Pickings and Points

Northland Age, Volume IX, Issue 16, 28 November 1939, Page 2

Pickings and Points

Shoes can be obtained in Berlin only if the purchasers can prove that their old ones are worn beyond use. a ft ft South Australia, which has a population of 595,000, a third of that of New Zealand, has 313 licensed betting shops open for 133 days in the year. In the last twelve months they had a turnover of £5.736,102, of which bettors lost to bookmakers £549,332. Every betting shop makes an average gross profit of £1660 for the year. * * * “Poverty and war are twins in the scheme of things politically, and are possible only when the people can be misled by fictions which belong to the medieval age.”—Senator Cameron. ft ft ft “One of the many sensible things I noticed in New Zealand cities was the covered sidewalks of the shopping streets. Neither sun-heat nor rain possesses any terrors where these lines of arcades lend their welcome shelter without interrupting one’s walk or business round.”—Archer Waythe. ft ft ft “In imagination we ought to think how we would feel if it were our homes which were being broken

up by evacuation and blasted by bombs; we should think of the terror of littl • children, the agony in the hearts of mothers, the anguish of the dying. This is not sentimentality, it is realism.”—Rev. G. Calvery Barbery. ft ft ft There have been more than 4000. makes of automobiles since the first car propelled by an internal combustion engine appeared in France in 1868. ft ft ft “We should not be too sanguine about our British freedom. The price of it still, as always, is eternal vigilance.” —Ivor Brown. ft ft ft A motor car specially designed for the use of children to teach them safety on the roads is being produced in England. Weighing only 1501b5., equipped with a 1 h.p. petrol engine, and capable of a maximum speed of 10 m.p.h., the car, a twoseater, has in miniature all the controls of a full-sized car in a form that can be easily mastered by a child of six. * * * “The success of a democracy depends upon every one realising his or her responsibilities to it; thinking of his duties and forgetting for a time his rights. If he recognises no duties towards the form of government to which he is ready enough to pay lip service and to shout for, the day will come when he will lose his rights by dangers from without or within.” — Earl Baldwin. ☆ * * Beverley Nichols, the novelist, in the “Sunday Chronicle”: “If I found myself joining in a ceremonial dance in the Fiji Islands I should rub noses with the best of them. And at the same time, at heart, I would remain an old-fashioned Manchester Liberal.” ft ft ft Four-leaved • clovers ai'e not so uncommon as one would suppose. American woman, Mrs. Florence W. Smith, of Detroit, has collected twenty thousand of them. And in spite of that she says she has had only the average amount of good luck. * ☆ * In Minneapolis, U.S.A., a policeman nabbed one Marcia Schneider for speeding: “Where do you think you’re going? To a fire?” said he. “No, I’ve got one with me,” said she, pointing to a blaze in the back of her car. ft ft ft Mr. Chamberlain in Parliament: “Whatever may be the length to which others may go, H.M. Government will never resort to deliberate attacks on women, children and other civilians for purposes of mere terrorism.” ft ft ft Sailors on the L.M.S. Railway Co.’s

steamers between Holyhead and Kingston refused to sail until the Eire flag was replaced by the Red Ensign. Eire is neutral. ft ft ft “Blighty,” the purely Service weekly magazine of the last two years of the last war, has been started again. It consists of jokes, humorous articles, stories and cartoons from other periodicals and is distributed free to the troops. ft ft ft One of Danzig’s most famous sons was Gabriel Dariel Fahrenheit, the inventor of the mercury thermometer, who was born there in 1686 and died | in Holland fifty years later. Most of j his life was spent in England, wner > he earned a scanty livelihood making meteorological instruments, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. ft ft ft Instructions of the Bishop of Birmingham (Dr. E. W. Barnes) to his clergy: “Repudiate the idea that Hitlerism can be conquered by force. ! Evil political systems can only be desi troyed by moral victories. It is not I Christian, nor even religious, to say ] that force must be met with force.” ft ft ft i The borrowing operations of AusI tralian Governments for the six years | and a half from November, 1932, i total £202,448,000. The cost of raising was £1,397,692, or 13/9 for every £IOO of loan money. ☆ * * From now on, every resident in the 65,000 enumeration districts into which Britain is divided will be known by a four-letter symbol and number. Thus: Mr. John Jones, of 9 Acacia Villas, Suburbia, is now “DWXV/ 147/1”; his wife, Gladys, “DWXV/ 147/2,” and his daughter Doris, “DWXV/147/3.” These numbers appear on their identity cards, which must be produced to get the family allowance of meat, bacon, butter, fats j and sugar.

From September 16 . 11 bacon and hams were commandeer: d by the British Government to :ca e equitable distribution. And no one complained.