AT THE TEA TABLE.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XLV, Issue 12000, 13 February 1920, Page 5

AT THE TEA TABLE.

SOME TOPICAL TALKS. i “Some of the Germans on the Blade List are playing the game -of ‘Come and Find Me’ with the Allies,” remarked the Critic. “It will, indeed, os difficult to arrest those who have joined the Bolsheviks.” “I doubt whether their chief reason for joining was to escape the vengeance of the Allies, ” said the Scribe. ‘Tt is more likely that they have bean attracted by the hope of sharing in the murderous deeds and cruel practices of the Tartar savages. The proverb is true that ‘birds of a feather flock together’ even if they are birds of prey and pillage.” “We have been rather surfeited with accounts of tenuis playing in Australia,” remarked the Sport, “but I was glad to see that the Australians have been punished for their allegation that New Zealand was, not a suitable place for playing the Davis Cup matches, because of its unsettled weather conditions, and the other day the weather in their own country caused them to play matches in their socks. ” ‘‘Settled weather in Australia sometimes means a prolonged drought,” said the Cynic. "In onr Fortunate Isles we have no great extremes such as they have over there where cyclones rage and devastate, and droughts destroy. It is true that a libellous Yankee once said that we have no weather —only samples, hut we have certainly the best climate in the world. ’ ’ ‘‘l notice,” said the Critic, “that the engineers on strike in Australia whose hanking- transactions have been stopped, allege that this has been done to prevent them buying out the Shipping Company. The tact that they recently made the offer, coming immediately after the Company’s resolve to remove their ships elswehere, seems to indicate that the design behind the strike was to make the trade useless to the Company so that it would sell out for a low price. ’ ’ “I am beginning to suspect that a similar design is behind the go-slow policy and other devices for increasing cost of production,” said the Sage. “It may also account for the demand for nationalisation. The Labour Trust has frequently claimed that it should possess and control all the means of production. ” “Don’t blame the men,” said the Cynic. “It is their leaders who deserve censure because they are responsible for all the mischief. It is reported on good authority that men are actually leaving the mines because' they are not permitted to earn euong hto live on. Some of the Labour Trust’s chief operators recently alleged that men were leaving because of unsatisfactory conditions due to neglect by the owners, but the real truth seems to be that this is because the go-slow policy prevents them from earning proper wages. ” ■ “Some people thought,” said the Critic, “that after the war we were going to have a new world in which brotherhood would bo uuive sal, and the League of Nations was hailed as a first step towards it, but I notice that the passport system is to be made still more stringent in France, while Britain is also exercising greater care over the admission of aliens. ” “That is because the Hun has not yet shown that he can be regarded as a civilised huamn being,” said the Scribe, “and that is why he is being excluded from the League of Nations till he has purged himself of his iniquity.” “Don’t talk twaddle,” said the Cynic. “What is the use of prating about universal brotherhood when we ourselves will not allow the people of great nations to land on our shores, merely because their skins are of different colours. ” “That is not “tthe solo reason for their exclusion, ” said the Sage. “It is also because of natural racial antipathy, because tneir manners and customs differ from our own, and are sometimes repugnant to us, and also because even our modes of thought and conception of morality are different. ”, . “Also, perhaps,” said the Cynic, “because they are more thrifty, and too industrious, which makes the thriftless go-slow people fear their competition as labour-saving human machines.” “So the Eiffel Tower observers have found that those supposed messages from another planet are only disturbances due to solar activities, ’ ’ said the Critic. “That seems to dispose of all the speculations.” “Not so,” said the Scientist, “a negative proves nothing. So far all those who reported the receipt of vibrations from some source outside our planet, distinctly affirmed their regularity and persistence, and it is difficult to assume that solar activities would possess those characteristics. We must await the results of further investigations before we can form a definite opinion. ” “All the same,” said the Cynic, “we are all too much inclined to believe what we desire to believe, and that propensity accounts for the spread of many errors, and the present stability of some.” ' * T noticed a paragraph going the rounds, ” said the Critic, “which humorously related how a Maori was surprised that his Bank account had become exhausted because he still had some forms in nis cheque book and he offered to give a chqeue to pay off his overdraft. It seems to me that is only a local adaptation of the story of a young wife’s similar belief in the value of unused cheque forms,” . “There was a genuine case in New Zealand where a cheque did good service without reducing a Bank account,” said the Cynic. “It occurred at the funeral of a Maori, While the natives were piling notes and gold into the coffin a shrewd European came along, and his generous sympathy for the Maori and his cunning for himself by writing out a cheque for £IOO and leaving it in the coffin in place of the actual money he took out as change.” I * A JAYE PBNNE.