What If We Came To This

Northland Age, Volume IX, Issue 60, 7 May 1940, Page 4

What If We Came To This

Even the limited amount of rationing in New Zealand so far has brought forward many and'"Witter ! complaints from those who presumably speak for “John Citizen” in his many moods. But in England according to a writer in a well-known newspaper, the position is much worse. In facetious vein, “Patoc” writes I the following of the necessity for an “ink pool” which will, of necessity, have to be wide and deep. And though humorous, it tells only too cleanly, how “rationed” people are in wartime England : Soon we shall have to have another pool—the Ink Pool. It will have to be a big and deep one. Ration cards will almost certainly lead to ink rationing. I happened to be in London the ( night that Britain took the count. And so the benign Borough of Holborn will in fu.ure look after my more material (and rationed) needs. My ration book came today. This if nothing else does, will turn me into a writer, I find that I—and you—must write my (or your) name and address in the book 22 times—on 18 occasions in block letters. There’s a lot more writing for us to do. So let’s start at the beginning of the book . . On page 2 you write five names and addresses—those of your retail butcher, and your favourite retailers of Bacon, Butter and Margarine, Cooking Fats (including lard and dripping), Sugar. Then you get to the rules and regulation governing the issue of General Ration Book R. 8.1. These make it quite obvious that waiters and waitresses will soon have to add scissors to their professional equipment, for Section 9 of the regulations permits the exchange of half a coupon (plus cash) for a cooked meal of rationed meat or bacon in a hotel, restaurant,

cafe, tea-shop, etc. But the halfccupon must be detached from the book by the person serving the meal. And so we may yet expect to hear: “So sorry, sir, but I can’t serve you a lamb cutlet—l’ve lost my scissors!” Instructions 14 and 15, concerning the spare coupons and counterfoils in this literary digest, are beautifully pointed. You do just nothing with these until told what to do. That seems easy. If an air raid drives you from home, you must snatch up your ration book and take it with you. The rules say so. Then we come to the meaty part of the book. There are twe pages of pink coupons which mean meat meals. The arrangement of the serial numbers at first gives food for thought, but you will soon get the hang of the thing if you remember how the Chinese read their books.

Turning over, we come to an azure blue page. Blue is for butter. Each tiny, thoughtlessly unperforated coupon represents one of those minute weekly pats. Printed appropriately on that favourite culinary colour—buff—we have the cooking fat coupons. Our share of the nation’s stock of sugar is divided up into 26 little squares on primrose paper. Then we come to three pages of spares. These are the “don’t do anything till you’re told” coupons. They are quite gay—light green, a sort of shrimp colour and a quite daring yellow. Then there is another “do nothing with this until you’re told” page, backed by spaces for filling in the name and addresses of ycur retailers tight times and your own name and address four times. Towards the end the thing gets a little more elaborate, for you have to tell the Government the date of your birthday. This should not raise hopes of their intention to send you an extra half coupon for bacon on that important anniversary. They also want you to tell them what you do for a living (if anything) and the name of your boarding school (if any). You may think that is the end of your homework for one evening, but when you turn over the next page you find they want to know the names of your retailers all over again. This sort of thing seems to be encouraging ink hoarding.

The French Government has given the Polish Government, now located in Paris, an extensive area of land near Algiers for the settlement of 25,000 Poles who fled from the RussoGerman invasion of Poland. * * ☆ During the historic fight at Punta del Este, an egg laid by a canary on the “Exeter” hatched as a shell burst near by. The battle-bred nestling was named “Spee” and was raffled off in February in Plymouth and brought £l7/16/- for the relief of the “Exeter’s” 61 dead.