RANDOM NOTES

Dominion, Volume 24, Issue 287, 31 August 1931, Page 8

RANDOM NOTES

Sidelights on Current Events LOCAL AND GENERAL

. (By

Kickshaws.)'

A man recently complained that he had drunk ten pints of salt water. It takes a “hundred per cent he-man" to complain bo bluntly about the soup.

A famous professor says that even insects protect their heads against the sun. What, then, 1b more natural than a bee in a bonnet?

It would be interesting to see the family reunion between Miss Madeleina Slade, Gandhi’s, right-hand woman, and her family in England, for Miss Slade is due to arrive in that country as a •member of Gandhi’s entourage. There Is no doubt that Miss Slade somewhat startled the stricter members her family when she decided to deny herself the delights of naval social life for the rather untested pleasures of becoming an intimate adherent of Gandhism. if. In spite of fhe fact that her life to-day is so different from the life she once led In England, if we are to believe Miss • Slade, her present life is by far the more interesting. When asked how she was enjoying herself as Gandhi’s secretary, she said: “I am as happy as any woman in the world. -1 feel neither a stranger nor in a strange land, but rather I feel I have left the night behind and emerged into the day.” As Miss Slade has been leaving the night behind for over five years now, undoubtedly she ought to know.

During the five years that. Miss Slade has taken Gandhi as her master sha has submitted herself to all the rigours of Hindu discipline with better grace than the average daughter of an admiral submits herself to the far worse rigours of social discipline at Portsmouth, Malta, or “Gib.” Miss Slade rises at four every morning in order to pray until five a.m. She then takes a bathe in the Holy River, spins till seven in the evening, indulges in a few more hours of prayer before retiring for the night. Since she has forsaken the idea of marriage and taken a double vow of both mental and physical celibacy, there is naturally no thought of scandal when she sleeps on the river bank in a cot besides Gandhi’s. But for the snakes, she declares that both she and her master prefer to sleep together on the bare ground. But the snakes, knowing nothing of vows, can still sting with a bite sharper, if not quite so venomous, as the scandals of any weilknown garrison town. Miss Slade must be looking forward to a delightful homecoming.

A journal that flourishes among the better-class “gentleman’s tailor" in England puts its finger on the pulse of thb present political situation in that country when it denounced Mr. MacDonald for visiting the King wearing a morning coat and bowler, hat Although this journal had reconciled itself to an emergency Government in order that gentlemen might find the wherewithal to purchase more fashionable suitings with . a different arrangement of buttons to last year’s, it would never support an originally dressed emergency Prime Minister. One would .have thought that this particular journal had become innured to the vagaries of Mr. MacDonald. At any rate, that periodical has had its tearful eyes upon his dress eccentricities for many years. Although it allowed self-control to remain uppermost, it was Indeed a sore temptation to tell Mr. MacDonald the belated truth that when he recently visited the Academy, the cynosure of every eye that counted in the world of fashion, he was wearing a coat two years out of date—with a button missing.

It is not understood just why a men’s fashion journal in England should be so hard on a Labour Prime Minister as regards his clothes when it winks its editorial eye at the dreadful lapses of other equally prominent persons. When the Prince of Wales attended the Queen’s Hall one evening he was wearing a double-breasted jacket; a white silk shirt, with a soft turneddown collar, soft cuffs, black bow tie, and a grey pullover. Such a commonsense dress must have shattered the entrenched conservatism of every “gents’” fashion journal in the land. But there are others besides the Prince of Wales who resolutely refuse to bow to . the dictates of long-standing conservatism in men’s dress. Mr. Bald vin has had the courage to admit in puulic that he likes comfortable old clothes loosely cut He caused sticklers of men's fashionable- wear to turn pale when he appeared at the Eton and Harrow match in a blue lounge suit that failed to soften the bold outlines of a vivid yellow waistcoat. A very elderly soft grey felt on his noble head also gave bathing interests despairing thoughts. Hatters have long since given up Mr. Churchill as hopeless, for while he gets no end of publicity from his hat vagaries, those who make his hats receive only public derision. If Mr. Churchill has made history in a hard, square, flat-topped bowler, the joy of the caricaturist for many years, why should not Mr. MacDonald also be allowed a little originality when he visits his Majesty the King on matters of State?

Capone does not approve of kidnapping because it makes the kidnapped man’s wife and. “kiddies” worry so much. Presumably Capone’s own wife has given up worrying over him. It is generally a toss up whether he returns in time for a meal, late for a meal, in time for the next meal, or as an* ambulance case. The telephone for Mrs Capone must have its own special horrors. When his mother prepared for him a very special turkey dinner, in honour of his release from Philadelphia prison, the meal went cold. Capone never arrived to eat it Possibly he may be excused for not honouring this important occasion with his presence. Not only were a host of Press representatives, police representatives, and members* of his own gang waiting to see him keep his appointment, but there were also sundry members of opposing gangs" anxious to caj;ch a glimpse of him. For rival leaders had set a price of £lO.OOO on Capone's head. Certainly a mother, and possibly even a wife, would take such an excuse as a reasonable explanation of absence.

Come gallop over, the stars with mer r The night is clear, the wind is swift, And all the wild shadows of dark are adrift. Ohl gallop over the stars with me! Gallop* over the stars and away Through the cold blue wastes of echoless air, Singing “beware—despair—take care,*