POSTSCRIPTS

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVI, Issue 86, 8 October 1943, Page 4

POSTSCRIPTS

Chronicle and Comment

BY PERCY FLAGE

Japuneasy. •" # ; , Home radio: "What has happened: in Italy is strictly a home affair.' Otherwise, a home guard affair. ♦ ♦■♦■•,. ■•■'■' Roosevelt: "We must not relax^our pressure on the enemy by taking time, out to define every boundary and settle every political controversy in every part of the world." *■••■* * PERHAPS., John: Here is what Carlyle wrote: "Good heavens! And this is what you call the flower of life; and age, and darkness, and the great grand Perhaps lying close in the rear of it. * * *• SO THAT'S THAT. i Churchill said, when asked -for a 1 blue-print of the New Order by a friend of mine: "I shall base it on the I Sermon on the Mount, and I shall follow it as closely as I dare without be-. ing accused of plagiarism. **. ' * ' DEFINITION. The Ambassadors of Germany and Italy (in part) have exchanged, frank views with Japan's Foreign Minister, Shigemitsu, Tokio reports. Frank, (syn.) straightforward, direct, unreserved, honest, sincere, artless, unsophisticated—according to Webster. . ♦ ♦ .*' ' . INQUIRY. Dear Percy Flage,—Can any reader tell me the origin and remainder of the following? , Professor McStickleback sipped at his port, " His feet on the anthracite stove for . support; ' His dinner was over, his mmd was at ease, His soul was unfettered and free as the breeze. Yours, ■ GODFREY PHILLIPS, * .*...■* POSTCARD. Did anyone ever receive a postcard of Paris that failed to show the Eiffel Tower, writes "Barkley." Alas, those postcards will soon be collectors' items if, as Vichy reports, the Germans pull down the famous old tower for its metal. In its day (1889) it was the tallest man-made thing in the world, but it has been surpassed now. Height was its only distinction; architectural beauty never was. So we won't mourn. We'll get used to the new post-war postcards. * * * MYSTERY TANK. The mark V, missing link in a series of latest model German tanks, has turned out to be a 45-ton monster carrying a 75-millimetre gun and is called the Panther. This tank is said to have been something of a mystery to Allied military observers since the earlier mark IV was succeeded, by a mark VI Tiger. The Panther is powered by 650 h.p. engines similar to those in the Tiger and is about the same size as the Tiger but lighter in weight, because of smaller armour-plate. The Panther's front plate has. a thickness of 85 millimetres, compared with the Tiger's 100 millimetres. ' * * * LOOPY LIMERICKS. By A. Magniac— There was a mad lady of Gwydir, Who went about yelling blue mwydir; Yet her voice was so sweetSuch a musical treat— That I wish Clara Butt could hav« hwydir! . j ' There was an old girl of Karachi, Who said to her husband, "O Achi! Your efforts at verse Get steadily werse; You're far too pedantic and stachil" * # ♦ BARBED WIRE DISEASE. "The worst curse of being captured is the long boredom, despair, and futility of life." Such was one prisoner's comment on "barbed wire disease," the no-occupational disorder of war prisoners. Britain is attempting to fight it by a system of correspondence courses in agriculture, arts, commerce and industry, engineering, languages, and law. At first, informal courses sprang up in the camps, given by professional or technicallytrained men among the prisoners. Now Oxford University, which for 600 years has rarely awarded degrees to students not in residence, has formed the plan for prisoner education. An examination was held recently in English literature, in which 30 students who had never attended the university were awarded Oxford diplomas. All were prisoners of war in Germany.