By the Way

Evening Star, Issue 23657, 17 August 1940, Page 3

By the Way

(By X.Y.)

O Decades of the great Has-Been! I dimly recollect How once tho drab suburban Scene With verdant Leaves was decked. What Cottage, howsoever mean, Displayed no gracious growth of Green To give it Self-Respect?

I passed along the stolid Rows Of urban Domiciles, Where mass-production Bungalows*. Extended, Miles on Miles, Diversified by some of those Stark Relics of the Long Ago’s Less ornamental Styles.

And wheresoe’er 1 chanced to stray— And, sure, it mattered not, If Skies were dull, and cold, and grey. Or bright, and blue, and hot— In every House, on every day, An Aspidistra would display Its Beauty in a Pot.

An Exile from the Orient, Beneath an alien Sky. Behind its Casement Window pent It watched the Folks go by. With Vegetable Wonderment Concerning where these Creatures went. And whence, and how. and why. Each Owner watched his growing Plant, And tended it from Birth; With fertilising Stimulant Enriched Its Mother Earth; Attended to its slightest Want, And daily grew more jubilant About its Height and Girth.

But now the Greenery is gone. The Wreckage is complete. A Sombreness has come upon The devastated Street. Stern Time has taken every one; .The Aspidistra Plant is done. Played-out, and obsolete.

Where have the Aspidistras fled Which held Suburbia’s heart? Were they, in Scorn, deposited Upon the Rubbish Cart? Neglected, withered, brown, and dead, Were any Tears of Sorrow shed At seeing them depart?

For now there comes, to fill their Place, The China Statuette; A Single, now and then a Brace, Or, possibly, a Set Of Dogs of every Breed and Race, Depending on the Window Space Each Purchaser can get.

I’ve seen a Milo Venus who Is somewhat scant of Dress, A Monkey and a Cockatoo, A china Shepherdess, A Cat of some exotic Hue, A Pair of Kookaburras, too, And others, more or less.

So each suburban Thoroughfare, Past Corner after Corner, Proceeds beneath the Stony Stare Of artificial Fauna. One Aspidistra still is %here; So Neighbours, bury it with Care, And let me lie Chief Mourner I • • • •

Not least versatile among Ministers is Mr Armstrong. So far as. we are aware his pre-power avocations were confined to dry land. Naturally some of his platform illustrations dealing with the science of navigation are calculated to amaze or mystify master mariners and others who have access to the bridge. The Ship of State is not on Lloyd’s Register, nor is it likely to appear therein so long as instructions to masters are founded oh the principle enunciated by Mr Armstrong this week: “ We know how far we can go without wrecking the ship, and we are not likely to wreck it.” Many a skipper in the Roaring Forties has probably said the same thing to an apprehensive mate, and has carried on until something has carried away aloft, meaning limping into port in the dismasted condition of the Penang, of recent memory, or being at length posted as “ missing.”

The records of shipwrecks in New Zealand show what an insatiable maw Palliser Bay possessed in the days when sail predominated. Vessels from South Island ports, such as our own or Lyttelton, making for Wellington or any east coast port of the North Island during a typical sou’-wester, have figured in the long list of total losses through embayment in that menacing indentation to the westward of Cape Palliser Once within that area the most careful handling was of small avail. It was a case of a lee-shore on any course that might be set to try and escape from the'trap. Inexorably the sea room for “ wearing ship ” became less and less as the necessity for tacking became more and more frequent —should a cautious captain prefer that method to the risk of missing stays generally attaching to “ going about,” as yachtsmen understand 'it. If one wants an antithesis of a harbour of refuge Palliser Bay provides the best example—or the worst.

The phrasing of the Ministerial pronouncement recalled to “X.Y.” a summer holiday of very many years ago spent near the entrance of a huge landlocked harbour forming the approach to a then well-patronised terminal of transtasman trade. The distance between the two headlands at the entrance was somewhere over a mile, and the prevailing sea breeze of each afternoon constituted a “ soldier’s wind ” for the half-decked 22ft cutter or brigrigged boats which were hired from fishermen to troll for snapper to and fro across the entrance. To carry on to within a few boats lengths of the reefs on either shore before going about for another reach was the hall-mark of the venturesome, and may have been rather less risky than it seemed, providing that one got the strong tide under the boat’s lee for the fresh journey. The point is that it is not exactly the manoeuvre the average man appreciates being applied to the Ship of State. • • « • Mr Armstrong employed his seafaring analogy as a reassurance for the small taxpayer and as corroboration of the Labour Government’-s adherence to its expressed principle of the conscription of wealth along with the conscription of man-power. Besides this, he was confessedly breaking the news as gently as might be—announcing the possibility of a No. 2 Budget in the current financial year, involving vet another'dip into the taxpayer’s pocket. The justification proffered _ is that “ things are changing so rapidly.” They are indeed, and they promise to change, still more rapidly now that the “vicious spiral ” of unhallowed memory is again the course definitely laid down on New Zealand’s economic chart. Compulsory loans are foreshadowed as a step to the achievement of what assumes more definitely the outline of- a capital levy. Rather naively Mr Nash’s temporary understudy admits that “ additional wealth must be created before it can be taken.” Doubtless in this crisis those directing industries of all kinds would submit willingly enough to the Government taking any “ additional wealth,” but they are probably unable i

“ The time has cornel* the Walrus said, “To talk of many things

to see how they can first create it under the statutory terms and connow hedging them-about. Re* duction of overheads? Let the Go* eminent set the example, beginning, say* with some of its inspectorial army.

The daw in borrowed feathers, is a* school reader fragment not obliterated from the mind of at least one. North Island traffic inspector, ■ But its application to motorists whose borrowed coupons have enabled them to extend or eke out their mileage—even if it b* deemed a • breach of the rule of tha road—constitutes a knock-out blow to the Golden Rule. To do unto other* as you would that they should do unto others is not, merely a lubricant but a motive power _to tho life of' societv under duress- like the- present. ' If coupon non-transferability is the law, in has been as much honoured .in tho breach .as was another . anti-social, pseudo economic experiment tho “anti-shouting” section of licensing legislation. Some communicative motorists. when asked to explain the mystery of how others manage to- keet» their cars in commission throughout the month, can impart secrets. ■ For instance. a car owner, having laid up-hi* registered vehicle, collects his coupons and is overwhelmed! with pity for at bowser proprietor* whose turnover has been enormously reduced. To him tha precious coupons are handed, and it is surprising how rapidly the -news is spread among car users at which station a little temporary accommodation is available.

In its pre-war days of independence it was said that in Denmark, institutor of the modern co-operative dairy factory, the producer, along with tha lower strata in the economic sense, was a virtual stranger to butter as » consumer, and spread margarine on hi# bread. Is it to come to that in New Zealand.after its climb to the position of the world’s largest butter exporter? At all events, a protest which appeals as quite spontaneous was heard at the Te Awamutu Dairy Company’s meeting of shareholders when it transpired that in some of our school cookerv classes the use of margarine .was instilled. # But what are instructors to do when. if report speaks truly, a big proportion of New Zealand housewives habitually use margarine in the kitchenette because the domestia budget dictates it? Dairy producers are alive to the fact that it is the low price of the substitute that is the deciding factor in man*’ homes. So they become advocates for ree ducing the retail price of butter to a, competitive basis. Nothing has yefl been heard, however, "of any dairying producer advocating a reduction in tha Government guaranteed price to himself. Here is another problem for out .price-fixing Government,

Ho, bring the needful box of trick# To pierce this planet’s bowels; Assemble shovels, spades, and picks. And garden forks and trowels; Fetch gelignite, And clamp it tight, And set the drills a-roaring; For now we go To seek the foe - Beneath the Channel’s flooring.

Ho, muster Dutchmen, Frenchmen* Poles, Czechs, Belgians, Danes, Norwegians* And make them bore a Hole of Holes Through sub-aquatia regions. ■ Let aliens toil To shift the soil, As diggers, drillers, blasters; To sweat and ache Until they make A highway for their masters.

While all our Heinkels, Messerschmitts, And Dorniers and Junkers Are falling down in little.bits ’ To Davy Jones’s bunkers. It’s our intent To circumvent That painful crossing-over, By climbing down At Calais town And popping up at Dover. No doubt ’twould be a great idea For some romantic annal. If hosts should suddenly appear From underneath the Channel. Our H. G: Wells 1 (If no one else) Could make it worth the reading, And call upon Heath Robinson To sketch the whole proceeding.