BY THE WAY

Evening Star, Issue 25400, 3 February 1945, Page 10

BY THE WAY

[Written by " X.Y." for the ' Evening Star.'] HIMMLER SPEAKS., The times are bad, Alas, alas I And awful tilings Have come to pass. I'm telling you, O Herrenvolk, The situation's Past a joke. Soon you will hear The Fuhrer's Speech, His ultimate Expiring screech : But what he says, ' > And what 1 say. Won't differ greatly. Any way. The argument Amounts to this: Since everything Has gone amiss. A lot of you Will ask the same Old silly question— Who's to blame? There's, Adolf, now. And Josef Paul, Hermann, myself. And Ley, and all The Nazi crowd, Both less and more. Besides the Wehrmacht, In this war. So let me state. Both here and now. There's going to be A frightful row If you attempt To save your skins / And make us scapegoats For your sins. For what we did To Czechs and Poles The gu.ilt must lie » Upon your souls. If we oppressed The wretched Jew, It was because You told us to. For Nazidom (Including me) ■ j . Is branded " Made In Germany " ; • Its divers crimes (Including mine) Are produce of the ' ■ I German Vine. | Now listen, each And every one. Don't lay the blame For what's been done Oil me or them; For you and all The Reich are One War Criminal. • •'«■'•. When Mr Nordmeyer deals with figures he is entitled to respect. He may be said to have them at his finger ends, for in a contest at Oamaru in September, 1943, decided purely, on figures, he won by what swimmers call "a touch." Although a touch-and-go affair, in his case it meant touch and stay. Thus did the New Zealand Parliament escape forfeiture of the privilege of giving ear to a Minister acclaimed .in print by an [analyst in the Press Gallery as the No. 1 orator of the House of' Representatives. Slimming has now a world-wide vogue, more! starkly compulsory, in ; . some , countries than in others. Not only in his capacity of Minister of Public Health does "Mr Nordmeyer urge upon us its yet more Spartan observance. He is locum tenens for Mr' Sullivan, Minis-; ter of Supplies, on whose behalf he now proposes to. block up one loophole through which there has been some wriggling. # •'',-' # : . Mew Zealanders are notoriously sound trenchermen, with special emphasis on meat and butter. The cafeteria snack habit has undoubtedly snatched many town-dwelling brandsfrom the burning; but that there are some backsliders still among them' is suggested by the discovery of legless lamb carcasses among our overseas' shipments though this phenomenon was not entirely unknown in pre-coupon times. But it is on 'the country dweller . that Authority's eye is fixed. Even to-. day it is not unknown for an open-air ! worker to encompass just- about a week's ration at a sitting, although neither of his other two meals that day may be by any means meatless. If the new provisions for the weighing of deliveries from rural slaughter houses are intended as a brake on such appetites, their success is less certain or pronounced than the sagging of the coun-' try butcher's knees at the fresh burden of having to weigh and record his bulk supplies. The last straw 1 • • • » Consider his daily round, which covers different districts on different days of the week. For him there is no 40-hour week. He may have to do his own killing, .with a drop of droving for a preliminary as a test of patience and slow motion; otherwise customers become critical, on the score of keeping and chewing attributes. Probably he has to'do'his own motor van servicing also. On his rounds he discovers at every approach to closer settlement an embarrassing escort of innumerable flies and as many of the local dogs as are allowed off the chain. Coupons are a complication superimposed on the simultaneous business of making small change and equally small conversation with a lady less pressed for time than he is, and who is liable suddenly to supplement her supplies with a request for a bone for soup or for Rover, pre-

ously recently returned from the north, his complexion showing the rich yellow olf the malaria-preventing drug. Talking of soldiers from the wars returning reminds me that I am asked something about atebrin almost every week I understand that every man is given a six weeks' supply when he lands back, with instructions to take a tablet a day. It is of the first importance that he carries out instructions, for, if he does, he remains safe I am also frequently asked whether atebrin has any effect on the liver or even on virility. There is no evidence that it has any harmful effects whatsoever, according to high authority. Friday, February 2. ..Some points about children from this week's reading:— . Breast Feeding.—" Breast feeding is the child's birthright, and every effort should be made to establish it." Dental Care. —" It's a pity that so many people start caring for the teeth, their children's as well as their own, only when decay has made its presence felt." '.. .- Crying Children.—" A continually crving child is either a physically unhealthy one (suffering from pain or discomfort) or a spoilt one. If the latter, it has probably been the subject by you of the conditions making for spoiling." Names in this diary fictitious. (COPYRIGHT.)

ferably by way of discount. It is astonishing how it is only the " revving " of the engine which thus stimulates a jaded memory and elicits these eleventh-hour requests. Sometimes he is" lucky if lie arrives home by 10 p.m. Maybe the life has its compensations, but surely the country butcher is one of the unsung heroes of the Home Front. « « » » However, as to Mr Nordmeyer's figures. It appears that New Zealand's rather patchy Self-denial Year makes available for Britain an extra 20.000 tons of meat and over 9,000 tons of butter. When one says "patchy,'' what is meant is that some of us tighten our belts more than others. Yet the most wasp-waisted of us must be veritable Falstaffs compared with our opposite numbers in Britain. And how cold must they be over there in this, their perishing winter! Insufficiency of both internal and external fuel, aggravated by jury-rigged doors, windows, and roofs in innumerable houses, completes a tale of woe .which on the Continent of Europe can be multiplied several times over, and yet fall short of exaggeration. To ensure its indelibility the Northern and the Southern Hemispheres have concluded an unholy compact as to climatic _ behaviour. ' On the one hand there is a body-and-soul-chilling freeze; on the other a devastating drought, affecting such producing countries as Argentina, South Africa, and Australia; even for the moment threatening to embrace, tentatively, parts of New Zealand— Auckland specifically excepted: War, famine—and. a shortage of doctors! •»• # * * If man is really intent on rendering uninhabitable this, his allotted sphere in' the solar system, he is liable to find Nature ready to compound a felony. As a member of the departing British farmers' delegation politely reminded us, deforestation may amount to a crime. From Australia's newest dust bowl comes a naive request to Government' to find and forward for planting, a shrub more suitable for stock rodder than the native species that has almost disappeared through being cut down for that purpose. From further back in Australia's interior come expressions of doubt as to whether recovery is possible after droughts have clinched the ill results of overstocking during a good season or two. Recently the United States learnt a sharp lesson on the danger of erosioncourting farming methods, and she is even now undergoing costly curative treatment. • * • » It is fairly certain that what were once great granaries are now sandy wastes. \Vhen Major Ranier was laying his piipe. line in Libya to provide the Eighth Army with water, the necessary excavations around Mareopolis, a particularly desolate region or bare desert, disclosed .a complete system of underground reservoirs; also the foundations of houses and other relics, telling of a once thickly-settled neighbourhood, and convincing him that under ancient Roman and Greek colonisations Mareopolis had been a thriving centre of cultivation. Popular belief locates the Garden of Eden in Mesopotamia. In the thirteenth century Hulagu, grandson of the famed Jengis Klui'i. descended on South-eastern Asia from Tibet, massacred Bagdad's entne population, and destroyed the irrigation system that had endured for at least 8.000 years. Fertility ceased, and Mesopotamia became a land of ruins and desolation, through which, great waters ran to waste or overflowed their; banks to make malarious swamps.

It was under Ogdai Khan, son and successor of Jengis, that the . Mongol hoists swept across Asia to Russia, destroyed Kiev (1240), made most of Russia their tributary, ravaged Poland, and annihilated-a mixed army of Poles and-Germans at the battle of Lieg-nit-z, in Lower Silesia, in 1241 a.d. They prepared to settle clown in Hungary, whence domestic strife recalled most of them to their native steppes. And this serves as a peg whereon to hang one or two extracts from Hitler's latest clarion call to " Eurppe's foremost Pjiwer—the Greater German Reich." In- his peroration he said: " Once again victory will not go to the Asiatic steppes." Adolf's early education was a bit scrappy, and he may be excused for not knowing that the swastika, the Nazi emblem, which presumably ho still wears on his sleeve, derived from those steppes. It has heen for centuries, and still is, the Mongol national emblem. Buddha seems to have somehow got entangled ■with Thor.

The . Government's rather belated New Year gift to a gratified (but, on this subject, rather bewildered), country is a Royal Commission, headed by a. Supreme Court judge, to inquire into our licensing laws. Evidently the process known as trying it on the dog, in the shape of the Invercargill Trust adventure, is not regarded by Cabinet as an infallible or adequate guide to a State monopoly of a business popularly understood to be rather lucrative. So there is to be an intensive six months «ir so of research work as an aperatif. No doubt Invercargill will be visited, and from that base a flying visit, though not in the nature of a raid, might be paid to a well-wooded district in a remoter part of Southland's interior recesses. Neglect of natural resources would constitute a missed opportunity, if not an actual dereliction of duty. Then, from considerations of seclusion and calm deliberation, for the drafting of the report, the final rendezvous of, the commission might he at historic Kumara or some reasonably civilised township on the West Coast.

In Otago the trials and tribulations of the Land Sales Committee extend from Dan to Beersheba. Before Christmas there was the cause celebre of a farm in the Waitaki district: now there is its counterpart down south at Inchclutha. Vendor and purchaser come to terms, await the committee's ratification, and then the Crown intervenes. There is a hold-UD of indefinite duration while the Government makes up its mind as to whether it will or won't, acquire, the property for the settlement of a returned soldier or two On the land. While " every avenue is bpina thoroughly explored " Ijv a conscientious department the land goes out of production and weeds take charge. This is no doubt a weisrhtv argument for a further inflation of a numerically strong Public Service, which is npparently overworked as well as underpaid (vide the Public Works Commissioner).