LION & BEAR

Wairarapa Times-Age, 17 June 1942, Page 5

LION & BEAR

. EXCHANGE Or COMPLIMENTS. POSSIBLE EFFECT ON BUS QUEUES. .The Lion and the Bear have entered upon a period of mutual compliments, said the “Christian Science Monitor” in an editorial recently. One result is that there are now four people in Britain who may be tempted to test the new British regulation that everybody waiting for a bus must queue up for it. They are four aviators to whom the Order of Lenin has been awarded by the Russian Government. This decoration confers a pension of 25 rubles a month, gives free travel throughout the U.S.S.R., entitles hold-, ers to refunds of income tax, and to go to the head of any queue he may happen to see. Does the rule apply outside Russia? If it does, the quickest way to buy chocolates in Balham or catch a bus at Clapham Junction is to shoot German airplanes out of Soviet skies. The British compliment is artistic rather than utilitarian. It is the setting up of a bust of Lenin near the house he used to live in when he was in London. It claims to be the first concrete bust ever designed; and, with the conferment of the four Orders of Lenin, is certainly solid evidence of the improving relations between the two peoples.