OBITER DICTA.

Press, Volume LXIV, Issue 19285, 14 April 1928, Page 14

OBITER DICTA.

[By K.] Like most of the other lowbrows I have enjoyed this week's news concerning the bloodshed and bombs which pass for preferential voting in Chicago. I believe about one word of it in ten, but that does not lessen the satisfaction one gets from knowing that Chicago has decided by a majority of homicides against Big Bill Thompson. It has busted liim, as it were, one on the snoot, even though it used up a (rreat deal of ammunition to do it. Yet it occurred to me to wonder how this news about Chicago strikes the, Prohibitionists. My Prohibition friends have been wont to tell me, waving their cocoa-cups enthusiastically round them, that since Prohibition began in America there has been a great wave of moral regeneration. And I have answered, "Big Bill Thompson." The death-rate, they would say, lias decreased by something per cent.* To which I would reply, " Ku Klux Klan." The saving-banks deposits in Nebraska, 111., they #ien insisted, have increased by so many billions. At this point I said " Bootleggers." Then they played their ace, which is, that " God wrote the Eighteenth Amendment." And I struggled along by saying " The rival bootleggers." Eventually we got down to my saying simply "Chicago." Now all this dreadful mental effort is no longer necessary. I merely band the Rev. Mr Gingerale a clipping from the cable news about government of the gunmen by the bootleggers for the politicians, and while he is reading it I go away.

The surprising thing is that the Chicago papers should be eager and enthusiastic to let the worst be known about their city. The Americans have often been accused of window-dressing, and of putting the shrivelled apples at the bottom of the case. But this is not true. It may be, of course, that they love to parade Chicago as something unique in the annals of crime. One cannot, however, imagine the Auckland papers doing anything like that. One of them said the other day that if Auckland could be transported to France, she " would take her place as the fifth city in the Republic." Wellintentioned, this caused some annoyance in Auckland. In the first place it was felt to be a mistake to admit that' Auckland could anywhere be . anything but first. In the second place it was thought to be very like treason to the Auckland spirit to say that she would take her place as the fifth city anywhere. At least, the ' Auckland patriot said, she would not do so without first making some strong remarks about the preference shown to Paris. This sturdy local patriotism is admirable, but even Auckland can < take lessons from Nice. The other day an English journalist sent a message from Nice to London describing some rough weather. The newspapers of the Riviera immediately attacked him. One of them said: "As the 'Daily News' and other important organs of the British Press, do not call to reason their singular contributor, we shall have to make up our minds to defend ourselves. If persuasion is not enough, it will remain simply to expel an undesirable journalist from French territory." / : 1 This is wandering from America, however. It is but fair to the Eighteenth Amendment to- say that while it has resulted in the Chicago journalist being quite unable to say of any. particular bomb or homicide whether it should be put under " Bootleg Jottings," or " Political Items," it has also resulted in an uplift movement amongst

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