The Butter Ghost.

Free Lance, Volume XVIII, Issue 948, 12 September 1918, Page 24

The Butter Ghost.

(For the New Zealand Free Lance.)

(By E. M. Story.)

I FIRST met him in New Zealand. I prefer not- to name the city —it was a city—where we met; it is enough that we did meet and that I saw him with my third eye. I felt the more surprise, at meeting him wheai and where I did as he is supposed to keep to pasture and paddock, or to visit; the dairies occasionally. He startled me with his abrupt question: "JDo you know old Salisbury Butter Market, ?" he asked. "What, Salisbury, in Wiltshire, at Home?" "Yes." "Where they lay out the white fleece on the ground, and where the cows look at their calves across the square, and bleat as they look . ... and where the dear old market-women, wearing their picturesque hoods, offer fresh butter for sale?" "Wrong, tense," said the ghost; "offered butter for sale." ' 'Then —then —they don 5 1 ?" \ "Not now." . ■ ' "Tell me all about it." The ghost gave me a penetrating look. "I'm a traveller," he said. ' 'Havei you been Home, lately ? ' "Just come from there, before X returned from Australia." "What did you find?" "Butteries s bread —small quantities of the milk ration being made into sorry butted'?',' "But," I began "That's it! But what need when New Zealand has so much butter, eh ?" 1 didn't like the ghostly expression as I looked at the face of the speaker. "What is it?" I asked sharply. ' 'When I was at Home I visited Carlisle." " "What! - Carlisle Market, where the north country women sell." "Wrong tense again!" said the ghost. * I stared. "Is it the same at—at Warwick, Worcester, Exeter, Barnstaple?" I asked. "All butteries s bread. Well, a-quarter of a pound a weiek for those who can afford it, but , the price is stiff." "Yet, New Zealand has"—• — "Didn't I tell you that I've just ocme back from Australia?" "Well?" "I went to attend a meeting of New Zealanders and Australians; the object of the meeting was that New Zealanders might induce Australians to' raise the price of butter to the Home folk by thirty shillings a hundredweight." "Did the Australians do' it?" "Yes," said the ghost, "they were reluctant, at first, as they were satisfied with the price they were getting, but they yielded at last."

"Surely New Zealand couldn't have known about the butterless bread?" "Charity is becoming, but there's no room for it here." "There's Canadian butter —American butter," I faltered. "Certainly, and Canadian troops and American troops who require it. Why, you know America is scraping the butter on her own. bread, so that she may share with the Allies." "I can't make it out," I said. The ghost asked: "Have you such a thing as a pound note about you?" "Certainly," and I drew one forth and held it out to him, but he did not takei it. "It's the solution 'of your problem," he said, "some of the notes," he added, "are dirty. Enough . many are soiled," and I fancied I saw a sneer —a, leer —a horrible ghostly sneer on his face. "And America is doing as she is?" "Yes; she is doing her best to put a little morei butter on the bare bread. You see America speaks: English." "I don't understand. New Zealand speaks English." "Of course," said the ghost, " 'to the last man and shilling.' " 'I did not likej his tone and I said so. "Sorry it's not so good as it might be; I've seen too much butterless bread ! Besides I was at the meeting when that historic agreement was reached." "But look how splendid New Zealand has been in all her patriotic efforts; how she has worked for the Red Cross ; raised ,money for this, that and the other; sent her 'boys' to the Front, and " The butter-ghost held up aj forbidding hand. "Please desist—let us keep distinct thingsi distinct. My concern is butter—butter for the millions at Home—butter that might have been produced and sold at the old price, ox very little beyond it if. . . ." Here he broke off, and turned away as though ashamed of exhibiting too much feeling. "What do you mean to do about it?" "I shall' be veay busy for quite a long time," was his answer. "Can I help you?" "Well, I want a man with an inkhorn." , "The very thing. I'm here." "Be ready to-morrow morning and I shall have a message for you." The morning arrived on the wings of a gale. I was ready and met the ghost in the same place, which shall be nameless. "Take your pen and write," he said. I took my pen as indicated, and as I put it to paper it moved rapidly and as though of its own volition; I had some difficulty in restraining it. It ran on for some half-hour, and then came to a dead stop, and this is what I read ion the paper: "Dear New Zealand!, — "We of the butterless bread send greeting. We have heard of your works of love and charity; of your glorious deeds; of your heroic sons, some of whom we have seen and welcomed in our own land. We cannot .tell you of

all the admiration that w© feel for them and for you, but something, something as soft as butter, yet still something, troubles us and you. When we sit down to our rationed fare (you, of course, are unrationed) we look at the butter less bread— ; >ve look hard at it, and we reeal the strange action that you—was it your farmers ?—recently took when they raised the price of butter —our meagre supply of rationed butter —by twenty per cent., though the price was then the highest known here, and actually sent to Australia and induced her to raise the price bv as much as thirty shillings a hundred-weight—-thirty pounds a ton. "New Zealand, we do not complain j we are sorry —sorry that you could find it in your heart, in your mind, to wish to more thickly butter your own richly buttered bread with our poor scrap 1 Some of us, at Home, feel that many of you in New Zealand do not know of this action of a certain section of your people, or that if you know the bare facts you have not fully appreciated their significance—their deep significance. Will you look into the future for a moment? Do you see the historian at work collecting his chronicles of the Great War ? Do you see him searching out information as to the cost of living in Britain, the rise in prices P I>o you see him as he unearths this particular record ? Do you hear- his exclamations as he reads of that meeting in Australia? Of that .decision, when the Old Land was doling out her meagre food supply, and restricting her butter allowance to 4ozs a week for each adult who could afford to pay at the rate charged ? How will this compare with the decision of U.S.A. to restrict her own food supplies that she may help Britain and her Allies through this crucial period? "New Zealand! You are bone of our bone and blood of our blood, and we feel ashamed and grieved over this thing. We have such a pride and pleasure in you as the Daughter Dominion, yet what kind of conduct would that he in a daughter who scraped the butter off her old mother's bread that she might put it on to her own already richly buttered ? "The old mother's memory is yet green. . She would that, out of it some things might fade. This is one. What will you do, dear New Zealand, for your own sake? We will eat our butterless bread ; we- will forgive. But will you ever forgive yourself if you fail to do what you can to enter your protest as a people against this principle?' Have you not heard the lines that follow : — 'If I should ever be in England's thought After I die,

Say there" were tilings he might have bought And did not buy. tJnhonoured by his fellows he grew old And trod the) path to Hell. But there were things he might have sold Andldid not sell.' " It was here that my pen stopped and the Butter-Ghost tapped me on the. shoulder. "That'll do," he said, "put up the ink-horn and sert a special mark, the mark of the angel Who records on the forehead of the Editor who publishes, for he will be a man with the Third Eye." . "And a lover of New Zealand," I said. "A true lover," said the ghost, as he left me alone.