POSTSCRIPTS

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIV, Issue 64, 12 September 1942, Page 6

POSTSCRIPTS

Chronicle and Comment

BY PERCY FLAGE

These days, when the Jap snipers are up a tree, they are up a tree. * * * There's the Great Bear and Little Bear, but the Russian bear is giving yon Bock hell. ~* * * Do you know that in French IndoChina the women really wear the pants, and the men wear shirts? * * # President Rafael Guardia: "Costa Rica is wholeheartedly doing everything it can, from expelling Axis sympathisers to planting rubber trees, to help the United States with the war." * * * British correspondents in North. Africa have been called home for putting too rosy a complexion on things. Their successors in the ' desert will be instructed to confirm all mirages. * * * NEAR THING. A soldier whose main trouble was extreme talkativeness was on escort duty with a corporal taking an important prisoner to headquarters. Before starting, he had been told that on no account was he to speak; a bet of a packet of cigarettes, had been made that he couldn't remain silent until reaching headquarters. They went in single file, the soldier quite mute. 'On arriving at -headquarters, the corporal, without looking round, said: "Well, Tommy, you've won the bet." "Yes," replied Tommy, "but you nearly had me when the prisoner escaped." * * * SNOWFLAKE. Blust'ring South Wind, you are host At a banquet where the toast, "Departing Winter," is sweetly sipped From primrose cups, where sunlight dipped. Many guests have braved the gale, Gentle raindrops, pearly hail; Tiny snowflakes, softly dressed. You must be the honoured guest. Tho' to winter you defer, Self-effacing you prefer; Within your fragile hands you 'bring Promise of a joyous Spring. POLLY FLINDERS. * * * PUZZLE. "Fronti Nulla Fides" writes: — Herewith is a puzzle which might interest the readers of your column, \yhich retains its popularity despite the present arduous tunes, not forgetting, of course, its wit, which is a large contributing factor. Here is the puzzle: Two glasses. Water in one. wine in the other. Same amount of liquid in each. You take one teaspoonful from the wine glass and put it in the water. Stir well, and take one teaspoonful of the resulting mixture and put it back in the wine glass. Do you now have more wine in the water glass than water in the wine glass, or vice versa, or what? * * * OFFICE ABOLISHED. Tom L. Mills: The abolition of the office of Assistant Secretary of Labour has been gazetted. Reminds me of the first man to occupy that post. J. Lomas, up from the mines of the West Coast of the South Island, a migrant from the Old Country and a very able, sane leader of organised labour. He was appointed assistant to the world's first Secretary of a State Labour Department, Edward Tregear, who in turn had been appointed head of the newly-created Department by the world's first Minister of Labour, clever and versatile William Pember Reeves. This original trio of social order experimentalists has long been gathered to its fathers, but each left his mark on the pages of New Zea. land's history. * ■ « • » SAW STARS. An Australian soldier, watching over a group of prisoners, was fascinated by the row of dust-caked ribbon decorations worn by an Italian colonel. Finally he walked over, inspected them closely, and said: "Listen, pal, you're not going to need those pretties, so how about trading them for a couple of cigarettes?" The colonel got the idea and immediately made the deal." Then the Aussie spotted an officer with a silver star gleaming on each shoulder and offered to make a similar deal. • "Sorry," replied the officer in English, "but I still have use for it. You see. I'm on your side." The Aussie was astonished to learn that the officer was an American general, an observer, who was inspecting the prisoners. » . * ♦ ; WHAT A WAR! The- following letter, received at a Canadian Army headquarters, is selfexplanatory:— Dear Mr. Headquarters,— My husband was induced into the army long months ago and I ain't receifed no pay from him since he was gone. Please send me my elopement as I have a four-months-old baby and he is my only support and I knead it very bad,every day to buy us food and keep us enclosed. Both sides of my parents are very old and I can't suspect anything from them. My mother has been in bed with the same doctor for thirteen years and won't try another. My husband is in charge of a spitoon. Do I get any more than I am going to get. Please send me a letter and tell me if my husband made an application for a wife and child and send me wife form to fill out. . P.S.: My husband says he sets m V.M.C.A. every night with the piano playing in his uniform. I think you will see him there. Yours truly, MRS xxX », * * DO YOU RETURN? Do you return on evenings such as these. , , . A friendly ghost, and laughing once «-i2*3.in Siriging in chorus with the homebound breeze,. And calling gaily in the whispering rain? Are you drawn home again by forest ways, The mopoke calling in the clinging air, The smell of damp leaf-mould, the shimmering haze .... .. ..„ Of lace-like fern in fragile pattern rare? And does the kowhai, sun-gold for the Give you the ache of heart that always C 31X16 When August's children ceased their slumbering, . With darkness gone, and Winter tout a name? Do you return, O wanderer from afar. Forsake the desert and the sad and worn, , To ride in fancy on a shooting star, And be once more at peace where you were born? —MARGARET WATSON. * * » WALLACE. "Nova Scotia" passes on this one— "Lads," snapped an iron-jawed corporal of a Canadian unit just landed. in England, "they're holding Wallace in quarantine. Thirty days. What do you want to do?" . A scuffle of feet punctuated a wrathful roar: "Where is .he?" .And, inja trice a grim band, of determined troops had surrounded a frightened immigration official. „ , , "But the rules . . - he began. "The rules be damned, stormed tne soldiers. "Wallace is as much a member of this regiment as the Colonel. He comes in with us or we'll tear the place down and wrap it around your The scared official beat a tactical retreat. In the inner sanctum a decision was quickly reached. England s famous iron clad quarantine rule on dogs was waived in view of the emergency. And Wallace, the regiment's 150-pound Newfoundland dpg, crashed the Barrier that has frustrated thousands of tourists' pets.