POSTSCRIPTS

Evening Post, Volume CXXXI, Issue 28, 3 February 1941, Page 6

POSTSCRIPTS

Chronizle and Comment

BY PERCY FLAGE

Sorry to disappoint, Melisande, but Bacchus was not the god of betting. * '# * Tha .English may be a Germanic race, but at least they have not degenerated to the depths of Nazism. * . * * There's an old Italian saying: "Happiness goes on foot." Graziani's retreat* ing warriors know better than that. ■. ■ * i * *. G. 0.: Flage, if you want to spell "Dublin" the Eire way, it is: "DHUBHACLIATH."' '■'■.*'• * * Every truth is at bottom a theory, and a theory is nothing but a tool which we drop the moment we have forged a better one. * * * "While he never actually struck me," explained Mrs. Sarah Sanders, suing her husband for divorce, "he would go round slamming his fist against doors and saying, 'I wish it was you.'" .*'.*■ * * SIDI BARRANI—SEEDY GRAZIANI. Twenty-five thousand prisoners out of te brook—"Py gorrie," says Hori, "that te good fishing." E.E.L. Nelson. * # * ." TENACITY. A British submarine has a commander known for tenacity. On a dangerous mission recently they lay doggo on the bottom for three days in semidarkness. For three days the commander did-not open his mouth. As they surfaced they were attacked. A torpedo struck them a slanting blow. Depth charges began to explode around them. Inside, the men were thrown about. The noise was shattering. Safe on the bottom again the commander spoke: "Pretty adjacent, what?" he said. * * * TROOP-LANDING BY AIR. It was a certain Mr. Green, not the Soviet, who first conceived the idea of landing troops by air. Back in 1828 Green astounded England by suggesting that not only soldiers but even cavalry might be carried over the enemy lines by means of balloons. To substantiate his claim, says a London newspaperman, he declared that he himself had already made one such ascent on horseback from London. He declined, however, when challenged to prove his assertion by giving a further public demonstration, and for years later suffered merciless ragging at the hands of his, friends and acquaintances. Finally, to silence his tormentors, he decided to make an ascent on horseback from Vauxhall Gardens. His mount was a diminutive pony, but he was given ah ovation when he actually did rise into the air astride the pony's back. But even this feat was completely put in the shade two years later when a Frenchwoman, Mme. Poitevin, actually floated over London mounted on a bull. * *■' * * . INTERNATIONAL BOTTLE CLUB. Do not jump to conclusions; the 1.8.C. has nothing to do with liquorous orgies. It was begun by an Australian during a voyage, from -Vancouver to Sydney. He placed hundreds of messages (in various languages) in glass bottles, which he threw into the sea. The membership of. the . club grew among the people who found the bottles and read and replied to the messages. From a casual bottle-dropping concern^. the 1.8.C. has become a systematised business. Members collect thousands of old bottles and hand them to passengers on long-distance ships with re. quests to drop them over the side at specified points as far as possible from land. (That New Zealand soldier whose bottle message reached his wife via Kapiti the other day is probably not a member of the 1.8.C, but the ocean currents did the job for him.) The general idea is that the curious hobby may one day provide valuable information as to the drift of world sea currents and the direction of winds. Some of the bottles have tortuous and long voyages: one dropped by a Japanese Bottle Club member near Kamchatka arrived three years later at Chile, and messages thrown overboard at Alaska have turned up in Australia. * * ♦ THE PERPLEXING BRITON. The Englishman's a funny foeHe fumbles; At starting he is very slow, And stumbles. He doesn't pack much early lickHe's mulish; He scents to be a little thick And foolish. His timing- isn't very good—■ Appalling! I've never even understood Such stalling. ' He staggers all around the ring— The blighted You'd never think him, from his swinf, A fighter. He takes it often* on the chin, This stout- boy; But when he seems to be all in .. . Look out, boy! He lets his arms fall to his sideYes, maybe; But when they think that he has died, Oh, baby! He staggers, reels, and jolly well Get's thinner— But at. the end he gets tha yell— "THE WINNER!" H. I. PHILLIPS. New York "Sun." "Hi" Phillips is rated one of tha cleverest (and cleanest) columnists in the States. * # * LAMBETH-WALKED TO DEATH.. You dance (with "oys") the Lambeth Walk, of course. But, as you dance, do you know that the first Lambeth Walk was a march—a dreaded march of death across the bottom of the River Thames from the City of London to Lambeth? It happened this wise. During .the twelfth century Squire Taggart was a Judge in the city who surrounded himself with a gang of thieves, murderers, and cutthroats. Greed and corruption were rife in those days, so in his qfftcial * position Taggart was privileged to prey upon his .unhappy victims, generally people with a little wealth; Brought to court by his gang for trivial charfes* the folk usually received as sentence the dreaded Lambeth Walk. This was carried out in an unusual way. Weighting the victim's body, a rope was tied round his waist, one end to a rowboat with enough rope for the victim to reach the-bottom of the river. The boat was then rowed across the river, dragging the victim across the bottom! The river was much shallower then, but very few came through the ordeal alive. For years this was the sentence of Taggart, who grew rich through his corruption. But his day of reckoning came. A body of enraged citizens awaited their opportunity" and seized Taggart with most of his gang. They made him do the infamous Lambeth Walk; the rest of thfrgang suffered ■ a like fate.