POSTSCRIPTS

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 128, 26 November 1938, Page 8

POSTSCRIPTS

Chronicle and Comment

BY PERCY FLAGE

Jose. —If only those Nazis could be more humanitAryan! * * « Camou Flage.—Goebbels gabbles and gobbles. . . , * * * , * I Let us reiterate that the greatest certainty of the day is uncertainty. * * * i [ Once Britannia ruled the waves but now it takes the three democratic Powers to do the same job of work. * - • • ' Another of those idiotic "chain letters" is going round. The only bad luck you will have if you "break the chain" is that you will lose some practice in writing. * * * : NEW IDEA. The Prime Minister has now express* ed a new idea for our benefit, viz, "In spite of everything that was being done, the problem still remained." Perhaps it would be unwise to solve problems that provide opportunities for vigorous rhetoric ; and enable the majority of people to be otherwise usefully employed. Yours truly, FACT; * # * THOSE LONDON "FUNS." Well, for our innocent part, we did not know that we had any London funds until our attention was drawn to it by the "Capitalistic Press." We're ever so glad to know. They must ba the unspent balance of what we left' in the Leicester lounge when the Red Caps weren't about some time between 1914 and 1918.—"JOHN BRADBURY." * * * EPITAPH. Dear Percy Flage.—l have long been* an admirer of your interesting column and would like to forward you a small contribution. I found it in Seymour Hicks's book, "Night Lights." It is:— "An amusing epitaph on a tombstone in a Canadian churchyard. It reads: "Here lies an Atheist.. All dressed up and nowhere to go." With all good wishes for the coming festive season. Yours sincerely, ■ SPEIGAE. » • .* . . .' BRAIN TEASER. A different kind of brain-teaser this weekend: one which will, we predict unduly disturb the grey matter. The problem: is to fill in the blanks in the following verse with four-letter words, each word having the same four letters, no two words being alike. Here it is;— "An old lady on bent, Put on her -— and away she went; 1 , my son,' she was heard to say, 'What shall we do to — '- today?'" How do you like the look of it? * * r *•< i EQUALOGUES. Here's Blotto's contribution to this feature;— ' - .. Cricket gear + weed = part of a racecourse. Month + spoken = of an official. Mole + rubbish = minstrel. Blow + pronoun = direction. A food -t a satellite ■= a holiday. ' Preposition +) quote .== an explosive. Vehicle + fantastic'^ very large. Quarrel + preposition = lunch. Now let us see what you can do with these. *.*,*■ SCHOOL'S IN. Do you know that— 1. Ernest Thompson Seton tells of ft robin who, having nothing else to do, built six nests while his mate sat on her eggs? 2 Fourteen yards of lanital—a synthetic woollen material —weighing seven pounds can be extracted from 170 pints of milk? 3. Ane inch of rain represents one foot of snow, and air in snow may be as high as 30 parts air to one of snow?v 4. At Roman feasts the custom was observed of serving a guest as many cups of wine as he had letters in his name? 5. A unique law in Omaha, Nebraska, prohibits the use of a finger bowl by more than one diner at a time? 6. A sum of £50,000,000 has been spent on Gibraltar, yet the Rock produces nothing? 7. California was named after a sixteenth century romance, by the Spaniards, who considered it an earthly paradise? . 8. If an elephant, in proportion to its size, ate as much as a mouse, it would consume 20,0001b of fodder 9 The humming-bird is so light and feathery that it takes approximately ninety of them to weigh one pound? 10. If a small quantity of sugar is added to the water when washing linoleum the result will be a brightening of the colours? * * * BRUEGHEL'S WINTER. Jagg'd mountain peaks and skies icegreen Wall in the wild told scene below. Churches, farms, bare copse—the Sea In freezing air of winter show. There ink-black shapes on fields in flood Curling, skating, and sliding go. To left, a slant-signed Tavern; a blaze; Peasants; a watching child; and 10, Muffled and mute, beneath naked trees — In sharp perspective set a-row— Trudge huntsmen, sinister spear aslant, Dogs snuffling behind them in tha snow; And arrowlike, lean, athwart the air, Swoops into Space a crow. But flame, nor ice, nor piercing rock. Nor silence, as of a frozen sea, Nor that slant inward infinite line Of signboard, bird, and hill, and trea More than give subtle "hint of him Who squandered here life's mystery, And—deathless made—his company. WALTER DE LA MARE. WORTH THE MONEY. Here is a hitherto unrecorded—but perfectly true —episode of the international crisis. It has a special sport* ing interest. A lady journalist was in a London post office the day after Der Fuehrer made his ultimatum speech which set all Europe and part of America by the ears. As she was standing at the counter there entered a big, burly, tough-looking man with a woman. He came up to the counter, and startled the lady clerk -behind it by saying, in deep-toned accents, that he wanted to send a telegram to Hitler. As he seemed quite sober, he was handed a telegraph form, and proceeded to write laboriously a somewhat lengthy message, which he then read out, not without some verbal swagger, to his lady friend. It was an invitation to Adolf Hitler, Chancellor of the Reich, to meet him when and where he liked, and settle tha Czech issue by personal combat under any rules. The message came to Ida 9d, which the sender paid with cheerful alacrity. It is not known whether Der Fuehrer ever received it, but the sender was a well-known ali-io wrestler.