PASSING NOTES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25428, 8 January 1944, Page 3

PASSING NOTES

No longer is it necessary, in our search of information on the German home front, to rely on German underground reports or statements of neutral travellers. Information comes to us straight from the horses’ mouths. Nazi papers are illuminating authorities, and from these it may be gathered, says a recent London paper, that German civilian morale is “ dangerously low, except—significantly—in the unbombed provinces of Saxony and Silesia.” No press expends ink and paper in fulminations against the non-existent, or pours out the vials of its wrath on nothing. Even a press as tightly controlled as Germany’s may often let the cat out of the bag. “ More dangerous than the pessimists,” says one paper, “ are the fickle people who say with resignation that it ‘would not be so bad. if we lost the war ’.” Or who “ naively believe that the Anglo-Americans would not let the Russians enter Germany.” German workers are quoted as saying, “ What do we as workers do more than work? We cannot be worse off than we are now; the Russians are not half as bad as our propaganda paints them.” And so on. Quoted in the same London paper is the remark of a German officer in Greece who, on receipt of family letters from the Ruhr, said, with tears in his eyes, “We have brought a lot of unhappiness to the world, and now God is about to punish us.”

At this tremendous moment, lying midway as it does between the beginning of the world and its end, Allied soldiers and statesmen of greater or lesser note have seized the added point of the New Year to issue orders of the day. Looking gratefully at the past and present, they have veiled their faces and held their tongues before the future, preferring much to be safe than sorry. Notwithstanding this handicap to every leaping imagination, they have spoken with eloquence. General Eisenhower dared to put his reputation to the test with the statement that “victory will come this year.” General Montgomery, nicely timing his New Year message with his farewell to his ever-victorious army, shrank from such a plunge, merely saying, “There is no possible doubt that the end of the war is in sight, although I do not think it will end to-morrow, or next week or next year.” Mr La Guardia, of New York, was more outspoken, foreseeing a “bust-up” in Germany about Easter and the assassination of Hitler. But none of these speakers rose to the eloquent height of our own Prime Minister, who painted his pictures in fiery red and menacing black, decorated with his favourite triplet phrases: The New Year dawns an angry red, the red of total war. All around the ' world horizon the > war-clouds hang low, heavy and threatening. . . . An onslaught such as mankind has never seen, heard of, or imagined, terrible in its Intensity, devastating in its destructive power, inevitable in its crushing outcome, will be directed against the embattled hosts of Nazism.

"The Japanese,” said Admiral Halsey the other day, “are being fed on bigger and better lies the worse their military position becomes.” What is meant by a “ bigger lie,” and what by a “better”? Long have we been accustomed to lies white and lies black. A “ big lie ” we also know, but a “good lie” and a “better” lie are something else altogether. Is a good lie one that is not too extreme to be suspect, carefully decked out with trimmings to make it acceptable? If so, a good lie may be merely a small one. According to Hitler in his “Mein Kampf,” “a definite factor in getting a lie believed is the size of the lie.” To the Axis mind, therefore, a big lie is a good one, for it serves its purpose. The biggest lie in the history of Nazism is that concocted to cushion the blow of America’s entry into the war. Alarming news had come from Russia, and Nazi circles were in a panic. So Germany was told in staring headlines:

America on the eve of revolution. The United States in panic, the people kept down only by violence. Barricades in the streets of Washington and New York. The President frantic. Congress in revolt against an unjustified war. All food rationed. Millions have fled from New York to the interior, with Mayor La Guardia and Eleanor Roosevelt in the lead. Entire Pacific Coast evacuated.

The lie was both big and good—a real “ whopper.” But it served its immediate purpose and the crisis passed.

From the Marlborough Sounds comes an alarming account of mosquito swarms that infest the week-end baches. The wet weather of the earlier part of the summer has apparently made the whole Sounds area a vast breeding ground of mosquitoes, which literally swarm at night. Recently a resident swept up four kitchen shovelfuls of dead mosquitoes from the floor, and plenty more outside were anxious

to get in. The report apologises for the possible exaggeration, but no exaggeration is possible in any mosquito story. Mother mosquito lays 400 eggs at a sitting, and in a fortnight each egg produces a fully-matured mosquito ready for work. If a mosquito life is allowed to pursue the even tenor of its way a single pair of mosquitoes, during the waning and waxing of two summer moons, become the parents uf 100,000,000,000 descendants. And only a skilled astronomer or an American Steel Trust expert could compute the increase for a year. As a symbol for innumerability, mosquito population statistics might well be substituted for the hair of the human head or' the sands on the seashore.

Though every good mosquito is a dead mosquito, the live mosquito is not without interest. Male mosquitoes are decent fellows, living respectably on vegetable food and searching for nectar among the garden flowers. But the female of the species is more deadly than the male; she is a nasty piece of work: The female mosquito with eggs to lay is ravenous for blood. The floor of the mouth and the upper lips are extended enormously Into the shape of a long, firm tube with which she penetrates the skin of man or beast. Having ejected a drop of poisonous saliva to thin the victim’s blood, she pumps up her meal through the tube. If any of the saliva remains in the puncture it causes a burning, itching swelling known as a mosquito bite.

Flee from the mosquito female as you would from the devil. She comes at you like a dive-bomber, spits at you, poisons you with her saliva. She is mad for your blood. Are you a belle? A female mosquito will make you wring your hands with anguish. Are you a beau? Hollywood might take you on to act the part of Robert Taylor knocked about by Joe Louis in a bout for the world championship.

That strange affirmative of the negative which puzzled, us for so long—- “ Yes, we have no bananas,” —has at last acquired some sense. It has now become more than a musical hall wisecrack, significant only by its nonsense. We have its parallel every time we are told by a tobacconist,' “Yes, we have no tobacco.” When the periodical supply of cigarettes comes to the shops the city has one of its “periodics.” Then, by some mysterious telepathy, the arrival of the new supply becomes bruited about. In less time than it takes blue-bottles in the bush to swoop down on pieces of cast-out refuse, the shbp counter is humming with cigarette hunters. When the last cigarette is sold out, and the counter-front is empty, the shopman or shop-lady, glancing at the void before him or her replies to your request, “Yes (as you see) we have no tobacco.” Now all this has a more serious aspect—a social, sociological or psychological revolution. It reverses the traditional rela ■ tionship between shopman and customer. For the first time in our history the buyer becomes a suppliant and the seller a distributor of doles. The customer slinks into a shop as if asking for credit, and feels grateful if he gets it. Strive as he may he cannot remove from his voice the accent of humility, and strive as he may the shopman cannot remove from his elevated brows the note of hauteur. Civis.