THE PASSING SHOW.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 225, 22 September 1932, Page 6

THE PASSING SHOW.

(By THE MAN ABOUT TOWN.)

THEY'RE ON THE WAY. Gandhi's going off his feed, Or so the latest cables say. The Chinese Army's disagreed Concerning some arrears of pay. Peruvians want to go to war, Bolivia's wallowing in gore, Japan has bought some Soviet oil, Ireland's coming ,to the boll, The unemployed at Birkenhead Have had a slightly hectic day; But what's all .this when one has read The M.0.0, are on the icayt Franco says she's imposed upon By the German attitude, Someone at Geneva's gone And made another platitude. Wee Lloyd George is "up" again, Fanners say they want more rain, Russia's full of Bolshie wiles, A child has walked six hundred miles, They say the latest nudist fad Has drifted to the U.S.A., But here's some real news, my lad — The M.C.O. are on the way. ■ The news that the British hangman has passed away of his own volition after having aided some hundreds to retire permanently revives memory of a pecuAN OFFICIAL, liar feature of the late Mr. Ellis' character. He alternated his professions and when not officially engaged he was a hairdresser, although it is cabled he did little in this line, the possible feeling among customers being that the tucking in of the well-known white sheet round the client's neck was too suggestive. Mr. Ellis therefore augmented his income by keeping fowls, of which he was very fond, but on no account could he be persuaded to kill one for a family meal, this duty being delegated to others. A man of the most delicate feeling was Mr. Ellis—not at all the kind of man that Denis was in "Barnaby Rudge." Denis, if you'remember, died, too — but not by his own hand. Dear M.A.T., —Notwithstanding the fact that they handle a lot of coin, it seems that even bank tellers may occasionally 'bo mistaken as to the value of THE SPADE. one. An instance occurred recently where a customer pulled out a handful of coins in a bank and the keen-eyed teller spotted what looked like a spade guinea. More in joke than earnest he said, "I will give you a pound for that." To his surprise the man replied, "Right you are,'-' and the deal was made. Naturally the teller was delighted to get a spade guinea at a shilling under its issued value, especially with gold at a premium. He was not quite so pleased with his bargain when, upon showing the coin to a collector, he learned that "the bright gold was brass," in the words of the old song. It doesn't always pay to call a spade a spade.—William IV.

It is impossible to examine modern German tendencies without remeniibering the name of Krupp, to whom we used to owe so much for the armour our ships ■wore THE BIG NOISE, and for the ironmongery so widely disseminated in France. An Australian correspondent, mentioning that the great 'works at Essen are now manufacturing peaceful household articles and up-to-date yachts on the Kiel, adds that fifty years ago Frederioh Alfred Krupp led the German community of Bendigo (Victoria), where the gold comes from. Fred was so popular in Bendigo that Australians conferred the highest known honour on him —called a racehorse "Krupp" after him, not, of course, expecting that Fred's father, the cannon king, would make so very loud a noise in the world ofi war. You will remember that the greatest of all German guns was called "Big Bertha" after the fraulein (then head of the firm) "who was about to marry a young Englishman of German blood, when 1914 came along and upset the international love story.

Inspiring to be told that Australian wine is now a rival to Portuguese and that "there are four thousand British wine growers in Aus-

tralia," etc. Maybe there GLASS OF WINE, is a nigger in the wood

pile, for of a surety Fritz, Jean and Jean's Swiss cousin mode the Australian vineyard. Time was when South Australian wine towns rather surprised the stranger visiting them for the first time, for the average townsman would address the newcomer in either German or English, and the language of the Fatherland was spoken by little prattlers in schools. The vast Americanmade vineyards at Mildura and Renmark were cosmopolitan hives of industry. In their pr&liminary days the head serang was always French, the under bosses* German and the wine experts Swiss and the labour either pure Australian or undoubtedly British. It was common to find an ex-British officer or university man from Oxford or Cambridge massagino- the vines under the direction of an ex-peasant from France or an ex-Michel from Bavaria. The insistence of the Continental in the vineyard business of Australia will remind old hands of the gibe about the Commonwealth, "The Scottish <yvm all the land, the Irish have all the billets—ajid the English carry all the swags." Fritz, Jean and Emanuel certainly have a hand in the excellent trade which is I ousting Portugal. |

Like so many modern blessings, detection by finger print is thousands of years old and was introduced by the Chinese, who used the foot (if one may 'be Irish FINGERS for a couple of lines). The AND TOES. human liand is used because the modern burglar never opens a safe with Qiis foot and very rarely goes about :barefooted. Where he consistently wears rubber gloves as well as rubber shoes he lias any investigator thinking hard. The finger print of the human foot is still used extensively in the land where there are nearly five hundred million people with two feet each (baa-ring the wooden-legged ones). As not all Chinese hove passed the sixth standard, some method of signature is still necessary, and in millions of cases the worker still signs the wage book with his toe. It is generally supposed that the finger print is used by modern police forces merely because no two fingers on earth are alike. This is as true as the fact that there are no two great toes alike in all the world, no two noses precisely similar and no two eyes the same—-and no two anything else identical in all Nature. Still, there would be difficulty in producing a man's ear or his nose in evidence, and°an exhibit A consisting of a lock of hair (everybody's hair being unlike every other body's hair) would he inconvenient. A. New Zealand engineer returning from the teeming East where the labourer signs for his cash with his foot says toe forgeries are common enough, but that the Chinese custom of clipping off the toe of the forger minimises the risk of the system.

THOUGHTS FOR TO-DAY. | Friendship is but a name. As to myself, I know well that I have not "one true friend. As long as I continue what I am, I may have as many pretended friends as I please.— Napoleon T. Instead of saying that man is the creature of circumstance, it would be nearer tie mark to say that man is the architect of circumstance. It is character which builds an existence out of circumstance. Our strength is measured Ibj] our plastic powers—Carlyle.