SUPPRESSION OF JOKES

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21794, 8 May 1934, Page 11

SUPPRESSION OF JOKES

»AUSTRIAN CHANCELLOR HIS DIMINUTIVE STATURE According to a cablegram published yesterday, penalties of from one to six months' imprisonment have recently been prescribed in Austria for anyone inventing a new joke against the diminutive Chancellor, Dr. Dolfuss. Commenting on the fact that the Chancellor had grown tired of the jokes about his size, the Literary Digest stated recently that as one means of suppressing such jokes Dr. Dolfuss bad informed all schoolmasters that pupils making-them must be punished. "It is a strange repayment for the affectionate raillery which evidently inspired so many of these jokes," continues the article, "for example, the one that the Chancellor had broken his leg falling off a ladder picking strawberries; or the one that in his worry over the recent Socialist uprising he had paced up and down under his bed all night; or the one that lie had managed to get hold of everything he wanted in Geneva, except the doorknob.

"Not many years ago the Ford car came in for a similar barrage in this country, but 110 one noticed that its popularity or that of Mr. Ford suffered in consequence. On the the height of the season for Ford jokes marked also the height of Mr. Ford's success in distributing his product to the ends of the earth. There is a moral here for the diminutive Chancellor to ponder." It would spetn from yesterdays cablegram that the measures taken with regard to school children did not prove sufficient to check the flow of jokes injurious to the Chancellor's dignity.