Honour The Humorist!

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 20 February 1926, Page 9

Honour The Humorist!

■VTOT everybody receives what is due to him (says an English writer). Still the time has arrived when a little more attention should be paid to the humourist. After all, everybody can make the world cry; it takes genius yes, real genius—to make the world laugh. Not bitter or sarcastic laughter, but good, honest, side-splitting mirth. It is not many men who have succeeded in making the world laugh. Charlie Chaplin may be said to have done it, and his reward rests in the grateful hearts of nations. No statues have been raised to his honour, nor is it likely that any ever will be, unless the world undergoes a mighty change. And yet, why should Charlie Chaplin v not have a statue? He has done a lot more to earn such recognition than many another man whose scarce-known features are staring hidden under a layer of London soot. Why should there not be an effigy of Mr P. G. Wodehouse or Mr George Bobey in Hyde Park? Each in his own way

has done much to further the gaiety of our nation. Not long ago the cartoonist of our leading humorous periodical, Punch, was honoured with knighthood. But Sir Bernard Partridge might well be described as the one serious man on a really humorous periodical. His companions who quip with brush and pen remain unhonoured and unsung. The town of Hannibal, Missouri, is raising a monument to Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Einn. Honour is being done to Mark Twain, but not for his humour. Tom and Huck are famous literary characters, but the humorous work of Mark Twain, though no less great, is to be allowed to sink into oblivion.

Only once has a monument been erected to the memory of a humorist. Nasr-ed-Din Hopa, a famous Turkish wag of the fifteenth century, had a fine tomb erected over his body, but to-day it has been allowed to fall into decay. How long will it ue before some Humorist is given real honour in Britain?