THE GENERAL AND THE BALDHEADS

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 100, 30 April 1938, Page 26

THE GENERAL AND THE BALDHEADS

Japan is marching ahead in more

than military matters, and a paragraph

the other day is a.warning to the ■■■ United States, at least, to look to its laurels, says the "Manchester Guard- •;' ian." The paragraph announced that --' General Terauchi, Supreme Commander of the Japanese Army in North '. China, had been awarded the cham- "- pionship of baldheadedness and ap- " pointed an honorary member of the -.. Association of Baldheads. Now this

type of association and champion has | been regarded for years as a United States prerogative—and, to tell the truth, no one has even wished to de-1 prive the Americans of their supremacy in the field of eccentric competitions.

- Apparently, however, Japan has been I' insidiously preparing to undermine : this supremacy. The baldheaded cham- „, pionship is evidently the.first blow in % the new battle. But Japan has a '■-■-long way to go yet before'the United - States is compelled to surrender. ■*■ A Baldheaded contest is common- •• place compared with the "ice-sitting contest" staged four years ago in New York. It was won by a red-haired girl who sat for five and a half hours on ice, "during which the volume of her ice-cake perceptibly diminished."

The United States still holds the chew-ing-gum championshipi with a score of 45 sticks made, by Bertram; Smith, of

Lebanon,' Illinois. TheT oyster-eating world championship, again, is held by a 'United States Negro ,who ; consumed

more oysters than, urishelled, would

fill a two-gallon can. What has Japan \ in,readiness tocrival the laughing contest staged at Omaha, Nebraska, some ye.ars ago, in which the palm was awarded to the winner for "volume,

clarity, contagious quality, naturalness, continuity, technique, and wholesomeness"? No Japanese, probably, could forget the seriousness of life long enough to win a championship of this sort. The.United States also claims

the records for slow smoking, nonstop kissing, staying awake (6£ days), and non-stop Bible-reading.

General Count Terauchi, supreme commander of the1 Japanese Army in North China, it appears, has been awarded "the Championship of Baldheadedness," comments the same journal editorially (Mark Twain coined the word "balditude") by the "Association of. Bald Heads," which has also nominated the great man an honorary member of the association. No one who has seen a photograph of General Terauchi would question for one moment his title to this honour, but for all that it seems a dubious one. Most men, and certainly most generals, have been more anxious to conceal their baldness than to boast of it. In his play "Caesar and Cleopatra" Mr. Bernard Shaw suggests that Caesar wore a laurel wreath to hide his lack of hair, a trick which failed to deceive Cleopatra. "You should rub your head with strong spirits of sugar," she told him. "That will make it grow," and added insult to injury by telling hinTthat he looked "only about fifty" in his helmet. Napoleon, if we may judge from his portraits, took refuge in another trick not unknown' to lesser men, that of spreading the hairs he still possessed over the vacant sites. But General Terauchi is of sterner stuff. On receiving the news of his championship he told the Press that he had become bald in his twenties, which suggests that he is anything but ashamed of the fact. Baldness, for all one knows, njay even be considered a sign of military skill in Japan, copied with mistaken thoroughness from the Prussian crop. There is, however, one danger. Might not the flash of a bald-headed army attract the passing bomber? We recommend to General Terauchi that he should consider seriously the question of Hair Defence. '