TIMELY TOPICS

Northern Advocate, 16 April 1932, Page 6

TIMELY TOPICS

The contention of old traveller? that crocodiles shed tears over those they devour has been - made the subject of a controversy in the correspondence columns ' of" the London ‘‘Times.” Most of the letters have ridiculed such a thing happening - , but a lady contributor-.relates the following adventure to prove that the old travellers were not so very iar wrong. ‘‘Some years ago,” she says,- ‘‘while steaming up the Indus my husband was waiting to get a shot at a crocodile. The Eurasian captain of the old Jhelum remarked to, me that he had given up shooting crocodiles as he did not like to sec them cry. Mow, a crocodile is the only thing I can bring myself to shoot, and thinking the old man had somehow or other heard of ‘crocodile tears’ we were inwardly amused at what we considered his humbug. Shortly after the crocodile was shot and proved to bo a long-nosed ghariat. Some hours after as the loathsome looking object lay on the deck preparatory to skinning, I exclaimed, ‘His eyes look alive.’ ‘Monsense,’ exclaimed everybody; ‘ho has been dead for hours.’ But as they spoke unmistakable tears began to well up and brim over even as Captain do Silva had described. Startled beyond measure my nusband, who had our small son by the hand, bent over to look. ' Instantly there was a furious lashing and clashing of great jaws. The child was snatched back in the nick of time, but an onlooker was sent sprawling by the lashing tail.” The moral to bo learnt from the story is that when you see anyone displaying an inclination to shed ‘crocodile tears’ give them a wide berth.

It was inevitable that the English public, would some day grow weary of the syncopated ‘‘music” of the New World and- demand a revival of the old straightforward rhythms which can. alone satisfy the English ear and heart, says the ‘ ‘ Alnrnin/j Post.”- The wonder is that, -the reign of jazz has lasted so long. We began to fall victims to its spell just before the war, and in the crazy years that, followed it seemed to many a real benefactor, helping us to forget our troubles and anxieties. There have been no “piping times of peace” for this generation. The “tumult and the shouting” were not allowed to die. They wore re-echoed, and even aggravated, by saxo-phono, banjo and clashing cymbals. War produced its songs in the old traditions, but they were powerless to stem the transatlantic torrent of ragtime ./ballads, which are only now beginning to pall. A concentrated diet, of “canned” ginger and sugar is bound to sicken one in time, and it is hardly surprising that the British public should be again craving for the vitamins on which our fathers and grandfathers flourished. The re-, vival of the music-hall songs of the 'nineties is an earnest of the 1 final defeat of . syncopated sentimentalism.