POSTSCRIPTS

Evening Post, Volume CXXXI, Issue 30, 5 February 1941, Page 6

POSTSCRIPTS

Chronicle and Commeti*

BY PERCY FLAGE

It is no longer news for a man to bite a dog, but wait till he, bites the dusti .; . : * « * LThe only thing experience teaches us, observes Andre Maurois, is that experience teaches us nothing. / « * ■■#■~ Ad. H.—Black sheep news item: The remarkable and rare sight of two pens of black lambs at Tuakau lamb fair shows' that even a lamb will turn in wartime and start a black-out. * * * - • Then there was the London child left in town with no school to go to who remarked: "If I can't go back to; school soon I* shall have forgotten my memory." *• * * * "Leader-Post'T: bur tastes change as we mature. Little girls like painted dolls, little boys like soldiers. When they grow up the girls like the soldiers and the boys go after the painted dolls. * # * QUESTION AND ANSWER: R.W. asks: What is the function of the New Zealand Forestry Unit serving overseas?" Obviously to help the troops when they get into an ambush. RAY. * * * SHOOTING FROM THE MOON. Professor A. M. Low, who has (it it said) scores of successful inventions to his credit, from the "Queen Bee" radiocontrolled aircraft to a device which, ensures all golfers a straight swing, is president of the Interplanetary Society, and is quietly confident that man will reach the moon in. say, 500 to 1000 years from now. The society has a German section, and Low tells how he was amused to read in one of their recent reports the view that when they —the Germans —reached th* moon they considered it would be passible "to direct meteors from the moon to-strike the earth at any desired point; in, other words, that, once on the moon, they could rain meteors on Britain and blast her out of existence. How the German mind-sees in everything a means of shooting things at people! ./ ** ' * EELS FOR THE ENEMY. "How can England go on." recently; asked the Berlin correspondent of the ; Italian "Telegrafo." "Is it true that, the 47.000.000 Englishmen are 47.000,000 Churchills?" London has been destroyed, according to several German newspapers. No buses or underground trains are running, and streets are disappearing) under floods. Canadian eels, which at one time fed many Germans and Italians, are now marketed in Britain. Many thousands of pounds' weight of eels are also being preserved in Canada for Italians and Germans now. prisoners of war. "Schwarze Korps," organ of Hitler's Black Guards, commenting on Londoners' ability to carry on under continuous bombing, sardonically sneors about "England approaching death with sensual pleasure and smacking i's • lips." * * . * . . MEN-O'-WAR FORTS. ■ Fort St. Angelo, Grand Harbour. Malta, "which is the Royal Navy's shore base, was first fortified during the ninth century by the Saracens. Robert of Normandy strengthened it in the tenth century. In the year 1400 the Spanish were garrisoned there, so "K.A." tells, while in 1565, for ; six months, the Grand Master La Valettc, from the fort; directed the heroic defensive compaign against the besieging Turks.' Rebuilt in 1686 by the Knights of St. John, it is the only fort in the British Empire that has the official rank of Man-o'-war. In "Diamond Rock," an insignificant piece of rock in the Caribbean Sea, near Demont, Martinique. H.M.S. St. Angelo had an interesting counterpart. In 1805 during armed action against : France, this little rock was "manned" by an intrepid crew of British tars, who, "like mice handling a little sausage," took on "board" a caravan, and with it for seventeen months fired away at French vessels passing to and from Porte-de-France. Shortage of ammunition compelled their ultimate surrender to a French squadron. Nevertheless, this small stronghold was at the time rated by the British Admiralty as a naval ship. * * • UNINSPIRED. Some things we should not. like to ■ own — A sex-appealing saxophone; II Duce's job of work, which seems A turmoil of nerve-shattering dreams: A racehorse which, though full of \ pride. Has never yet been "home and dried1'; A chin like Himmler's, or a hummock Like Goering's broad French-window stomach; A 15-guinea modern denture That creaks at every wishbone ven-. ture; Carloads of vitamins and such, A hippo in a rabbit hutch; A stout snail wearing on its spine A Government house most fair and fine; A spinster auntie- tall and spare, As harmful as a frigidaire; A Mona Lisa face like Gocbbels', A leaking pipe that slops and burbles; A Persian cat that specialises In lots of kittens of all sizes; A tuatara which goes wild Even though suave* and undefiled; A comet which is known to be Blown-up with useless energy; A reputation—as they say— For lazy work and too much play; Lastly, we would not care to own That spoof like this just makes u§ groan. ' - O. SELVES. * * * DEVASTATING. Burlington U. Cade writes: Dear Flage,—lt is difficult in these times to find adequate language in which to express our horror and detestation of the Fuhrer. I think the enclosed, an effort of the celebrated Lord Chief Justice Pimblekin (a creation of, I think, Barry Pain) comes just about as near the mark as one could desire. It reads: . Your crime is one of the most heartless, atrocious, inhuman, and horribla that it has ever been my misfortune to . hear of. Your long and cold-blooded premeditation; the cynical indifference to "the result of your atrocities, combined with the delight with which you have wallowed in human gore; your greed, ingratitude, treachery, savagery, . meanness, and cannibalism; all these things stamp you out as the most foul and loathsome monster, aye, vampire, that ever wallowed in the foul and fathomless quagmire of infinite and Immeasurable dastardliness. Under the circumstances I must inflict on you the severest penalty which the law allows. Accordingly I sentence you to penal servitude for life, with the cat once a week. Mercy #ould be thrown away. - . on you! (Slightly adapted.) .