THE PASSING SHOW.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 233, 2 October 1929, Page 6

THE PASSING SHOW.

(By THE MAN ABOUT TOWN.)

They seem to take their . municipal elections seriously in Chicago. The number 01 editors who do not get shot is remarkable. They manage these matACID INK. ' ters differently to us, ladling out the dope with one hand while smiting the victim with a blackjack.' Mayor Walker, of New York, as you have heard, is the best-dressed man in the oreat city. He has never been known to wear the same trousers twice in one day. Last time he was candidate for the Mayoralty the "Chicago Daily News" editorially said:. Mayor Walker is an attractive candidate with an admirable singing voice, a pretty wit and a nice taste in haberdashery, who is quite unequal to his job. He has failed to advance the solution of the city's most vital problems, such as transportation, departmental reorganisation and the exposure and elimination of corruption. He is complaisant, indifferent, indolent and futile." It is unthinkable that any Dominion newspapers would dare to write of Mayoral socks, trousers or indifference. American and other writers often say very plainly what they think of public men. One often wonders what public men think of the writers.

There has been a small debate in Parliament as to whether the State should decide what books the citizen shall read, the suggestion being that.the JUDGMENT. average man is incapable of judging for himself and is bound to be poisoned by poisonous literature. The point is, one doesn't know if it is poison if one doesn't read it. The best way to find out whether a citizen is literally poisonable is to surround him with all sorts of nasty books and make him read them. If they make him wickeder he isn't worth bothering about. If he's a decent chap he merely sticks the book in the fire, laughs like fury and isn't a ha'p'orth the worse. There are, of course, nasty people who can discover offensiveness in literature innocuous to other people. These are irreclaimable, so why bother about them? Wild orators oozing vocal poison have infested every capital in the world. Chase them and they become more virulent. In London the police have found out that the best way to render the poison innocuous is to let the orators rave away and protect them smilingly while they are doing it. Even in New Zealand the wild men who used to rave, rave no longer because nobody fights them. even smile at them. An alleged naughty play which is attacked from the pulpit gets a splendid run. A banned book sells like mad. If everybody reads that the Right Hon. Critic has. banned a new book everybody wants to read it. If no fuss is made the people judge. The people's judgment is sound.

Business men having complained that the New Zealand youngster frequently writes a shocking fist, the educational authorities are about to teach "rhythmic CALIGRAPHY. writing" accompanied by gramophone music and arm drill. The young writers will also chant in the absence of gramophones. There is no reason whatever why the new rhythmic copybooks should not have the copy set to music. The New Zealand infant is ever and anon bound to jettison the method of writing he has been learning for something new. 'E dunno w'ere 'o are, but he ought to know at last when he does pothooks and hangers to music and is given calisthenics for the wrists and hands to enable him to satisfy his employers when he goes out into the great inky world. The public will agree with M.A.T. that the business men who demand beauteous handwriting from young fingers might learn beauteous handwriting themselves. Most important persons revel in indecipherable caligraphy. Suggested here that to improve the handwriting of business men they should do it to music as the children are about to do. The new idea suggests brighter offices. The most important persons in the business world growl their thoughts to stenographers, who render them into typescript, the master mind simply adding a signature nearly always proudly indecipherable. Why not carol these thoughts? Why not business letters sung to jazz tunes? The new school system includes arm exercises for young writers. Why not "on the hands—down!" for the business man reciting his glowing thoughts to the typist? A banker who could do a back handspring while putting the bank rate up would be cherished.

Mr. Justice Smith has said that New Zealand people are great travellers. It is true that you may see Jones in Queen Street to-day and in Lambton Quay on TRAVEL. Tuesday. Robinson hurtles past you up Shortland Street and you nod to him. Within a week you give him the glad eye in Cathedral Square. And so on. The game of battledore and shuttlecock with lorries for battledores and furniture for shuttlecocks proceeds merrily from January to December. The man who makes a home and settles down for life at Heme Bay will be found in a year or so making a home with every intention of settling down at Sumner. This itinerancy leads to the impression that there are a lot of New Zealanders. You probably count each one three times. There are several thousand born New Zealanders in London and about a million and a-half Continentals. But to come down to tin tacks. Of the three-quarters of a million born New Zealanders in the world but a small proportion travel out of the country and a large proportion haven't the necessary means to travel far even in their own country. Consider the typical urban case of the young woman and the old one. The young woman with a perambulator ainl a baby found the old lady leaning over the fence of her house in Calliope Road, Devonport. "Where have you been, my dear?" asked the old lady of the young one. "Oh, I've just been taking the baby for a run on Cheltenham Beach." "Oh, have you?" said the old lady. "I've lived in this house for forty years.and I've never seen Cheltenham Beach yet." The suggestion lately made in court that New Zealanders find it cheaper to travel than to stop at homo will bo received with loud huzzas by the unemployed, who are all to be assimilated within the next five weeks.

Drop a tear for Ludwig Zrenner, the peaceful Munich lithographer who revolutionised pictorial amenities by inventing the picture postcard. Ludwig, like so THE PAUPER, many persons with ideas,

died in a slum and goes to a pauper's tomb,- but it is improbable that that considerable body of commercial magnates who made millions by Ludwig's invention will die in slums. As everybody knows, the picture postcard became a furore. It ante-dated the scenic movie. It was universal and it was highly artistic. It gave Germany and Austria a place in the pictorial sun no other countries had. It was Bavaria which taught us all how to produce good coloured photographs. You remember, of course, when you used to receive postcards of English picture places that the cards were always "Printed in Germany," so that the late Ludwig who now lies in a cheap deal casket had been an enormous commercial asset to his country. Ludwig by his idea immensely stimulated the card industry of Britain, so much so, indeed, that a London distributor was knighted for his marvellous feat of selling Ludwig's work. 'Twas ever thus.

THOUGHTS FOR TO-DAY. Justice discards party, friendship, kindred, and therefore is always represented as blind.— Addison. • • * Employment is Nature's physician and is essential to human happiness.—.Galen.