IN THE PILLORY

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22467, 30 July 1938, Page 14

IN THE PILLORY

An Allegory fßy COMMENTATOR!

There was once upon a time a community of families in a village, who lived chiefly by taking in one another’s washing. Each family paid £ 1 to the village taxgatherer, being a wage tax on what they earned from one another. Then all were happy. Winter came and some did not want to wash, or even to be washed, and said also they would not pay the £( 1 because they had not saved any money when they were young. So the rest of the community’s pound went to wash the great unwashed and they said hurray! and became more numerous than evex*.

Then came the wise men from the east of the city and the West Coast, and finding the unwashed the more numerous, they sided with them (for each had a vote) and persuaded them to demand not only £1 but £2, saying we are getting older and want food and ye that have worked and saved when ye were young must give to us to spend; and the wise men from the East and the West said Yah! Yah! very loudly in the air (for those without money were numerous). And soon the food the community had saved was all eaten and nobody either washed or did any work and all began to starve. So they went to the wise men of the East and the West and upbraided them for what they had brought about, but they heeded them not; they said they were very busy men and would they call again next week.

There is no more of this story. The tribe’s history unfortuhately ends there. Of recent years the Archaeological Society of Tibet has been making investigations, and is inclined to think they were annihilated by a hardworking, slant-eyed race who not only did their own washing but took in washing for other people as well.