The ODD ANGLE

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 297, 16 December 1941, Page 6

The ODD ANGLE

(By MacCLURE) • THE MAYOR'S APPEAL, If we're not going to co-operate 100 per cent with the local and national defence schemes arranged for our own benefit and security then the sooner we learn the art of rickshaw pulling and rice-growing the better. On Saturday night my old laundryman, Wun Lung, and I made a complete tour of the city to see for ourselves the response of Our citizens to the Mayor's request for a full observation of our blackout restrictions. As we passed two shops in succession with their time switches left on, hotel, club and public buildings absolutely devoid of any attempt at even reducing the glow, apartment houses and flats and private houses with their well-lit windows wide open for fresh air, we saw the task ahead of our worthy Mayor to get much of the cooperation he asks for. And the irony of it all is it is for own benefit. I wonder did the Harbourites (now dead) have the same request put to them? And how many of them believed Gabriel was about to fljr over THEIR white houses? Yes —it looks as if we're headed for the rice fields unless . • SPEAKING OF RICE And speaking of rice growing, I asked Wun the betet way to go about, it. His cousin from Mangere, who had done a lot of it in the Yangtze Valley, put me wise to the whole lay-out—;in case. Here's what you've got to do—hoping you won't, of course. First, to grow rice, you've got to have water. Beer's no good —it's got to be plain water—plentee of it, savee? Next, you need several handfuls of rice kernel. It would seem, you chuck the kernels over a mucky place. After a bit they sprout into a tangled mass of deep, rich, green. When the rice blades are six inches long you disentangle them in clusters and plant them in deep mud at two-foot intervals in regular rows two feet apart. Joining a union isn't an absolute essential to a good crop. .What IS necessary, though, is to have a little Buddhist shrine handy so as you can pop in and give thanks. In addition, one must fast every second day. With a little more co-operation with the local defence authorities, however, to keep the Japs, away, one can dodge all this mucky business and grow beans. • TREATY CHRONOLOGY President Roosevelt has threatened to read to Congress the whole chronological series of events that have occurred between the United States and Japan since that ill-starred March day 88 years ago when Commodore Matthew C. Perry first concluded a treaty with that " 'Scuseplease" nation. It's a long story and a bloody one. The year before the commodore secured the treaty he landed on the- beach and met the Lord of Toda. This gentleman later was given a small part in one of Gilbert and Sullivan's operas because he looked just like a Jap.—which he really was, of course, although no one suspected it. Anyway, he didn't fool the commodore. No, sir. March was always a bad month for murders, suicides and all that sort of thing; even Shakespeare noticed this and .had Julius Caesar murdered on the'ldes, of March. The "Yanks, however, escaped this fate that . March. Securely tucking the treaty under his belt, the commodore ordered drinks on the house and cabled back 0.K., chief," but it wasn't to be so 0.K.-ish as all that. Them Japs, were yellow—they couldn't take it— not. the stuff the Yanks sent back for theirs. Oh, no. ; • TREATY RIGHTS JThere was once a Yankee firm who shipped a cargo of wooden hams and wooden nutmegs to a Pacific isle and got away with it. The Jappos, "oyevCTy were wider awaker, and, although they concluded several treaties with European Powers from in the years following Perry's visit, they cancelled them just as often as they felt in the mood. Sometimes they laid the blame on the stuff— sometimes the' "oot" wasn't forthcoming. The year before the American Civil War Japan sent her ®£st Scuse, please," embassy to Washington. The next year (July 5) Japanese. attacked the British Embassy, wounding several persons. Ten days after Guy Fawkes Day that year they attacked, opening up a huge fireworks f display, Roman candles, double bangers and all: the forts of the Prince of Nagato (a born nark, if ever there was one) opened . e on British and French vessels in the entrance to the Straits of bimonsaki. Two years later British, French and U.S.A. warships bombarded his forts and war vessels Commodore Perry had been a little too premature with that O.K. cable: things were not one little bit 0.K.-ish' No. • „ • SATSUMA PLUMS Japan wanted to eat her cake and have it, too. Anyway, we got reparation—£loo,ooo worth, of it—on paper. The Prince of Satsuma, big pluin man, squealed over paying his whack—a measly £25,000, one-quarter of the assessed damages. Satsuma was plum foolish. Again we bombarded his towns and steamers. In December that year he paid honourable gentleman with a cheque and the inevitable " 'Scuse, please." The ink was barely dry before we had another necessity to bombard, all oyer again to enforce treaty rights. Then—in 1887—the Bible was translated in Japanese. The Japanese imported large quantities of Bibles and read them. It made them better men—for a while. Then, at Pearl Harbour the other day, they backslided again. , • THE STATUE We found Mac Haggis sitting on the steps of Burns' statue spade in hand. "You're no thinkin' o' diggin' your slit trench there, are ye, MacHaggis?"! said sternly. "Why not?" he asked. "Th' yellow scum'd surely nae commit such sacrileege as tae drap a bomb onyways near Rabbie Burns." Towering above us in more ways than one, Scotland's bard, his hand on his -plougti and his plaid shawl draped around him, seemed to be deep in thought. "It's this britherhood o' man idea.o' his," Mac Haggis suggested. "When man tae man the world o'er shall brithers be—for a' THAT—an' a' THAT." "It'll tak' a lot for us tae forget,a' THAT," I ; replied. "Ye dinna think Rabbie's wunnerin' why they don't plough up the Domain an' rob the enemy, of a. landin' field?" I added.. "If ye ask me I think he's wunnerin' why some 0 his patriotic Scottish .friends have nae started in tae sandbag his statue now hes sae helpless hisself," MacHaggis replied moodily. "Here's tae ;ye, Rabbie," and . Mac Haggis joined |in .the toast. "An' tae hell wi' the' murderin' yellow scum ye forgit tae exclude m ye're immortal verses —" An v th' friend p'. Hitler ye knew naethm' aboot when ye wrote 'em " 1 added.