CAPPING CARNIVAL

Evening Post, Volume CIII, Issue 152, 30 June 1922, Page 8

CAPPING CARNIVAL

STUDENTS' PROCESSION

TAKES FREEDOM OF CITY,

Once a year the students of Victoria University College take possession of the main streets of the city for their capping carnival, and for a couple of" hours in the middle of the day run riot in the high spirits of youth, and for the sake of that, the citizen overlooks the inconvenience and delays of traffic, of trams blocked, and the difficulty of getting home to lunch. The annual occasion fell to-day, and luckily the weather was fine and mild, for the costumes of many of the participants in the carnival were very light and airy. The streets; from the start of the procession at the top of Cuba-street to the other end of Lambton-quay were well lined, and where the carnival ended, in Post Office-square, some thousands were gathered together. Tram traffic was held up badly in Willis-street, where at one stage 18 cars were stationary, one behind the other.

The carnival was as entertaining as usual, with its amusing skits on the times staged on a number of lorries, performers acting their parts with more or less appropriate gesture and speech so as to convey the message of their party to the people in the street. Prominent personages were caricatured, from the highest to the humblest in the land. First came a burlesque of the opening of Parliament, with the delivery of the Speech from the Throne. A magnavox assisted the orators in the arena of the Post Office-square. Then after that came a clever parody of "the state of things in Ireland, entitled "The Irish Stew." with such announcements as "It'll be a devil of a'tatty we'll not mince," and "de Valera, the Spanish Onion, who will not be minced," and "Ireland's Tragedy," the "Devil Era," and so forth. More topical, was the travesty of the municipal milk scheme and the coupon- system, with a baby sucking an empty bottle and announce ing "Mother's lost our coupons— Where's our milk?" and a caricature of a prominent authority on milk.-

' Other moving (stage scenes illustrated the relations of teachers to the Minister of Education, with the slogan: "Our salai'ies shall not be below Parr" ; a forecast of the Police Court of A.D. 2000, with the Magistrate despatching the business with characteristic energy; a skit on the fashion in cures entitled the Bulgarian Bug Nursery: a sroup of men in white sheets labelled X.X.X. (Ku Klux Klan); and a. team representing lady footballers, scantily clad indeed..

Tlie proceedings were by no means always strictly decorous, and there was a certain amount of quite unnecessary and not amusing horse-play, which might well be cut out next time, rj; the carnival would be the gainer thereby. There is not much fun in scamperine through popular restaurants and hustling people in the crowds. .

The official capping ceremony is taking place in the Town Hall this afternoon.