“THE SHEIKH” SWINDLE.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19311, 24 October 1924, Page 8

“THE SHEIKH” SWINDLE.

KINDLY TREATMENT OF FLEAS. An article in the Daily Mail, written by Mr G, Ward Price, ought to destroy one of the most romantic illusions of the British, and the .Australian public. This is the swindle of “the Sheikh”—that fierce, dashing, amorous, irresistible, gallant, masterful, manly, utterly false, and imaginary figure who carries off a lovely, proud, high-spirited English girl on a thoroughbred horse to a tent full of silk rugs and sherbet, and there, wins her unwilling love by constant applications of a cowhide whip with an ornamental gold handle. I have just come back (Mr Price writes) from 10 days among the sheikhs in the Riff—real, savage, unspoiled Sheikh country, where Englishmen have been but four times in the laet three years, and then only landed on the coast, whereas my journey took me twice across its whole breath. Not even the most sensational woman writer would have disputed the reality of the Sheikh atmosphere. Every roan had a rifle slung from liis shoulder and a pistol at his hip. Sitting on the floor, I scooped koue-koufl with my hand, like the rest, out of the same bowl with a young chief who had killed his enemy the day before and brought home hia head to show his wives. The Sheikh eetting, in fact, was richer than I have read in any desert romance or seen in the beat Bedouin films—and yet the love of the lonely English girl for her sunburnt Arab captor, the passionate surrender this his fierce, romantic personality and surroundings force from her haughty heart, grew more obviously impossible every moment. The reason can bo given in one word that should be printed in italics, for it can only bo whispered—fleas! Romance and fleabites simply cannot live together, and during those long moonlight nights of Ramadan, the Moslem fast in which the only meals of the day are taken after sunset and in the small hours, while I lay writhing on my rush mat, desperately rubbing insect powder into the very pore® of my skin, I heard the Sdieikiis around me scratching, and, fox all their eagle eyes and curly black beards and frce-ohild-of-nature ways, I do not believe the love of an English girl would have survived the test. I saw one man only wash while I was in the Riff—and he was a negro. Water was too scarce. The women bring it on donkey-back in untanned pigskins from remote pools on tie plains or trickles in tire hills; and even what one had to drink was often so muddy that I would hardly have watered plants with it at home. At night the single candle would be snuffed out, and, wrapping themselves in their long robes, which they never take off (how they can fight in skirts reaching to the ankles mystifies me) my hosts of the Riff would sink into troubled sleep. As I said before, I did not suffer alone, though I saw on the bare logs and arms of my companion nothing to compare with the conservative estimate cf a thousand bites that I bore in my own body. Several times I noticed one of my companions search for a specially troublesome enemy. Having traced it among the volumuinos folds of his drees, he seized it with practised fingers, and very carefully put it down unharmed on the floor in our midst. The Moslem religion forbids the unnecessary taking of animal life. If British fleas could only know how kindly their cousins of the Biff are treated they would hop riglrt across Europe to get there. Zealand Methodist Conference, the Rev. W. Walker moved, and Mr P. H. Martin seconded—“ That this meeting of ministers and laymen of the Methodist churches of Dunedin, representing 1500 members and 5000 adherents, vigorously protests against the ignoble effort to force the Gaming Bill through Parliament. Economically, socially, and morally, it will injure the dominion W'o urge that the Bill be immediately withdrawn.” The motion was carrier! unanimously, and it was decided that copies be forwarded to the Prime Minister and the local members.