POSTSCRIPTS

Evening Post, Volume CXXXI, Issue 27, 1 February 1941, Page 10

POSTSCRIPTS

Chronicle and Comment

BY PERCY FLAGE

DO AS DAD DOES—KEEP MUM! (Yorkshire war slogan.) * * * Adolf: "God shall not. Leave-us in the coming year." Won't He! . * * * Ambrose: That shark, Flage, and that wind. Now we know why there are no sandfiies at Lyall Bay! * * . * It is reported that a rural electricity ' station has the following notice: "To touch these wires is instant death. Anyone doing so will be prosecuted." * * . . .*,-.. ' JOY BEATS WORRY. The Morganton (North Carolina) "News-Herald" reports that, when timeg are good, its circulation gains at the town of Joy in Burke County. When business is bad, the subscribers in the town of Worry, nearby, lead those in Joy. Joy is now leading. * * * 1 COURT SHORTS. A husband ' said in Tottenham Police Court last month: "My wife was most unreasonable when she saw me in a shelter with a girl clinging £> my neck. The girl had fainted.and.jui falling, threw her arms round: me." Wife at Bromley (England): "When my husband came home to me after _ being away for two years I told him to go back to the other woman. He replied:''l can't. We've been bombed out of our bungalow.'" . Wife in Tottenham Police Court: I should appreciate my husband more if he would go away and send me his wage packet every week." ** ' • WHAT A WOMAN! In the old parish churchyard at Brighton (England) is a stone to tht memory of Phoebe Hessel, the celebrated soldier girl. The epitaph reads: "In memory of Phoebe Hassel, who was born at Stepney in the year 1713. She served for many years as a private soldier in the sth Regiment of Foot in different parts of Europe, and in the year 1745 fought under the command of the Duke of Cumberland at the Battle of Fontenoy, where she received a bayonet wound in her arm. Her long life, which commenced ia the time of Queen Anne, extended to the reign of George IV, by whose munificence she received comfort and support in her latter years. She died at Brighton, where she had long resided, December . 12. 1821, aged 108 years." * * * THIS ENGLAND. ." Dear Percy Flage,—Your correspondent J.McK. is surely 'not at one with our friends across.the Channel.in his scorn of England? It should be noted that all enemy broadcasts, revilings, threats, etc., are made in reference to England, meaning, of course, Great Britain. Even in the Senate of the - U.S.A., and in the Press of that country, England is the term used, being,One supposes, less trouble to enunciate than "Great Britain." It is .a nice thought, that England's freedom still depends on folk beyond the Tweed, but that is not all: it depends- on Wales, and whatever small part you are prepared to allow, to .the Irish also. There certainly are some great Scots, Welshmen, Englishmen, also -Irish; con--' cerned in the defence of the British Realm. Cheer up, J.McK., you may be certain that Jerry will be as fiercely repelled at John o' Groats as in Sussex, or Llandudno. Please don't be small-minded. MANXMAN. •..-*■ * ♦ ' SCHOOL'S IN. ' Do you know that— (1) Two cats, "Whiskey" and "Chink," have been bequeathed to his cook, Dorothy Biggs, by the former Recorder of Finance, who left £95,821? (2) While a spotter watched for every aeroplane from the roof of Eton Chapel the Bishop of Lincoln confirmed 180 boys? (3) In the gipsy schools of the Bal> kans, the children are punished by depriving them of their cigarettes? (4) There were domesticated cats ia Mexico and Central America long before the first Europeans came? (5) The powder which elegant gentlefolk of past centuries used for their hair contained a powerful insecticide? (6) The marble bust of Saint Paul in the Boston Cathedral is really a sculptured portrait of Albert Einstein? : (7) The term "infantry" was coinedl after the Infanta Eugenia had reorgan-, ised the army of her father, Philip' [I? (8) In Rumania traffic policemen :arry little hand grenades which leave a. coloured phosphorescent glow at the point of explosion? (9) A game similar to baseball wai; played in Cheshire long before the dis» :overy of America in 1492? (10) Using a 3000-year-old razor, th« ihief of -Berlin barbers recently shaved Heinrich George, a Berlin actor? *' * * THE PENNY WHISTLE. The new moon hangs like an ivory bugle In the naked frosty blue; And the ghylls of the forest, already. blackened By Winter, are blackened anew. The brooks that cut up and increase the forest, As if they had never known The sun, are roaring with black hollow voices Betwixt rage and a moan. But still the caravan-hut by the holliei Like a kingfisher gleams between: Round the mossed old hearths of the charcoal-burners First primroses ask to be seen. The charcoal-burners are black, but their linen .. " ": --~ ■ Blows white on the line; " ■ "-"- And white the letter the girl is reading Under that crescent fine: Arid her brother who hides "apart in' .a thicket, . _ . Slowly and surely playing ■■■■.: On a whistie an olden nursery melody, Says far more than I am saying. EDWARD THOMAS. ■ -' VIVE LA JUSTICE! v ■ A liaison officer with the French. Foreign Legion af^Karvik: I was returning from a reconnaissance with ; the Colonel and his intelligence officer, writes Lieutenant P. O. Lapie. Landing at a small wooden pier, we wer«. greeted by a hail, of bullets. We crossed the road one by one. A new volley of bullets. In front of us we saw, by a telegraph pole and behind a small hillock, a Bren gun. "It's our )wn men who are firing at us!" AnDther burst of fire. On-reaching the top we recognised the legionnaires. 'Which company is that?" shouted the Colonel. "Fifth Company, ,mon, Colonel." "What..are your orders?" To fire on anyone landing,- ' mon Colonel." "Why did you miss me, then?" said the Colonel. The sergeantgunner remained dumbfounded. j "You' shall have a quart of wine for having carried out your orders and three' lays' C.B. for having missed thre« jfficers at three hundred yards."