should the public continue to suffer from these magisterial inanities '!"

It is a common, fallacy that Ireland is grossly over-taxed. The fallacy has been exposed many times, but no doubt a good many friends of Hoiue Kulc, especially in the colonies, have, rejected the exposures as untruthful inventions by Uiiionisl.fi or enemies of Ireland. Perhaps it may be useful, therefore, to qiiolc fiom a speech by Mit. iiiKiu;i,i„ the Irish Secretary and (he most ardent of Home Rulers, delivered in Leeds towards the end of November. Dealing with the financial difficulties of

Homo Rule Mr. Bir.mi. contended (to adopt the useful summary of the Tablet) that, from the British point of view, it is precisely the financial sulci of the (piestion which makes it, specially attractive. He suggested that the taxpayers of Britain would do well to cut their loss. At present Ireland not only did not contribute one brass farthing to the Army or Navy or to anything else of an Imperial character, but she ™ run at a loss of roughly £■2,000,000 per annum. He, urged that while Britain withheld Home ifiile from Ireland she could do nothing to prevent this burden upon (he British taxpayer from increasing, this is an interesting and significant statement, for it appears to indicate that the British Government la a little apprehensive about the opinion of the British taxpayer. The Nationalists are by no means willing to pay the price of Home Rule—Professor Kettle, for example, insists that Britain, when the divorce is granted, should furnish a "handsome wedding-gift"— and between the British taxpayer's pocket and the Irish Nationalist's pocket the Government will find its course a very difficult one to steer.

■ A good many people will remember that delightful book The Gamvoncrs,_ in which a futile, pompous, self-satisfied, dense and ignorant donkey in the shape of a German Baron is made to write his version of a caravaning tour in England with some charming people. Well, the Baron has actually.come to life in the shape of •-■. certain Count Feitz von Hochbekg, -. who has just issued in two volumes the record of his travels in Australia and- New Zealand. .Wa are indebted to the Otago Daily Times for extracts. He was filled with horror the moment he landed'in Australia: . What a shore! Never, thank goodness, havo my eyes seen such a desolate, untidy, miserable country. . . . And what people! 'They remind ono of the Czech miners of tho lowest class, withinsolent, dogged, daring, bad-tempered, sulky . expressions, . . . sallow-com-plexioried people', men and women, .with fallcn-in. cheeks, rough, common, Unattractive, they havo almost a Jewish formation of face and skull, with prominent eyes and animal-like jaws—bush people— I can't describe them otherwise. Melbourne, he says, is a "largish town with a vulgar-looking crowd of people," Sydney "looks a suburb" in which the people "all look like second class commercial travellers,"' and the only decent man he met was a waiter in Adelaide, who, after helping him fouv times to ham and turkey, shook hands with him in admiration of his appetite. But it is his views on New Zealand that must be noted. He refused to admit that Auckland is a, town; Aucklandcrs "have absolutely no artistic sense." Christchurch, however, gave him "an absolutely civilised impression." As to Wellington— SVe took a cnb and drove through Wellington. Tho fact that tho sun shone and tried its best to make this God-for-saken place look cheerful was utterly handicapped by blasts of wind blowing through all the streets, hurling up clouds of dust. To be named Governor of 'Now Zealand, and to have to reside in SVollington, would be, to my mind, equal to criminal exile, to the lead mines of Siberia. -He wound up at Invercargill: While T sat on a bencli at the railway station 1 had ample time to watch the ninny travellers coming and going, getting in and out of various trains, and I must say that I was.again greatly struck by the really uncommon ugliness, vulgarity, ungraccfuluess, and unsniartness of these, New Zcalauders. :

To us this is the saddest spectacle ever presented for contemplation. To .think that one day the Count of The Caravaiicrs would sit on a bench in Invercargill and curse our native land! Where, by the way, is that Voice that used to attend to these attacks'on the credit of the country?

In New Zealand, very happily, it is possible to proclaim some virtue in war and some darkness in peace without incurring the wrath of the people. But in the older countries he is a very brave man who rises up to protest against the doctrine of peace at any price. • When the latest English mail left London the newspapers were a ferment of telegrams and_ articles upon the Anglo-German crisis, and very naturally sonic of the strangest things were 'being said and written. Tho strangest of all the things that were said came from the Solicitor-General, in a speech before the pro-German National Liberal federation—the conference that cheered the German Emperor. "Lot us in this meeting," ho said, ' "send .to tho democracy of Germany this m-ssage, that we, holding as we believe tho faith of the vast mass of our own countrymen, cannot tolerate the idea that there should be ill-feeling between them and us or us and them. The. foll.nv-couulrvmen of Shakespeare and Milton cannot look askance at the fellow-countrymen of Goethe and of Schiller. Those who feel running in their blood the traditions of Wyeliffo and Wesley can hardly want to fiuarrel with the descendants of Luther. This tremendous industrial community, with its proud recollection of great names like Newton and Darwin, cannot bo so ignorantly foolish as to misunderstand a modern community which excels every community in the world in the development of modern 6cience.J'

This appalling rubbish, which was punctuated by cheers, 'is unhappily truly representative of a large section of British Liberal opinion. But fortunately there arc still some Liberals who arc human and honest enough to look at the facts with clear clean eyes. Mu. G. K.,Chesterton is one of them. During November, according to his custom, he got into a controversy, apropos of strike methods, concerning the conflict between physical force and moral forcp, and on November 25, replying tosome critics, he said an excellent thing. He was defending physical force against the censures of the people who hate-physical force as an evil in itself, and ho said in a by-tho-way illustration of his meaning: My main objection is very simple: 1 object to Peace and War bnin'g put in the place of Kight and Wrong. Tf people vaguely associate Right with what is or looks peaceful, aud Wrong with what is or looks violent, they will be alwars grovelling before tho-vilest idol of mud~tho God of Things as They Are, Thai, needs to be said, and said very often, in this age.