EUROPEAN RAMBLING

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 2, Issue 147, 15 April 1940, Page 3

EUROPEAN RAMBLING

(Featuring "Adolf in Blundcrland" and "Up and Down") It is fairy-tale time in "Russia, and a modern Russian mother, whose imagination has been sharpened by a day of collective farming, is sitting on the steps of her collective farm-house talking to her collective son. She tells him the story of Adolf in Blundcrland, which is divided into a number of scenes in which appear such interesting characters as March Into(a Field-Marshal), Mad-Flatterer (a Yes-man, generally employed to cross Czechs),, the King and Queen of Heartlessness, Mock Garbles, White von Ribbit,, Dodo (a kind of dead turkey), Doormat (the Average German), Mouse (who is, unhappily, non-Aryan), and Unity (cx quisite Aryon girlhood) . There they are, and they all have their fling, and everything gets "euriouser and curio user," with Adolf popping in and out of the various holes, swelling and shrinking according to the circumstances. His Head Gets Swollen. Says the mother: "You remember little Adolf had followed the White von Ribbit into a hole. The Reich was literally porous Avith holes made by the White von Ribbit in his efforts to scrape a diplomatic living, but up till now Adolf had managed to keep out of them. But this time, however, he was well in. Adolf felt a little dazed by the unfamiliar surroundings; as usual, the White von Ribbit was a couple of jumps ahead of him,, and at tiie moment had disappeared round a convenient corner. So Adolf sat there, consoling himself by thinking he was the biggest man in the world, till his head got so swollen he hadn't a chance of getting out of the hole. Then, in the way that Adolf has, he began to cry. And he cried, and he cried, till there Mas a big pool of water. Then he sudr denly felt very small on account of being a big man crying like that. And he got so tiny that he fell with a splash!—right into the pool of his own tears." Still Friends With Mussolini. Then Adolf meets Mouse (it is a Jewish mouse) and Dodo; and Dodo relates some of the famous German facts to him. For instance; ''William the Conqueror was a German. Alexander the Great was q German. Julius Caesar —no, we're still friends with Mussolini, so I'll have to admit that Caesar was a Roman. Genghis Khan was a German. All the great conquerors have been Germans." And the reason they went about conquering everybody, it appears, was to make the world safe from Democracy and "to pave the way for our dear Fuehrer, so that all people shall be free to do just as hi tells them." Adolf's Ambition. After a while Adolf finds himself walking in a garden—it is a Bereh-tesgarden—-with a feeling that he is getting rather small and wants to be the biggest man in the world again. And in the garden he meets a caterpillar sitting on what at first appears to be a mushroom, but on closer view turns out to be a small globe atlas. The caterpillar is very tall and thin, and carries an umbrella. The surprising thing is that he is covering a quarter of the globe. They have quite an interesting conversation, ending by Adolf calling him a nasty English caterpillar—"You crawl ahead so slowly, and you always ask 'why' about everything!"—and the cater- | pillar suggesting that Adolf might ! find a house in Antarctica a nice,, safe place to live in. Telling him Where he Gets Off. Then, of course, there is a 'ca-j party, and here Adolf is welcomed by March Into„ Flatterer and Doormat. It is a sort of Alice-cum-Bun-yan tea party, with Doormat telling a tale about three brotliers-under-the-skin, whose names we re Shushy, Benny and Moshy, and who lived in Fear-and-Trembling. They lived on sufferance,, and all titev got to eat was their own words. Most hilarious scene of all is that in -which the King and Queen of Heartlcssness (crj r ing, "Off with his Swastika," on the slightest provoca- ; tion), Mock Gurbles and one or two other weird creatures meet little Adolf and show him how a trial is conducted—particularly a trial of ] strength, with incidental music for < the "Polish Lancers."