BY THE WAY

Evening Star, Issue 25068, 8 January 1944, Page 3

BY THE WAY

(Written by " X.Y." for'the ' livening Star.') THE DANDELION. " Successful researches have been made at Kew into the manufacture of indiarubhei' from dandelions." —Cable. The Dandelions on my lawn, Which once 1 roundly cursed, And reckoned them, of noxious weeds, , The gaudiest .and worst, Have now obtained—or so 1 read— An honourable name indeed. No longer, on my hands and knees, Shall I perspire and toil, Eradicating painfully .Battalions from the soil. Or buy, to liquidate the pest, Ammonium sulphate and the rest. Their blooms henceforth may stud my grass, Here, there, and everywhere; Their seeds may blow around the place With every "breath of air; My quarter-acre may become A forest of Taraxacum. Come, Dandelions, grow and blow On lawn and bed and path. • 1 shall not, as in former years. Descend on you in wrath. Your former foe has changed to an ■ Unbounded Dandelion-fan. It isn't for'your verdant leaves Or starry golden bloom That I esteem voir worthy of Unstinted garden room; Nor yet your power, in draughts and pills. Of clearing up digestive ills. But 1 have dreams of motor tyres. Of rubber soles and heels, Hot water bags for winter nights, And garden hose in reels, Suspenders, bathing caps, goloshes, Elastic bands and mackintoshes. My wife considers me a case Of undiluted sloth, Or visionary idiocy, Or possibly of both. She hands me rake and fork and hoe .And tells me not to gi'bber so. But that's a way these women have. We know it,.l and you. They everlastingly refuse

To take the longor view. Why grub these beastly weeds to-day? It's" far too sultry, anyway. As father lamely informed mother, while impounding the month's rent and announcing his intention to make a short journey by race train in an effort to double his 'borrowed capital, there is no place like the racecourse at Christmastide to run across old cronies who have long been missing from their wonted haunts. And there is no gainsaying it. One striking feature about such reunions is the versatility displayed- by our manhood. If you ask a former carpet vendor what he has been up to lately, the answer you are liable to get is that he is timekeeper at a fish hatchery; or a licensed drainer will tell you that he is a custodian of oil tank's. This is all the result of the operation of Man Power. But it takes the versatility of our womanhood to checkmate official autocracy in this sphere. (Skip the next paragraph if you chance to have hoard this one.)

Two young Hawke's Bay ladies were directed by the local man power officer to take up positions on the staff of a leading Napier hotel. They conferred together and agreed that such occupation was repugnant to their principles and 'incompatible with their social status. They then sought out a magistrate, assured him on oath that a certain habit which they had contracted was inimical to their health, happiness, and pocket, and, in short, took out prohibition orders -, against themselves, thereby making it a misdemeanour for them to be found on licensed premises, punishable by law. As such an order can neither he quashed nor varied for the space of a year, they breathed freely and awaited developments with a sense of social security or at least comparative complacency. But it is to be hoped that this instance of feminine adroitness does not reach the ears of the clerk of the Executive Council when he retturns from his Christmas vacation. An Order in Council is. a matter of moments and could spreadeagle the pretty scheme. That is its purpose and function—to render any obstructive section of statute law null and void by a stroke of the pen.

This propensity to alter the rules of the game to extricate oneself from a difficult but deserved situation is not peculiar to Governments. We were familiar with : it in childhood, and reprehended it strongly (in others) whenever recourse .was had to it. In" this case, we trust, his sense of the ludicrous will restrain the particular Minister concerned from utilising a steam hammer to crack an egg. To-day its prime exemplar is Adolf Hitler. He who four years ago abrogated all the rules of warfare .and gloried in announcing the fact, now disgustingly bewails the absence of chivalry in his enemies' methods, particularly those of the Anglo-American breed. All our proverbs of the " pot .and kettle " and the, " Satan reproving sin " variety fall leagues short of meeting this case of protests against "horror raids " by the conceiver and instigator of the Rotterdam atrocity. Hitler's last speech betravs his intense yearning for the ability to say " 1 won't play any more under your Rnfferty rules," coupled with his" dire recognition that the game has to be played to a finish.

Then there is the question of prisoners of war. After ail, it is but a short step from making members of enslaved races do the work about the house while the herreuvolk do the fighting, to putting the unfortunate captives into the front line and telling them to shoot down their prospective rescuers under threat of dreadful reprisals against their destitute families. The fact that such a policy is a very shortsighted and temporary palliative and is, humanly speaking, certain to recoil on the head of its deviser, does not mitigate its fiendish ferocity. Hitler's town office in the Wilhelmstrasse has been well shot-up by Lanoasters and Liberators, but there has been no word yet of his. country citadel on the Bavarian - Austrian border being homlbed. Probably it would be a waste of petrol to carry missives for him. The indications are that South America is to be his spiritual home. Where the treasure is the heart is also but there is the vital question of transport.

A brief word about Hitler's opposite number. Mr Winston Churchill is understood to be convalescing somewhere on the southern shores of the Mediterranean, which is probably a more salubrious spot than even Torquay in these Northern Hemisphere winter months. But, whatever Fahrenheit records, lie can take it. For he ever spurned to lead a soft life. A re-cently-published book, 'Xo Great Shakes' (which get, and enjoy at

leisure), takes us back to his salad

days:— <t t A celebrity then serving at Bangalore (India) was Mr Winston Churchill in the 4th Hussars. I had met him frequently on the polo ground in England, and was glad to renew his acquaintance. He was then friendly, genial, and amusing, very influential with the officers of his regiment and extremely popular with his men, whose time he cheered with variety entertainments, at which their own talent was happily supplemented by his wit and originality. Having confided to me his future dreams of greatness, I asked him why he had adopted the army as his step-ping-stone to it, rather than the more natural ladder of politics. His answer was that it had been thought advisable that he should be first licked into shape. His' companions did their best. I think to achieve that object, especially on the polo ground, where some of the most awful language. I've ever heard used to circle round his head; but his public career is the best test as to whether the treatment had the desired effect.