POSTSCRIPTS

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 105, 6 May 1933, Page 12

POSTSCRIPTS

Chronicle and Comment

BY PERCY FLACE

I At the Naval Conference in 1935 Japan intends to demand parity (of armaments) in- principle with America and Britain. And disparity in practice, of course. • ♦ . » Apparently it has been deemed necessary as the first step toward the stabilisation of international currency to have a donnybrook between sterling and the dollar. What a worldl • * * The editor of the official organ of Soviet industry has been dismissed and arrested for declaring that the Vickers engineers were innocent. But a man with a name like Boguschevsky would say anything. * '* * SAVES THE COLLECTION, TOO. A * critic of radio 'd programme* says reproachfully that people aT«* even forgetting to go to ' church bocause they could get their services by: broadcasts. It isn't forgetting, but jui» a convenient lapse of memory. *■ \ •::- * ' AMBIGUOUS PUBLICITY. E.M.B. discovered this authentic nn« ' retouched announcement in a U.S. jour* nal- — At the morning service Dr. Smith will discuss "If the Depression is Disappearing, what Lessons arc wo Learning?" Mrs. Wilkins will'sing "Search Me, O God." Two other postsenpters also supplied copies of the curiosity. > * . ■ . •:: ■ ■• SIMPLE, ISN'T IT. Mr. Believe-it-or-not Kipley has inada the astonishing statement that it takes ' 8000 words to explain the "simplest* word in English, "Simple." According to/tlie Oxford University Prcse, Kipley is right, for the famous Oxford dictionary does use that number of words to"explain "simple." The new "Shorter Oxford English Dictionary" is much briefer: it uses only 746 words for the same purpose. », ♦ • SUCH IS FAME. Unaware that he was addressing hit, President, an Arizona cowboy one« threatened to'- pull "Abe" Lincoln'! whiskers. And here's a local incident equally astounding—if you don t take us seriously. The Minister of Education had almost finished his address at tho Pukepoto School (North. Auckland way)-when he asked the1 children if they knew who he was. H« was astonished to hear the class saf "No" in unison. \ Oh, Mr. Masters! ' ■ •' ♦ • nous hope. \ . '" Dear P.F.— News item (vide "Evening Post" cable news, 1/5/33): — The coming World Economic Conference is to be held in Juno in, London at the Geological Museum. It is to be hoped that the exhibits are not fossilised, but are of the hvo variety, and may the resolutions neither be pnmeval nor be shelved, as is usually done in such, an institution.. Tours 'umbly, i . U.li. * « • ■ SCHOOL'S IN. ■Do you know that — ' ' • ' . 1 Dr. Allan -Vickers, -the "flying docioV' l.« completed 50,000 miles of flying to the aid of patients in the loneliest parts of Queensland1 } ° A giant mechanical shovel that will remove II tons of earth in one dip •has been constructed for use in the Northants iron ore beds? _ 3. Egyptian inscriptions might sun bo a mystery but for Napoleon', campaign there, and the chance finding of/the Bosetta stone? / ' ■ 4. The Chilean Government permits an electrical company to raise rates provided it can show that its workers and its stockholders benefited by,th« ° T The remains of a 120,000,000-years-old pleiosaur were recently taken from Now South Wales and reconstructed for the Harvard University Museum t C. We have seen a photograph of a mechanic soldering one of the 10,000,000 joints which have to be made in the apparatus of the Central Automatic Telephone Exchange, Cape Town? 7. Ono trouble wfth this reforming business is that so many imperfect people wish to reform the more presentable ones? 8. You could make oodles of money > in London l)y inventing an automatic winkle extractor, or a shrimp peeler, or an illuminated collar stud! 0. Among the aboriginals prominent in Australia's early cricket history we're Bullocky, Dick-a-Dick, Cozens, Jellico, Lake Billy, Mullagh, Paddy, Bone, Tar Pot, and Sundown?. 10. South Africa has blood-red fish, a foot long, and so bright that they look like danger signals? * * ♦ BALI BELLES. "Tourist's note: The native girls of Bali arc very beautiful, but, so far, unsophisticated. Oh, Hie Bali girls are lovely girls with most delightful figures, Although they rather favour pearls they never turn "golddiggers." Dark eyes their nut-brown cheeks en* hnnW, and when they go in swim* niing, It's obvious just at a glance they need not practise slimming. Slender as any hind, and lithe, they; lazo through Java's waters, As suavely modelled and as blithe at Aphrodite's daughters. They dance divinely quite a lot, with" few clothes to encumber, * But not the fatuous fox-trot or yet th« ribald Bumba. , ' Not one of them has heard of Frcnd, or Jung, or D. H. Lawrence, Nor ever with a cocktail Joyed—'twould ' fill them with abhorrence. Though not church-goers, so to speak, they feel it is their duty To be nice girls from week to week, and 'work for homo and beauty. By Nature lavishly endowed, M hat been indicated, The Bali belles arc sweet, though proud, and unsophisticated, And never, it is understood, do any. find it strenuous, Or just a bother, to bo good—oh, very! —and ingenuous. But —frankly,.can you vision any placa in Christendom where Such innocence could be these daysf There's surely a catch somewhere. • '.. • • TALKING OF ■GANDHI— ]£■ Gandhi starves himself out of prison, as now seems probable, it will establish a new record in gaol-break' ing, so to speak. Bnt a more Inter* csting and exciting examplo of escape becauso it is literally true, was that of a German prisoner, by name Schaarschmidt, who gnawed his way through prison bars. In 1907 • this iron-jawed Nordic jbroke out of Gera prison by chewing through the oak bars of his cell window. The task took him three months, yet gained' him only three weeks of freedom, leaving. him with his teeth worn down to tha gums and liis jaw muscles so developed that his face iooked like a giant ape's.