THE PASSING SHOW.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 128, 2 June 1931, Page 6

THE PASSING SHOW.

(By THE MAN ABOUT TOWN.) Dear M.A.T.,—I know men have been shot for this kind of thing, but it is a wet Saturday and 1 have just condoled mysclby cashing a quid, and this is tne SHOT AT DAWN, result: Our cricket team Merritts better luck than it has been having. Every time it aDempster get a gate it raine on Saturday. I don t like ft aTalbot, I'll be Blunt and say that if the team were am Vivians they might set tne money Mills going even in the mud. Wenentitled to a Cromb of comfort, by James. when we realise the afterMathesonly # a matter for the council and they can take a Page out of Land's book and alLowry.pudiation if the tour is a financial failure, and let the creditors Allcoto blazes and take Kerr of themselves — Haunate. \propos the young New Zealander who went to Soviet Russia and became a dairy manager in a large way in the Ukraine, it ° may be interesting to MAJOR other New Zealandere MACKOFFSKI. that Russia has always been keen on getting hold of expert foreigners, for the Russian is a very keen bird in the thought department, even it he is not so practical as some folk. During the Czarist regime the Russian army was a vast organisation and Ivan was extremely keen on getting the beet kind of instructors possible. And many a Colonel Ivanoski or Major Mackoffski had a good Scots name. There were soldiers of fortune from every land of course, including innumerable German sergeants-major, but the Russian service was peculiarly attractive to Scots officers, who were extremely popular with the troops. Russia always paid the foreigner well—hence the popularity of the service there.

Dear M.A.T.,—I eared up my cigarette coupons with the laudable object of enriching the family board with a canteen of cutleryFrom a moderate smoker WHAT A FAG! I went in gradual but sure stages to an inveterate, and from that to an addict, my consumption of the weed gathering momentum as the higher mounted my little heap of certificates. After many moons of assiduous devotion to my Lady Nicotine, I had gotten me together a goodly pile. As the blue smoke from the last of the 15,000 odd curled upwards to the blackened ceiling I fell to rumination and from that to calculation. I found that to earn my spoons and things I had laid out in actual cash the sum of fifty-eix pounds five shillings. Placing those coffin nails end to end, allowing two and a half inches as the length of one, the thin white line reached a distance of one thousand and forty-one yards two feet. Phar Lap at full stretch would cover the journey in just sixty seconds. It took me sixty weeks —and methought that I, too, was no laggard. Thinking of those fifty-six notes gone up in smoke, I'm no financier, either. Put that in your pipe and smoke it. —J.O.

The G.O.C. New Zealand is, one sincerely trusts, not hastening war. He has promised every (up to now) unenlisted volunteer a pair of trousers if war should PREPARE break out. It is underTO MOUNT, stood that the infantry volunteers during peace time will wear riding pants, but there ie no indication that the footsloggers shall wear spurs. It is really no laughing matter, for history mentions kilted soldiers on horseback, cavalry riding in slacks, and artillery pounding along in trousers. There was once a colonial corps on service which rode eo long and so hard that its accumulated riding garments had departed thread by thread, and the display was pitiable. No issue of new riding pants was available. A trooper of Scots ancestry may be regarded as an inventor. One morning when his tattered mates paraded in badly-ventilated garments he passaged jauntily into his place wearing a kilt made by cutting a horse blanket in half and draping the same round the waist with a strap. The remainder of the outfit seized the idea gladly, and for the first time in history horsemen moved into battle wearing the kilt. The immediate terrain was sprinkled with the deplorable garments discarded by the men. A gallant major with kauri tree legs of suitable shortness wearing a blanket kilt piled on top of a seventeen-hand charger was a sight for the gods and occasion for the Homeric laughter of the troops.

Children love dressing up. We are but children of a larger growth. Wβ all love pretties, and, if you come to think of it, the world at large ie vastly DRESSING UP. impressed by uniform. Initially, exuberant uniforms were made to frighten the enemy. The bearskins and busbies and feathers were worn to scare the other fellow into the belief that a five-foot-four man was six foot three. One was impressed with these truths on seeing the druin major of a band with every available bit of his uniform covered with gorgeous braid. The small hotel message boy hurtling down Queen Street clothed in a scarlet shell jacket and a pill-box cap absolutely cheers one. Some banks not so long ago possessed commissionaires in gorgeous array that seemed to put one's bank account up ten per cent and thus cheered the customer. Suburban Mayors have obviously designed the uniforms of their traffic inspectors. A police superintendent seenie dully accoutred in comparison. One has wondered how picture theatre proprietors have been able to afford field-marshals as commissionaires, until one finds .that they ar really not field-marshals, but possible, ex-corporals. The passion for sartorial expression is universal. The lady in the splendid fur of an Arctic animal is own sieter to the Zulu belle attired in three brass wire bracelets and a smile. It emphasises her beauty. And you must admit that a gentleman is far, far more lovely in a cocked hat with feathers than in an eighteenpenny cap and dungarees.

An eminent visitor to these hospitable shores has varied his lectures by playing the Chinese flute, and it occurs to one as one reviews in thought cur THE FLAUTIST, own fluteless orators how rarely they dilute their oratory with other accomplishments. In private, of course, a Minister of the Crown may troll out the only song he learned in infancy, but in the rarest of cases only will a politician throw a back handspring on the floor of the House, play a solo on the euphonium, or repeat a column of wise cracks from an American paper, claiming them for his own. The solemnity of the colonial orator is rarely broken by a descent iuto literature or art. It is flippant to <Io these things, and our leaders cannot be accused of flippancy. One exception, perhaps, is the prevailing High Commissioner who has been known to be very comic on occasions, even in the House. One dead and gone celebrity on suitable occasions in the House would announce: "I will now give you some poetry of my own," and actually did so. "Hansard" of a decade or two ago was enriched with these gems. Mr. Seddon out of the House would occasionally indulge in a song not by any means Lancashire, "The Wearin' o' the Green," but that was in the old days before the war, since which nothing of a cheering nature hae transpired in talkative circles. At Home the proceedings of the House of Lords are enlivened by the peers who knit socks or do drawn-thread work. One peer has been known to sit for hours and do tapestry, but not a single member of our own Upper House does needlework, the work of the country aftteoium.