SANDY'S CORNER

Wanganui Chronicle, 15 January 1949, Page 4

SANDY'S CORNER

“WE’RE NOT AUSSIES” The scene: The Menin Road in 1917. Characters: The sentry (42nd. Division, English), a patrol moving up the line Sentry: Halt and give the password! Voices from the patrol: ... . . . • That’s what you arc! Sentry: Pass, Australia! The Voice: Don’t you Australia us, you Pommey! We’re Pig-Islanders’ And that confusion of the Menin Road still exists. Here is a former Premier of New South Wales having to remind England of it in this enlightened year of Socialism, 1949. He even goes so far as to say that the Socialistic Government of Australia is not the same as the Socialistic Government of New Zealand That will come as a shock to some people we feel sure, as big a shock as when we received a note from a lonely little village in Scotland, the writer “being glad to know that New Zealand was something bigger and more important than an island in Sydney Harbour.” The writer, since his schooldays, had always thought New Zealand was such an island, which makes us wonder whether the expense we have gone to in sending people overseas who drink and suck lemons was fair, either to our importance or our purse or, oven more important, to our socialism. Hasn’t the world ever heard of the Social ist Isles?