CHAINS OF OFFICE

Southland Times, Issue 23376, 7 December 1937, Page 11

CHAINS OF OFFICE

A BRITISH SUGGESTION It is a well-known fact of natural history that mayors who were born free, are everywhere in chains—but are very seldom (if ever) in the kind of chain which is to be worn this autumn in order to keep the Mayor of Neurode in Silesia under official and ornamental control, says The Manchester Guardian. A local craftsman has fashioned a chain out of coal, and it is to be worn by the mayor when the town celebrates the sixhundredth anniversary of what we should call its charter later in the present year. Presumably a gold one is his Worship’s more ordinary wear, but on the approaching special occasion his badge of office will be a black, but comely type. As one might naturally assume from Neurode’s unusual civic ornament, ths town has coalmines —and that makes one wonder whether special chains for special places might not become a municipal feature of a brighter Britain. The Potteries might provide their chief magistrates with porcelain chains —which, quite seriously, might be very handsome indeed, while the notion of his Worship as “a dainty rogue in porcelain” is both new and attractive. Iron chains sound a little too heavy and menacing, but something might be done with stainless steel—if any of that precious metal can be spared from rearmaments requirements. Apart from another coal chain, Lancashire would seem to be a little handicapped —a cotton chain might look too much like a halter. In Cambridgeshire the greatly daring might suggest a chain of sausages, and Burton might experiment with a chain of bottle-green glass. But in spite of the example from Silesia it will probably be a long time before there is any real movement to push mayors and lord mayors off the gold standard.