POSTSCRIPTS

Evening Post, Volume CXXX, Issue 4, 4 July 1940, Page 10

POSTSCRIPTS

Chronicle and Comment

BY PERCY FLAGE

Inflation is a bubble easily blown up but not easy to prick. * * * Referee: Hitler's a great hitter, but he always hits below the belt. * # * Ikey McTavish suggests that the leader of the Democratic Labour Party is a lone wolf barking up the wrong tree. * * * Old Subscriber: "The Torch of Life" would, perhaps, today have read: "The Torture Life." Pay up, pay up, and pay again. All the best to Column 8. • * * ■ * R. Tai: France is now trying out an indefinite period of National Insecurity. Americans are under orders to quit England. No doubt they will "go west" in due course, but after that —T * # * "WIDE FIELD" IS RIGHT. Now is the time when artists should busy themselves devising new and original forms of gravestones, says a Munich paper, which, apparently, does not possess a sense of the fitness of things. A wide field (it is suggested) is opening out for artists' talents. The dreary stereotyped forms are already giving way to novel designs, but now it has become specially necessary to accelerate the reform before new vistas of . monuments, regular and monotonous as the keys on a piano, suddenly inflict themselves upon the landscape. ■ * * * BRIGHT BREVITIES. Dear Flage,—Obeying an uncontrollable urge to' join the ranks ot eighth-columners who are so splen° didly doing their bit towards preserving the morale of the multitudeAfter Mussolini's peace terms to France, we can expect to hear that Camera has been signed to fight Shirley Temple. The vicar was trying to encourage an apprehensive woman parishioner:— "Perhaps London will not be bombed at all," he said. "What!" she protested indignantly, "after all the expense we've been put to!" "Daily Telegraph" (London). Yours, ■ , JAY JAY. * * * BACK LASH. The subtle Jap, Who bought our "scrap," Has staged a snap :..._. To spread his map, And here's the rap— The wily Jap Is just the chap To frame a trap, And then back slap Those tons of,"scrap" . . In red-hot "shrap." Right in our lap! A dire mishap— And still we nap! No simple sap The crafty Jap! H.G. *.. * ■ * UNTO THE FOURTH GENERATION' AGAIN. Tom L. Mills: The recent passing of Kenneth Lucas, ex-editor and a direc= tor of the "Nelson Mail" Co., recalls some more newspaper memories and calls forth yet another Postscript. In the days when. Ken was a. youth and yearned to walk in the inky way it was the good old custom of owners of provincial papers to send their sons out to get experience on city journals. His late father, who was a familiar figure at the annual ..conferences of newspapermen, sent Ken to the "Evening Post." That was back in 1907, and the young and gentlemanly Nelspnian was a cub reporter under me whenI was a city roundsman, and another cub reporter who " accompanied me under those old-time conditions was Ken Muir, of the Gisborne "Herald." Good lads, both, and they became editors of their dads' papers. The two sons of lamented Ken Lucas represent the fourth generation associated wittt the Nelson paper. Carry on! •* * * MORNING TEA MONOLOGUE. j Above the ragin' uv the war, . '■ ! Above its hendless .ramp-'n'-roar, Where witlin'- bombs is 'ufdlin' down On many a quiet little town Uv Hingland, where the grass grows green Where winter snow-'n'-ice was seen, An' chilblains, dear, grew all around. Though not on 'er 'isteric ground, What goes for darlin 5 Scotland, too, Who've 'ad, they say, so much to do With risin' Hingland to the eight. She's reached, not.on a single nigh* An' got, uv course, tremenjus fame By being 'elped to do that same— Talkin' like this, without delay, What I did reely wanter say Was that I 'card come ocr the sea Singin'-what thrilled the 'cart uv me. Who was they liftin' up their voice With who I could sing-'n'-reDOice, An' pray dear, that the Motherland, Shoulder'to shoulder, 'and to and. Shall lay out stiff them Nasti brutes, Who only 'Ell's ole Nu*.«Jut«.^ Those ringin' tones I 'card-so clear Came from fair children free of_fe ar An' all the things what make Me sad (As many uv them must of ad). Why™S they glad? Becos quite soon, It mornin', night, or afternoon. They'll set out to a new land *air— Which is Noo Zealand, an' once there, Will grow up 'appy, stout-'n'-strong; In' when them kiddies come a ong ?m goin' to pick a good one out . . , Djer know, I never fancied stout. * * * INTIMATION. -What Shall It Profit" ("Prophecies Fulfilled"): Frankly, we are unable to server to predict the capitulation of those three countries. Interested, and a dozen other clients: Thanks Sr the particulars regarding InSncaKauffman. They have apneared already in this feature. Litterae: "Hidden Meaning" seems forced and not impressive., • TP- As usual, clever and spntely, but' one of those "codes" would be wrongly construed by the ribald. OAK' Sorry, but that matter is not quite suited to this feature. Try it^out on Mr Nash or one of the journals which specialise in economics. A Dam Ant: Your limerick, like the curate's egg, is good only in parts AB (Napier): Here is a fragment Of your thesis: "Men are generally con-' sidered very brave, but what they fear most is women! A man fears losing a woman's good opinion of him more than anything else." Student: Valenciennes is pronounced "valensenz"; monsieur "misyer." Glad you like the column. _ W.W. (Kaiwarra Dump): (1) Too fierce a verbal raid on the enemy in this land for us to handle. (2) So you have "made the columns of the 'Bulletin' more than once"? You make US envious. A. (Palmerston North): That rhyme was published in Col. 8 towards the end lof last year.