Evening Post. TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 1930.

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 73, 23 September 1930, Page 8

Evening Post. TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 1930.

" SLOPPING OVER "

In his "Fourth of July Oration" Artemus Ward found the greatest of Washington's merits in a negative virtue.

G. Washington was, ho said, about the best man this world ever sot eyes on. Ho was a clear-hedded, ■warmharled, and stiddy goin man. He never slopt iover! Tho prevailin weakness of most public men is to slop over!. . . They git filled up and slop. They Rush Things. They travel too much on the high prcsher pruiciplo

. . . When they see the multitood goin it blind they go pel mcl with it, instid of csertin theirsclves to set it right. . . Washington never slopt over. That wasn't' George's stile.

Even one of the ablest, stiffest, most self-sufficient of Washington's successors was not free from this weakness. When President Wilson went to Paris for the Peace Conference somebody "pulled his leg," and—if the change of metaphor may be pardoned—he "slopped over" with appalling results.

Men hive testified to mo in Europe, ho said, that our men were possessed by something that they could only call religious fervour. They were not like any of the other soldiers. They had a vision, they had a/ dream, they turned tho whole tide of battle, and it never came back..

"What a big tail our cat has got!" exclaimed the astonished President, but not until dispassionate observers in Europe had called his attention to the fact. Then he was free to speak. Not since Bill Adams won the battle of Waterloo had the battlefields of Europe seen anything comparable to the magical effect which he attributed to American valour. "Washington never slopt over," but Woodrow Wilson sometimes did.

We have been reminded of this incident by the "slopping over", on a much wider scale which has lately been excited among Woodrow Wilson's countrymen by a great naval exploit. One has, indeed, only to change a single epithet'in a sentence of !i&* cpearji already quoted in order to make it fit the new context. Referring to the hopes inspired in the Allies by the coming of the Americans, the President said:—

Then they saw men ia khaki, coming across the sea' in the spirit of Crusaders, and they found these were strange men, reckless of danger not only, but reckless because they seemed to see something that made that danger worth while.

Change the colour from khaki to blue, and how admirably the passage fits the picture that has thrilled the world of the Ventura dashing through 800' miles of. "uncharted seas," presumably scattering any coral reefs that were rash enough to get .in the way like so much foam from her bows, and kept hard at it by a captain and a crew who were absolutely reckless of danger "because they seemed to see something that made that danger worth while." As the captain has been officially praised for observing "the highest tradition of the Navy and the American Merchant Marine," .he . may be assumed to have spent all or nearly all of that time of peril on , the bridge. American legend may hereafter class him with the Roman hero of whom Macaulay has told us,

How well Horatius kept the bridge, In the brave days of old.

Any time that the skipper of the Ventura may have had to spare from the bridge he may perhaps have spent in accordance with the highest tradition of the old Missouri steam-boat service in sitting on the safety-valve. That the chief engineer of die Ventura can have had no share in this may be inferred from the fact that the best they could do for him in that tumultuous welcome at Pago Pago was to praise ■

his performance in the long run to the Tahiti in shutting down on the ice plant and other auxiliary plants in order to save all steam for the dash. '

There does not seem to be much room for heroism or. seamanship here, but the courage needed to face the indignation of the ship's company and the passenger.? deprived of their ice-cream must not be overlooked. All the facts, however, will not be known till we have full details of the proceedings at San Francisco, where, we are told,

aeroplanes escorted the Ventura through the Golden Gate, dropping flowers on the deck. At Quarantine an official committee boarded the vessel and presented, on behalf of San Francisco, to Captain Meyer, a scroll testifying to the brilliant rescue.

Yet the rescue had already been effected; without any brilliance or blare of trumpets, by the Norwegian steamer Penybryn, whose captain laughed at the Ventura's "800 miles of uncharted seas."

She travelled, he said, across the most beautiful and safest portion of the Pacific Ocean. There was absolutely no chance of touching anything for hundreds of miles.

And a large part of the truth had been proclaimed with brutal frankness by the San Francisco "Argonaut" before the official welcome:

Why, in face of these circumstances, the San Francisco newspapers should ignore the achievement of the Norwegian freighter and propose—as has been done —a public ovation for the captain of the Ventura, the ordinary,individual must remain at a loss to understand. It would be almost as appropriate in the premises to prepare an ovation for the skipper of the official garbage scow, or for the editor of the "Police Gaz-

ette." But if they givo such ovation to tho captain of the Ventura he will have a gay time of it thereafter whenever ho tries to hold up his head among other sailor-men ia auy port of all the Seven Seas.

It is easy to smile at the sentimental extravagances of. our American cousins, stimulated probably by the megaphones of Mr. Hearst's Yellow Press, but it is less pleasant to turn to the similar tendencies on the part of the British Press, of which we have had two glaring and much more mischievous examples within the last few weeks. The Hearsts of the British Press«are Lords Rothermere and Beaverbrook, and they have both found occasion in Australia's financial difficulties for "slopping over" in a deplorably sentimental, silly, and pernicious fashion. Three weeks ago, when Australia was beginning to nerve herself for the task of making ends meet and paying her debts, the "Daily Mail" encouraged the advocates of repudiation;—who are probably pacifists to a man —by pointing to her "magnificent service in war time" as a reason for "sympathetic consideration." Yesterday, the "Daily Express" was reported to have worked the same vein of patriotism in a column editorial entitled "The Truth About Australia: What She Did for the Empire." "The Truth About Australia" seems to be that she did so much for the Empire in 1914-18 that it would be sacrilege to expect her to pay her debts in 1930. The gush of the "Daily Express" is so sloppy, so illogical, and leads to such idiotic conclusions that one is tempted to suppose that some parodist had taken charge of the editorial pen:—

If every financial obligation were cancelled, we in Britain would still owe our Australian kinsmen a perpetuity of gratitude and admiration for the war. The British public simply will not stand having Australia's problems assessed in cold terms of- pounds, shillings, and pence. '','/'■,

If Australia's war debts are not to be assessed "in cold terms of pounds, shillings, arid pence," in what are they to be assessed? If they are to be assessed in patriotism, must not those of the other Dominions be treated in the same way?, The conclusion seems to be that Britain, "being entirely, destitute of patriotism, and having never done v hand's turn yet for the Dominions, either in peace or in war, and having moremoney on hand than she knows what lo do with, should shoulder the war debts of the whole lot. The sloppy sentiment of these Press Lords is just as silly as that which thrilled the world with the Ventura's heroic exploit, but a thousand times more mischievous.