OTHER PEOPLE’S IDEAS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 27 November 1942, Page 4

OTHER PEOPLE’S IDEAS

" THAT DANCE (To the Editor.) Sir,—lf my friend Rudyard objects to the word “rapine” chosen in preference to the word “ravishment” used in the same handbook of English synonyms from whence drawn, he may now have it to toss about before the admiring gaze of his school for backward scholars, at the same time quoting for their benefit a passage or two of the Recessional, his full-length quotation from the book of “Barrack Room Ballads,” thanks to him, being already learned by heart. As a literary smoke-screen to lessen the offence complained of by most orderly citizens, his poem might have achieved a better objective if unadorned by his added mention of enemy atrocities in Asiatic quarters very far removed from the temperate zone of our local College Assembly Hall and its later bottle-bestrewn battlegrounds. As a new leader of public opinion in other matters, Rudyard may cut some ice, but in this instance his leadership most dismally fails. —Yours, etc., “O.K. ME NOT.” This correspondence is closed. —Ed. Ed.