What Others Are Saying

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23489, 28 October 1939, Page 11 (Supplement)

What Others Are Saying

Britain's Spirit , ~-KoN'T worry about any of us. Whatever happens, we are certain tho r, S' lt tiling is being done and are prepared to pay'the price." __Kxtrs.ct from n letter received from a "ident in a largo ci fcy on th ° East Coast of England. Hard on Her Own Sex rXfE airo told* from New 1 '" York that 'W nf lV e women arc among 400 applicants for the post of executioner at Sing Sing prison." The only female executioner in Britain's annals seems to bo the famous "Lady Betty" of ,the Corinaii&!it Circuit in the eighteenth century. She had herself had the misfortune to murder her son, and when, w jth .some others, she came to be J, a prred, tile executioner was missing, and she volunteered for the task on the condition that her life was spared. Thereafter she wns officially appointed, and acquired the reputation of being especially hard on her own sex in the matter of flogging. / Obscrvator, in Tho Observer, London. Just Like George rpENNYSON, who wrote a lot of noble and lovely verso and was a very impress!»e public personage indeed, had a kind of blunt, gruff, short-tempered* "humour in private quite Rabelaisian, bur- almost J?oboylaisinn. __D. B. Wyndham Lewis in tho Bystander, London. Thankful I THINK of when I was brash and rash, .Jffhen t' lo bloom of my youth had / dew on it, , !And I'm grateful life didn't cash Every check that I drew on it. —W. E. Farbstein in the Saturday Evenins Prist, Philadelphia. , Subtle Stalin "WERY detail of StaJin's invasion of, ■* J Poland seems now to have been pjannpd'as a subtle offence to Hitler. Dimitrov, the Bulgarian Communist exile who was falsely; accused by the Nazis in ]9.'3:5 of setting fire to the .Reichstag, and acquitted because ho refused to be silenced, has been ordered by Stalin to open Communist propaganda clubs in all the invaded Polish townships. Dimitrov, who took refuge in Russia, is now' Stalin's foreign propaganda chief. The first Russian regiment to meet the- Nazis at Brest-Litovsk bore the name- of Ernst Thaelmann, the Communist leader who spent years in a Nazi concentration camp, and was released at the request of Stalin when the pact with Russia was signed. —Daily Express. London. New Zealand Comedy THE best way to rouse interest in a book (this is a cynical reflection, but let ii; pass) is to get it stigmatized ,as "indecent." There has, been a sudden demand in New Zealand for Boccaccio's "Decameron.".- Why? Because a young constable happened to ,poke his nose into it, was shocked, and informed his superiors, who brought a charge against a local book manager for allowing, it to be hired out to the public. The manager was duly convicted and had to appeal to the Supreme Court, which has now decided that the -'conviction should not have been entered. Tt's a mad world. Perhaps some enterprising publisher will now get a voiing constable to raise a Bimilar fuss about Chaucer. Or—why not ?—Shakespeare. - —John O'London's "Weekly.

Slogan with a Difference gUGGESTED slogan for the next series of pamphlets dropped over Germany: "Gort mit uns." —Peterborough In tho Daily Telegraph, London. "All Quiet" "YyiTH the disappearance of German newspapers (in so far as postal deliveries in this country are concerned) and the absence of any British correspondents in Berlin, one minor hardship of war is already apparent. Wo are cut off from what W. S. Gilbert would certainly have been entitled to describe as "n source of innocent merriment" in that we can no longer marvel at the fables and fantasies _of Dr. Joseph Goebbels and his hired assassins of the truth. So we must do what wo can with occasional stray gleams from the larger and more Nordic lunacy in the official German war news. —Tho Manchester Guardian. Cigarettes ABOUT thirty years ago women who smoked cigarettes in New York City restaurants were considered a menace to public morality. An ordinance was passed by the Board of Aldermen making it illegal for women to smoke in a public place, but was vetoed by tho Mayor. And a visitinp; ]2np;Hsh woman mot a rude shock when she took out one of those slender, feminine cigarettes of the time and asked the head waiter in a fashionable restaurant: "May ladies smoke, here?" Ho replied: "Ladies may, madam, but ladies never do." —August Loeb In Tho Now York Times. Key to Consistency golfers want to get the control that comes from keeping the left arm straight throughout the whole stroke, but they only succeed in holding it to about impact, and then lot it go, when the "pressure" is put 6n. It is possible, of course, to play good golf with, any system, more or less, but I feel that the keeping of the loft arm firm throughout the stroke is a fundamental, and a key to length and consistency in every golfer's game. —Heury Cotton^

Speedy Exit Y WEST EALING fruiterer escaped from his burning shop in his' nightclothes the other week. He hadn't time even to slip 011 a banana-skin. —Punch, London. 8.8, C. Satire "ADOLF in Blunclorland" is the title of a 8.8.C. satire broadcast the other day. Max Kestcr and James Dyrenforth, the joint authors, describe little Adolf's adventures with the White von Ribbit, the Great March Into, the Mad Flatterer, and others. A typical example- of the verse, adapted from Lewis Carrol, is: " "Tis the voice of tho Fuehrer. I heard him declare. If you want a good massacre, bomb from the air. When his sillv moustacho isn't bristling with wrath, It is kept in. jncin camphor to save it i from moth." During his adventures little Adolf meets tho'Deutsch Hess and tho King and Queen of Heartlessness. —The Daily Telegraph, London. Advancement TN the coal-ear of a freight train, two hoboes were discussing their futures. "I'm through with this life," said the first one. "From now on, I'm going to make something of myself." ""What's the matter with you?" queried the other. "You got ambitions p" His pal nodded. "Yes, - sir," he chirped. "Beginning to-morrow, I ride only on fruit trains?" —New York Journal. Comrade Ribbentrop TVHE front-page picture of this week's (September 1) Berliner Illustrito Zeitung, which with a circulation of over 1,500,00, is one of the most widelyread illustrated papers in the world, shows Herr von Ribbentrop and Stalin firmly clasping each other's hand. Notwithstanding their generous treatment to surprises, millions of Germans will continue to receive a shock every time they see this photograph staring at thorn from the bookstalls of the Reich this week. —Tho Daily Telegraph, London.

Substitutes TNGENIOUS Germans have found A substitutes for fish, and milk, and Junior wants to Know if they haven't found one for spinach. —Christian Scienco-Monitor. Living Things CATHEDRALS, like men, aro but mortnl, though much xiioro beautiful, and have to tako their chance in a world full of raging yahoos. If the thought of Chartres and othor European jewels being reduced to a heap of dust before long makes us melancholy, it is simply becauso the art of building such things has gone. When a fine tall church was destroyed by firo or fury at any time in the Middle Ages, chaps set to work diligently and raised up another in its place of equal or greater excellence, wato which they built something that still exists, no doubt, but which doesn't seem to get itself expressed in stone and glass. If you've ever listened to the breathing of Chartres Cathedral —the best time to hoar it is in the very early morning, and the best place is the crypt-chapel of Notre-Damo do Sous-Terre, which is older than Franco —you'll gather instantly what we mean. If you don't, please don't worry. —D. B. Wyndham Lewis, London. Tennis History Repeats Itself T WONDER whether the Australian A lawn-tennis team will follow a 1914 precedent and leave the Davis Cup in a safe deposit on American soil. Twenty-five years ago, when Australia had beaten America in New York by three matches to two —the same scoro as in this year's match —-the cup was left behind owing to the risk of loss in transit. Memories of this match, in which he won the decisive point against R. N. Williams, a survivor from the Titanic, must have crossed the mind of the Australian L.T.A. president, Sir Norman Brookes, as he watched his team snatch victory from defeat. To win after being two down with three to play was a rare feat. —Peterborough in Tho Daily Telegraph, London. Compliment TpWO sisters sun-bathing on the lawn at the back of their house at Gowerton, Glamorgan, found a thick swarm of bees hovering over them. They just succeeded in beating the bees in a raco to the house. An alarming episode; but was.it not, in its way, something of a compliment? —Tho Observer, London.