RANDOM SHOTS

Auckland Star, Volume XLIX, Issue 57, 23 February 1918, Page 14

RANDOM SHOTS

*2&^MIIEII?

Some write a neighbour's name to lash, Some write —vain thought—for needful cash, Some write to please the country clash And raise a din; For mc, an aim I never fash, I write for fun.

They were talking about the British command in France, and the possibility that Sir Douglas Haig might be superseded. Said an old cricketer: "It doesn't matter how well a man may be bowling; if he doesn't get wickets you take him off." " Yes," said another, " but what if he has haa catches dropped off him?" The group agreed that Sir Douglas Haig had not been at all well treated by his "field."

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j These delightful Germans! Our old friend, Professor Kuno Meyer, who lived for many years in England and Ireland, j and is one of the world's greatest Celtic scholars, has been lecturing in Germany on the barbarous social customs of the ►English. To give his gentle audience some idea of what English ladies were like, he told a story of an Englishwoman taken to a hospital suffering from a wound caused by a bite. When a doctor asked- if a Qog had bitten her, she replied that it was " another lady." Some of my readers will recognise in this story one of Phil May's famous efforts in " Punch." A much battered slum woman goes into a chemist's shop for a remedy for her torn face, and the chemist asks if a cat did the damage. "No," says she, "another lydy." Poor Phil May! To have one of his best jokes turned against his countrymen by a humourless German!

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British statesmen are not all, nor are they always, stupid. One of them at least, showed great perspicacity the other day, when he declined to inform Parliament whether he looked upon Russia as an Allied, .a neutral, or an enemy nation. It is, or course, treasonable to expect anyone to give such a definition, for the fact is that there is now no such place as Russia, save as a geographical expression. One cannot make war or peace with a geographical expression, especially when the said geographical expression cannot be defined on a map. This consideration reduces to a nullity the German talk about peace with Russia, or Ukrainia, or whatever else the contracting party may be called. Apropos of the chaotic state of the land that was Russia, a correspondent sends mc a set of verses, written, I suppose, in a kind of dog Russian, which is rather amusing, though it becomes monotonous. Let the following two stanzas suffice: —

Messieurs Lenin and Trotzky, It seemsky you have gotzky, Betwixt tbe Huns And Russia's sous. Among Adam Badlotzky!

O, Trotzky. your plotsky Are a lot of tnnsled knotsky; Old Kaiser Bill. Rejects your pill;— Your country's Gontopotzky!

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The newspapers at Home are still worrying about those peculiar people who cannot get on in these critical times without a retinue of servants? One of the worst cases is a household consisting of two women and four pet dogs— and nineteen servants. What the nineteen servants do is a puzzle to mc; they i must be falling over each other half the time. Perhaps each of the dogs has a couple of servants to look after its lordly 6elf. In spite of the grave scarcity of food, many animals not at all necessary in the national interests are kept, and even pampered. A Warwickshire sportsman who breeds St. Bernards was recently asked how he managed to feed his dogs in these days of restrictions. , "In ordinary times they were fed on j liver and paunch," he said, "but. now ] thej' only get the same as ourselves." A London woman who died last year left £400 in trust for the maintenance of her two dogs and two cats. It may also be mentioned that she left £2,000 to Guy's Hospital, £100 to her church, and £50 to her maid, from which it will be seen that her sense of proportion was rather crooked. She must have been a relation of the rich woman who addressed her thin, half-starved looking page boy one evening thus: "Barnes, have you given Fido his chop?" "Yes'm." "And his chicken?" "Yes'm." "And his milk?" "Yes'm." "And his sardines on toast?" "Yes'm." "Very well, then, you can have your bread and cheese and go to bed." Someone will have to 6pend time in looking after those four animals that could be infinitely better employed in war work, and the animals will consume an appreciable amount of food badly needed by human beings. And to think that many sheep-dogs in New Zealand, dogs that really work, -et fed only twice a week.

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A correspondent wants the blood of some railway officials. I can't oblige him, but I can let him air his grievance. He claims that there should be some consideration for the travelling public in the reserving of seats. He went to reserve seats for himself and his wife, and naturally wanted the seats to be together. When he expressed this wish j to the booking clerk, the latter did not , reply, but went on with his work of allotting the travellers the next two seats on the list. "It must be all right," Ihe thought, but when he got on to the ! train he found it wasn't. One seat was | next to the window, and the other in I the row in front, but next the passagej way. Fortunately a soldier travelling jby himself had reserved the seat next i tue one next the window (I hope you 1 follow the story), and was agreeable to change with my correspondent. When the seats were reserved the two seats in the row in front must have been vacant; why couldn't he and his wife have had them? I don't know. The ways of Government Departments are sometimes past understanding. I know of one man who got his way in this matter. Going in to reserve his seat for a date some days ahead, he found he was the first-comer (this did not hap- ! pen in Auckland), and was allotted seat number one. He said he wouldn't have it, and claimed that as he was the first to book he had a right to choose his seat. The' booking-clerk said he must take what he was given, in this case perhaps a seat by the door. However, the traveller stuck to his guns, and threatened to lodge a complaint with the Minister, and eventually the clerk gave way, and let him have his choice. But [we cant all take up this firm, stand.