THE PASSING SHOW.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 9, 11 January 1934, Page 6

THE PASSING SHOW.

(By THE MAN ABOUT TOWN.) A girl lias set tlie ponderous and ruthless wheels of two gigantic State Departments revolving by innocently enclosing two threepenny bits in an envelope and posting the same for inclusion in a Christmas I pudding. She is, one 'gathers, by this act alleged to be an exporter of silver. It gives one an opportunity to say that before threepenny bits became an international problem, and the whole of the State sleuthhood watched the change with sleepless eye, people often actually posted every kind of coin. Of course, the commonest way to send thrums, sprats, deiners, 'arf-casers and quids—pray excuse the slang—was to cut a hole the size of the coin to be dispatched in a card,_ inserting the coin and closing both sides of tie" aperture with gummed paper (obtainable at all post offices as selvedge), enveloping the same and Indubitably this nefarious trafficking'in one's own coin has always been against regulations, and one gathers from official literature that all articles once in His Majesty's mails are "the property of the Postmaster-General" for the purpose of the protection of the citizen who posted them. Barrie would be delighted with this new story of Thrums.

ROMANCE OF THRUMS.

The family has had a corker holiday In the blue and golden North, where the game fish invites the tourist with the double hooks and where the oyster clings (if possible) to his native rock. Father and his man friend have been engaged in fishing, and the acquisition of a saddle-coloured skin. The children have been wandering afar exploring the beauties of Nature, the pools where every miniature lake is a little world, and the rocks where the oysters make their homes. The innocent prattlers, unaware of any existing laws restraining them, gleefully gathered oysters, filled their blameless little buckets, and took them home. The ladies, equally innocent, saw in these oysters a surprise for their men folks. The men returned to their temporary home, tired with the day's fishing and wandering. What, thought the ladies, could be nicer for them than an oyster cocktail each? Bo they, compounded the cocktail of gin, vermouth (and whatever else a cocktail contains) and dropped into each glass a large, luscious and perfectly fresh oyster with the winning invitation, "Will you have an oyster cocktail?" Anyone knowing what kind of fishy leather ardent spirits makes of oysters will not be surprised to hear that neither gentleman seemed particularly thirsty. They are building bigger bullseyes for Bisley. SRifle shooting is of world interest, as. it is the ultimate means taken by all civilised nations for making the world unsafe for humanity. The enlargement of bullseyes must mean that the recruits in t-he next war are to be selected from the fattest citizens, or, alternatively, that "there ain't going to be no war," and that target rifle shooting as usual is a mere pleasant sport in which the gent, with the binoculars, the patent sights, the wind gauges, the damp-proof mats and the whole paraphernalia for shooting targets that don't shoot back, snipes an enormous quantity of canvas, iron-and wood and is chaired by his comrades and cheered to the echo. Several hundreds of rifle shots go to Bisley to wound targets. When Mars shows his ruddy fist tens of millions of men trot out, are handed a rifle, and after a bit of intensive banging at targets get away and bang at humanity. The high commands of the nations don't stop a man from shooting the gent, on the other side because he has never won a pot at Bisley (or Trentham). If pot-hunting meetings aid the skill of tens of millions of men in time of war they are more than justified. If it means that a pot-hunter of seventy with thick glasses, slings, binoculars and what not can successfully compete with the eighteen-year-old lad who may be roped in for real shooting—it seems rather a waste of good ammunition. You may trot out all the Mussolinis, IJitlers, Riza Khans you like as world examples of ruthless dictators, but as dictators these men are mere nonentities to that charmed circle of dictators and dictatrices who command the women of the world from their Parisian headquarters. No woman ever disobeys the ukase of the dress-dictators, and (entre nous) no man dare dictate a fashion for himself and get away with it. The woman of this year, one learns, is to be more feminine. She is to have a perceivable waist. Her clothes are to be built on Victorian and Edwardian lines, but not too Edwardy and not too Great Queenly. The dictators will compromise by making it unnecessary to tightlace the female form divine, so that flying buttons and explosive staylaces, featured in Victoria's days, will not again recur. The two reigns were notable for the voluminous nature of feminine garb, and there is no doubt that enormous stuffiness got away with all the wool the backs of the world's sheep could supply. The waist, say the dictatrix, is not to be in the .place where Nature put it, but more to the north. Although one deeply respects the men and women who command the women of the world, one feels that the farmer—other than the wool fiarmer, the silk farmer and the flax grower—has a grievance, fln order to retain the requisite slimness women are commanded not to discard diet charts, so that the multitude of growers of carbohydrate and flesh-forming foods will be hit where they live. Novelists will be robbed of the girl with "the boyish figure." One wonders rather whether the alluring siren with "the husky voice"—sign of a too, too loving nature—will vanish from fiction, too. World leaders, who noted the intolerable depression when it had been doing its very fiercest for quite a while, are at present staging a glittering comeback. When a poor leader's mil- | lion diminished to a wretched pittance of seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds, he appeared to argue that a world unemployment scheme would assist him to get back that two hundred and fifty thousand. He may have reasoned that the less money the man with the biceps had to spend, so much the sooner would he himself have fuller pockets. He finds that even world wonders occasionally make mistakes—'hence the comeback. So you will find that we are definitely round the corner any time these two years past, that in Glasgow "the tide has definitely turned," that the receipts of the British Treasury are definitely larger. There is a "scheme to nurture prosperity" in America, and so on, world without end. Feed prosperity with politics and you get a crop of dollars. World wonders in the beginning of' the slump eat still and roared to the man with the hands to grow more stuff and do more work with less at half price. Finding that he grew more stuff, world leaders said he was growing too much stuff and would he kindly chuck a few thousand tons of wheat or coffee or carrots or doormats into the furnace or the sea, knock off work, and sit twirling his thumbs with nothing to spend and precious little to eat in a world knee deep in tucker. To show how exceedingly clever leaders have been, it is reported that London pawnshops are being shut by the hundred because "there is nothing left to pawn." The Mayor of Auckland evidently believes that poverty is not the royal road to universal wealth. "My idea is that it is only by giving more spending power are we likely to get back 'to normal times," says he.

THE OYSTER COCKTAIL.

WINNING A POT.

RIGHT—DRESS.

THE COMEBACK.