WHAT OTHERS ARE SAYING

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23601, 9 March 1940, Page 2 (Supplement)

WHAT OTHERS ARE SAYING

Shake-Down to a Dutch writer, the home of the ex-Kaiser is so modest that it does not even contain a sparo room. It sounds as if Herr Hitler will have to make himself as comfortable as he can in the porch. . -Punch, London. Amateur Swineherd JsjUNLTGHT shining through a pig's ear is one of the loveliest spectacles in Nature, a chap was seriously assuring us last week. He is one of those amateur swineherds who have already responded to the cry of the Ministry of Food, and you can hardly tear him away from his sties. At feed-ing-time. he says, the spectacle—not to mention the speechmaking—is a thousand times more' entrancing than any Guildhall banquet or P.E.N. Club dinner, and the beauty and charm of very tiny pigs gambolling in their lovesome infancy tugs at his heartstrings so powerfully that it will cost him tears to have their throats cut at the appointed time. —The Bystander, London. Vivent les Rafs FNITIALS can be dangerous. I seem to remember a political organisation in Great Britain before the war which had to change its title because of the ribald comments made by ill-wishers on its initial letters. The R.A.F. in Fiance is lucky in this respect. Its personnel are now known everywhere as "les Rafs.'' It is no bad name for them. Two French words are suggested in the simple monosyllable. One is "raffut," which means, colloquially, "a big noise." Enough of the American idiom has found its way into the French language to make this a complimentary derivation. T prefer, however, to believe that "raf" is short for "rafle." This means —again colloquially speaking—a "cleanup" in the sense of sweeping the hoard —or the sky. —PotcrliorouKh in Iho . Daily Telesraph, London. A Word From Russia \. SWEDISH newspaper has drawn attention to a leaflet printed in Russia and. widely distributed throughout all Communist organisations in the Scandinavian countries. It runs as follows:—• Question: How can the world revolution come about with the greatest chances of success? Answer: By a slow war spreading among the greatest possible number of nations. Question: Should the treaty between Germany and Russia necessarily bring about this war? Answer: It was conceived with the very aim of bringing it about, before any other motive whatever. —The Children's Newspaper, London.

Penalty REGARDING the news that Germans are imprisoned for listening to 8.8.C. programmes, it is pointed out that there is no punishment in this country for listening to 8.8.C. programmes—except, of course, the programmes. —The Htimcrist, London

"How many men work in this factory?" "With the boss, eight." "That i«, seven without the boss?" "No, when the boss isn't here, none of them work." —Dublin Opinion Tribute r PHE eighty-year-old Karl of Selborne. who wns First Lord of the Admiralty from 1900 to 1905, sont the following message to Mr. Winston Churchill: — "May an octogenarian, whose greatest pride in life is to remember that he was once a First Lord, offer to the Navy, through the Hoard of Admiralty, his tribute of intense admiration, wholly untinctured with surprise, at its glorious achievements." —The Sunday Times, London. Nitchevo IU) A DWA Y'S Public Wise Guy No. 1, Mr. Walter Winchell, certainly rang the hell the other day when he remarked that Joe Stalin's Blitzkrieg against Finland is beginning to look to him like a Five-Year Plan. Such cracks are, we fear (said Old Uncle Cheeriboy, laughing fit to kill), just one more salt-rub into the wounds of illoomsbury. whose odious inhabitants can hardly realise yet that the legend of the Glorious Red Army—remember all those menacing newsreel parades? —has dissolved into smoke and dust before their eyes. It may be that Honest Joe has not yet moved his best troops from where they keep watch on their well-loved German buddies night and day, hut up to now the boy Winchell is evidently right. t-D. B. Wyndham Lewis, in The Bystander, London.

Gleams curfew tolls the knell of parting day. The knowing housewife makes the gloom complete; draws close the curtains, blacks out every ray. ThtAir Raid Warden's coming up tin• street. Now fade the blithering sandbags on the sight, and all the world is darker than the Styx; save where some window shows a flickering light. That's going to cost the landlord seven-and-six. —The Star, London. Charlie Chaplin Dyes His Hair r pHE latest photographs of Charlie Chaplin show him with coal-black hair. He was greyish when I met him in 1926. His is that rather luxuriant hair which goes grey and then white without dropping out He should have a splendid poll in old age (like Mr. Lloyd George) and look really patriarchal. _ Peterborough in the Daily Telegraph, London. A Bit Thick A FARMER had told a land-girl to "" milk the cows. - After a time lie returned to see how she was getting on. and was surprised to see the cow placidly drinking the milk. "What 011 earth are vou doing?" he shouted. The land-girl beamed at him and replied : "It came out rather thin, so 1 am putting it through the process again." —Miss D. Hod kin.son, Manchester "Pink Gin" a la Polonaise T AM informed that Germany has run out of gin and that vodka takes its place in cocktail bars. The Polish destroyers serving with the British Navy have a precisely contrary experience. They have' run out of vodka and are using gin instead. The Polish sailors find that gin is less fier.v than vodka. So tliev have evolved a "pink gin" of their own. It is drunk neat with a good dollop of cayenne pepper. -—Peterborough, in The Daily Telegraph. London. Grumble Corner r PHE new nation-wide campaign launched in Germany by Herr Hess against "grumbling and grousing" should, by all experience, he a great asset to the Allies. Frederick the Great, who knew his Prussians thoroughly, used to say, "My people and L have come to an agreement. They say what they like and I do what 1 like." Indeed, it seems doubtful whether any nation has ever managed to get 011 without some kind of safety valve. The grousing of the British soldier is so proverbial that it' there were 110 grousing commanders would have every reason to feel seriously alarmed. —Manchester Guardian.

London Stage UJSTORY isn't as yet repeating 1914 quite verbatim, we keep discovering. For one example, the West End stage in the first months of the Inst war may have been silly, but it was nt least urban and sophisticated. The average current West End show is the kind of dumb, witless thing that knocks 'em twice nightlv in Fazackerley and Ashby-de-la-Zoiicli. However, as we gather from a young subaltern of our acquaintance that to his generation this delirious stuff is practically Congreve, Wilde. Moliere. Guitrv. Maugham and Coward rolled into one, we'd better shut our dainty trap and leave the children to it. —D. B. Wyndham Lewis, in The Bystander, London. Problem OEOPLE who want to get right away from the war, "vicious spirals," and all that, thereunto belongs might like to creep off into a quiet corner and tackle the following problem, lifted intact from the title of a short article in the current issue of- "Nature": "Does the Mesotron Obey Bose-Einstein or Fermi-Dirac Statistics?" That looks a great improvement on old-fashioned riddles like "Why is a mouse when it spins?" And is there not a great moral lesson for us all in the discovery that the .Mesotron obeys anything? A word like that might so easily have been a bold and unblushing anarchist, a law unto its lovely but not exactly lucid self. —Lucio, in The Manchester Guardian.

Definition "OLITZKRIEG —Sudden and terrifying German attack which never strikes at the same place once. —Parade. London.