THE PASSING SHOW.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 236, 5 October 1935, Page 8

THE PASSING SHOW.

(By THE MAN ABOUT TOWN.)

On Friday afternoon the latest news dis ” , llrt P ..« A crowd NEWS. gathered. There were in all twenty-six eager people in that crowd and very serious they lool < cd ' On the other side of the door was P a^ ed a news note, also from London, rclatn ® doings of the All Blacks. One small boy W readin- it. Something will have to be done about relative values. We are losing our sense of proportion.

The little lad had the rare treat of an uninterrupted half-hour with Ins soldier fatliei. “Tell me a story, dad,” he begged. So the old soldier (who is a posiBITS OF tive oyster to grown-ups HISTORY, about war) told the small boy all the stories he could think of—made 'them snappy, embroidered them, laid himself out to make the most of his war adventures. The little lad listened without notable enthusiasm —might have been listening to a little history lesson —still, he listened? as in duty bound. And when the pater had finished the little lad looked at his father and said, “J s’pose you were just a kid in Nelson’s days, dad?” /

There isn’t the slightest doubt that Mussolini is a leader. He used to be a leaderwriter, which is far different and hardly ever as dangerous. And that A HEADLINER, was only twenty-live years ago. He represented the "Teat Italian paper “Irredentist” at the Cannes Conference in 1922, less than a yeat before the march on Rome. He was absolutely unknown to foreign journalists and perfectly unnoticed by them—a seemingly retiring, rather shabbily dressed fellow. At the Press Conference, presided over by Lord Riddell, someone asked a question about the new Fascist movement in Italy. Lord Riddell said it was unimportant and dismissed the subject. The Italian journalist, who was to mean so much to the world, leaped to his feet and with great fire defended Italian Fascism, lhe m-eat Englishman apologised. Mussolini was asked bv an American journalist, astute enough ‘to show sympathy and who hns been received by Mussolini in Rome since, M hat about Abvssinia?” Mussolini made this cryptic renlv “My friend, I 'began my career as a journalist. If need be, I can finish it as a journalist.”

The already perfectly familiar picture of the Emperor of Abyssinia mounted on a white Arab stallion will recall to many horsey people innumerable romantic epiMY BEAUTIFUL! sodes in which the Arab horse has taken part in poesy or reality. Most people know the, Arab horse bv the famous steed whose desert boss sold him and then renegged, throwing back, the price with “Away! who overtakes us now shall claim thee for his pains.” As a matter of fact, an average stable boy on an English or colonial thoroughbred would catch that noetic sheik in a mile if he gave the Arab a half-mile start, but the Arab has remarkable endurance and beauty which have made him •i sire to be desired. Politicians and others in Australia breed Arabs to perfection, and the Arab lends his strength, courage and endurance to Indian polo and to Empire war. The favourite picture of Lord Roberts was the one in which he is seen mounted on an Arab just as pure white as the Abyssinian charger of the Emperor, and the only horse, if one remembers, which wore war medals on his breastplate. Arab horses (as per poem) are supposed to live in the domestic tent with the owner’s wives and children. It sounds romantic; but in practice a British cavalry sergeant-major would object..on the groundsof military hygiene. The fpjuiiliar white horse of Haile Silassie does not sleep in His Majesty’s tent.

He was asked by a friend what was the rarest sight in Auckland, and he replied, almost without thinking, “A smoking chimney’ — meaning the domestic and NO SMOKE not the commercial chimSCREEN. ney. He selected a bright

Saturday' morning, gazing over miles of homes. The smoking chimney 7 was as rare as the dodo. He wondered how the matutinal rasher and the morning porridge; were cooked, and came to the conclusion that? either the electric stove or the gas range supplied the means, or that the old-fashioned range—complete with chimney' —was stoked up for breakfast and tlien put out of action for the day'. He was surprised during a comprehensive view of the great town to be able to count nearly' all the commercial smokestacks, exuding comparatively so little fume that every little building and every large one stood out sharp and beautiful against an almost unsullied sky-. Such a fair scene is possible only because we at present have more than we can do in supplying the products of the soil. When Auckland and its environs compete with the great world in which the smokestack is an essential very likely there will be even less smoke, for science is hard at it removing the drab cover of ten thousand smoky- towns. On a blue and gold and relatively smokeless morning Auckland is as. desirable as a drink of fair water on the Sahara Desert—or in the hinterland of Abyssinia.

Literary linguists, rendering into cableEnglish the real or alleged sentiments of Italians and Ethiopians, are probably' given some license. It is posTHE BRUSH. eible, for instance, that

there has been a. broad translation of an Italian song which declares that they will “Make a brush from the beard of the Emperor to ■polish the boots of Mussolini.” Related, no doubt,-to the naval singeing of the King of Spain’s beard, or the case of the whip at the masthead to flog the Dutchmen off the seas. Perhaps, however, the boot brush appeals with exceptional force to the Italian. Old-time visitors to Naples, bound for Vesuvius, Pompeii and other dusty' spots, will remember that every apparently' unemployed man carried boot brushes ami clothes brushes, not for personal use, of course, but for the dusty visitor. Visitors from Naples hoping to see the ruins were literally assaulted by- hordes of brushers of every kind, size and smell—the latter chiefly garlic. About twelve brushers would seize one visitor and brush not only the volcanic dust off his garments, but the nap, too. The boot brigade burnished the traveller's footwear until his feet were rod hot and until the brushee shrieked for mercy. The visitor being almost skinned alive, the swarthy' brushers stood round talking with their hands, howling for centissimi or even lire. Massage is not common among the lower classes in Italy, lyit they' are notable exponents of this art on the unwary stranger. On the occasion during which present wanderer witnessed the onslaught of Italian brushers the flies were so dense that Antonio looked like a shadow picture through the gloom. Hygiene hadn’t got as far as that in those days.’ Verylikely it hasn’t got to Abyssinia vet.

THOUGHTS FOR TO-DAY. Progress is up a stream in which there can be no anchoring; so soon as forward impulsion ceases, retrogression begins.—Anon, Delude not yourself with the notion that you may be untrue and uncertain in trifles, and in important things the contrary. Trifles make up existence, and give the observer the measure by which to try us; ami the fearful power of habit, after a time, suffers not the best will to ripen into action.—C. M. Von Weber.