JUST IN CASE

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIII, Issue 177, 29 July 1942, Page 6

JUST IN CASE

BROWNOUT BLUES

OR-BE A "WHITE" MAN!

(By W.E.J.D.)

A problem exists. It is the pedestrian In pre-war days, motorists used to curse this jay-walking menace. Now they have a further complaint. They can t see pedestrians in the brownout.

Ambulance men have wept on my shoulders. They're afraid thai a new law will come into being, forbidding them to double-bank. How can they help it if they pick up an extra passenger or two, or slice one into the rough while tearing through the still of the night?

You can't leave dead or battered pedestrians strewn along the wayside! It simply isn't done. I don't know why, but there it is.

Perhaps the council employees would object to sweeping them up out of the gutters every morning, the same as they do cats and hedgehogs. To get back to the original train of thought, the lads that rush here, there and everywhere in those shiny grey trucks have asked me to ask you to ask yourself whether or not it would be a grand idea to wear something white when perambulating forth into the murkiness of the night. The Wearin' of the Hankie V?hy not turn your E.P.S. brassard inside out. or tie a hankie round your bicep? If everyone did it, it would look quite fashionable. Think of the pleasing contrast a clean linen 'kerchief would make against the black of your dyed (or dead) rabbit "musquash." People in England have fallen for this idea in a big way. The latest traffic instruction films from London show nearly all the pedestrians with something white encircling a limb, or torso. Experienced drivers from the Homeland raise their voices Li unanimous praise of this idea. They say that since it became a habit, the seventh column menace of jay-walk-ing traffic, which so depleted the population and hence became a source of glee to Adolf and his herd of A 1 Capones, has been eradicated. No longer large motor casualty lists appear in London dailies. So why not give this a try? It's a far, far better thing to wear something white and remain whole than not to wear something white and be strewn about some dark back street.

. No longer will you venture out into the blanket of evening with your life trembling in both hands but patter along happily (just as I've done here) to your game of bridge or your date, secure in the knowledge that if a speeding car did come your way, it would pass round you, and not over you. Even if the worst does come to the worst, you'll have the satisfaction of knowing, like the pedestriah who int S Jilt? -? n the , P ed estrian crossway wasn t your fault, any-