NEWSPAPERS IN THE NEXT CENTURY

Evening Post, Volume CXXII, Issue 70, 19 September 1936, Page 27

NEWSPAPERS IN THE NEXT CENTURY

Prizes were offered by the "Manchester Guardian" for an extract, in not more than 100 words, from a newspaper of the year 2000. Competitors were allowed to draw their extract from whatever part of a newspaper's .contents they liked, including the advertisements, . -Many things, of course, may be much the same even in the blessed year:2ooo, and we had considerable sympathy with the selectors of such extracts as :'Rain again interfered with cricket yesterday, not a ball being bowled at Old Trafford" (Ashton) or "Further outlook unsettled" (too many senders to specify), which; stood out pleasantly against the intimidating concourse of autigiros to New York and rockets to' Mars. Yet after all it was the unusual seventy years on rather than the habitual, that would mainly interest us today if we could see it, and accordingly it was that which this competition mainly looked for. : If, for example, the present widespread objection to the "tyranny" of infant-rearing continues, a Hitchen writer's advertisement might be thej logical conclusion for that distant period: '.--,'

YOU CAN HAVE BONNIE BABIE8! We- Have Produced the Last Word in. BabyIncubators. Why Stay at Home? "Multlbator" looks after your Baby,until the trouble r some stage Is over. Have your evenings out until' Baby becomes Interesting.

Politically (and in other ways)* pretty grim reading was predicted for the daily paper buyers of 2000. Much of the advertisement, columns, we gather, are to be filled in that year with announcements of proprietary gas masks, patent bomb shelters, and other aids to prolonged existence, though how many purchasers for these interesting articles will still be surviving was not mentioned.

On slightly lower levels of savagery we might have fragments of the Parliamentary report curiously redolent of our own -time. From London, S.E., for example;

■'...' .'asked the Prime Minister whether the Government had yet evolved any settled policy in home and foreign affairs? Mr. Baldwin: The policy of the present Government and of the preceding Administrations of which I, my father, and his father have been privileged to be the successive heads was best outlined by my right hon. grandfather during the years 1931-36. There cannot,-1 think, be much justifiable criticism . possible •of a policy which has served this great nation effectively for seventy years-—-'■

A Voice: What about our five million unemployed? - , , -X Mr. Baldwin: The Government Is doing, and will continue to do . . .

The use to be made of future inventions seems indeed mostly appalling. The Manchester suggestion for the year 2000's "Business Opportunities" column, FIRE THE DRONES! Watch your staff. Television secretly Installed. Box %

seems to have taken a/hint from Charlie Chaplin's "Modern Times." And, one noticed some obligation to; AJdous. Huxley's "Brave"New: World%in'' :a £ Kent writer's "Nostalgia," the- stereoscopic smellle at the Buckingham Palace, will; be . diffused for another: week. . ■■ ■' ■ ■■ OBMVO, Intoxicate* without deleterious effect on the nervoua ayat'em. (Advt.) However, even in this world of terrible possibilities, cheerfulness did occasionally succeed in breaking through. We like a Windermere competitor's prediction for the sports page:

-The Test match at Lord's yesterday was interrupted in a curious manner... Grace, the great-grandson of the almost legendary Victorian cricketer, exercised hla right of appeal to' the slght-and-sound apparatus against the decision of both' umpires that he had been caught at. the wicket.- Reference to the apparatus repealed that It had ceased to function about an Hour previously. The batsman declined to leave the wicket and the Australians to bowl at him. However.a torrential downpour shortly put an end both to the deadlock and to the match, - .

The first prize went* fto DERBY DONATES-: HORBEB 200.

' Two fine pairs American Houses were yesterday presented to the Royal Zoological Society by Lord Derby, one pair for the , Zoological Gardens, Whipanade Park, the other for the country Zoo at Oswestry. Only twenty years ago 'this animal was In use In. .this country, and old folks can remember when It was'quite common; Many horses, however, were poisoned In the Great War of 1950, as, they were not considered worth gas-masks. -:. Lord Derby s grandfather possessed many fine specimens, which he used to race every year on what is now.Epsom Alr.Port.

The second prize went to an extract which envisages simplified spelling for the year 2000.

A meeting waz held yesterday in the London Solarium to consider the .re-bulldlng ov ; the Houzez ov Parliament in pre-war. style for use'az a Muzeum ov the National Period. Mis Jane Smith, Chlldrenz Komlsar, objected to the use ov the orldglnal site, which haz been reserved for ■ the -new Slty Nursery. The meeting • waz in favour ov rebuilding, tho Mis Mary Jonez, representing the Muzeiimz Komitee, arived too late to speak bekauz fog had delayed the'Kontlnental Wlngz by which she travelled.' There were several'men among the speakerz.'