THE LANTERN SLIDE

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 54, Issue 3895, 28 April 1937, Page 4

THE LANTERN SLIDE

The lantern slide is an old time survival, but it does out only very slowly. Lantern slides are brought into the country constantly by travellers returning from their personally escorted tours abroad, and spread the deadly diseases of jealousy and boredom in wave upon sickly wave over this “fair young land of ours.” Surely it is a reflection on the Governments that practically nothing has been done about this matter. They have successfully grappled with the germ of smallpox, and prevented the terrible scourge of hydrophobia from gaining a fotoing in Australia. About the lantern slide they have done nothing, and helpless audiences in town and country writhe in their seats nightly before its poison, their poor wan faces tinged with the terrible green of envy, as they see places they have always longed to visit distorted and ruined before them.

Recently a farewell dinner was given to three gentlemen who were leaving for Europe. One speaker was courageous enough to mention thih matter, warning them—imploring them, rather—not to procure lan tern slides abroad. The hope was expressed that if the travellers did, some official—the kind who disevover opium and things of that description, wherever they are hidden—might confiscate them before they were permitted to land. Tlie advice was not taken too well. It gave one of the gentleman an idea he had not thought of.

Adhere do they get lantern slides abroad? By what hateful alchemy do travellers make them? Or do they buy them ready made? Modern science has improved the motor car out of all knowledge, and the aeroplane also, and practically everything. But the old “magic lantern” remains in all its pristine horror still. Most children had a deep seated aversion to the “magic lantern,” failing to see any magic about it, and hating the horrible vague images, often upside down, which the “magician” showed, and the way he tapped on the floor to encourage his accomplice in his work. All this grim business still goes on to-day, whether the hateful machines are called eypdioscopes or anything else. It is high time that the technique should be improved or the whole practice abandoned. Then there is the question of the terrible lack of imagination found in the average lantern slide addict. Why do they always visit the Tower of London (with the fine Tower bridge dwarfing the old Tower), or the Whispering Gallery of St. Paul’s, or witness the changing of the guard, etc., etc.? Why cannot they make lantern slides of places one doesn’t know so well?

Perhaps a class could be held for intending tourists—a travellers’ preparatory eloss, granting a diploma of graduation for those who have benefited by instruction. Without such diploma people could be prevented from leaving the country. This might perhaps prevent the terrible scourge of the lantern slide, or at any rate the deadliest species of it, which abounds in Australia to-day—the result of indiscriminate and reckless touring.