POSTSCRIPTS

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVI, Issue 34, 9 August 1943, Page 4

POSTSCRIPTS

Chronicle and Comment

BY PERCY FLAGE

Roosevelt: "The road to Berlin is long and hard, but it is very sure." * * ■- * One old man directed in his will that he should be buried in a dog cemetery. Dogmatic.. * # # Do you know that P. T. Barnum, at the age of 15, had to borrow a pair of boots so that he could attend his father's funeral service. * * * William James: Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help to create the fact. * * ♦ INQUIRY. "Historical" asks: Can you, through your column, inform me as to who was the sculptor or woodcarver who fashioned the number of heads of early settlers which at one time adorned the outside walls of the . Old Identities Hotel on the site of the present Hotel St. George? . • We are unable to answer this question. Can any member of the old settler brigade come to our help? * * * CENTURIES AGO. Planning is a word greatly in vogue in these days.of destruction. The."London Gazette" had a word to say on the subject after the first Great Fire of London. In 1666 it reported that, to ensure that London should rise to greater beauty, hasty and unrestricted building was prohibited by order of the King. Probably John Citizen of A.D. 2142 will be intensely interested when someone roots out "The. Times" of 1942 and reveals how England was once defended by a Home Guard of nearly 2,000,000 civilian soldiers. And in 1643 it was reported in a leading paper that the House of Commons had agreed to raise an army of 20,000 men to defend the whole of England! * * # DREAM. A party of actors travelling by train were indulging in personal reminiscences. One stated that he had recently dreamt that he went to Heaven. When he arrived he was informed that everything there was magnified to a wonderful extent. A minute became a million years and a penny a million pounds. The latter fact impressed him particularly, so, advancing to St. Peter, he said: "Will you lend me a penny, please?" "Certainly," St Peter answered. "Just a minute." * • ♦ ■ ■ GULLS. I often wonder as I pass An open park or verdant spot At seagulls scattered on the grass Like lilies in a garden plot Extended with a space between As soldiers drilling on a green. . I like their stately attitude, The contemplative way they stand, As if in ruminating mood, Or dreaming of a golden strand— Or are they otherwise imbued When visiting the hinterland? And merely seek a change of food To vary sea and salt and sand! —H. GALLAGHER. Island Bay. • * * •» "ANXIETY NEUROSIS." General Jurgen yon Arnim, captured Axis cqmmander-in-chief in Tunisia, is reported to be suffering from an, "anxiety neurosis" in a British hospital. Hitler's hawk-faced favourite was removed from a mansion a few miles distant where he and 26 Axis generals were residing as prisoners of war. Examining doctors at the hospital deemed it necessary to perform an immediate operation on Arnim's left foot, which was threatened with permanent crippling. Authorities at the prison mansion had been worried for days by the dejection, moroseness, and despair of that once proud Nazi, who had advertised to the world his particular hatred for the British. He used to fraternise neither with his fellow-prisoners nor his entourage, retiring within himself with a front oJ frosty aloofness that barred all friendly advances.