WITHOUT PREJUDICE

Dominion, Volume 20, Issue 58, 2 December 1926, Page 10

WITHOUT PREJUDICE

NOTES AT RANDOM

(By

T.D.H.)

It doesn’t seem to have occurred to anybody, in the current discussion on American films, that if we don’t want to see them we can stop away.

An American visitor at a kinema in Christchurch is said to have failed to show respect when the National Anthem was played.—He , may have thought, after viewing the programme, that he was back home in America.

’The League of Nations consider* the best way to grapple with disarmament is to start another bureau at Geneva with a lot of fat billets for people to collect statistics and study the problem.—These Geneva bureaucrats have to be careful never to reach finality in anything they study or else their jobs would vanish.

New Zealand’s fatfie is spreading. Mr. Zane Grey's book about his fishing expedition has induced the London “Morning Post” to write an editorial article about it. It is all a question of .scale, it says, and what it wants to. know is what Mr. Zane Grey is going to fish for next. “Just as we do not go back to tiddlers after trout (says the ‘'Morning Post”), so we do not go back—with quite the same zest, we should suppose—to trout after tarpon. The tarpon-fisher, on the other hand, goes on to black marlin, so that a fish of 1501 b. he comes to describe as ‘undersized’—the sort of thing you put back. But after the swordfish, what? The shark is not really a game fish, and has a nasty habit of cutting the line, which is ah unsportsmanlike thing for any fish to do. The whale is not, properly speaking, a fish at all; we take leave besides to doubt if he would rise to the fly or take a spoon, and if he did his habit of sounding would run out the largest reel.”

After thinking the matter over our contemporary ends up by becoming a little more hopeful about Mr. Zane Grey. “There is,” it says, “one real sporting fish left for Air.'Zane Grey to conquer. Let him trv the orca gladi■ator, commonly called the grampus. Anyone . who has seen the orca shouldering his way like a torpedo-boat along the surface of the ocean will realise that on Mr. Grey’s rod he would make when he comes back—if he does come would be a porpoise or a seal: we have heard of an orca being found with thirteen seals and thirteen porpoises inside him. It was his unlucky number. He had choked on the fur of the thirteenth seal. We therefore commend the orca to Mr. Grey’s attention. Let him go orca fishing with rod and line, and when he comes back—« he does come back—he can write another book about it.”

It looks as if the Government Pubicity Officer might do well to have some orcas on hand when Air. Zane returns.

It has been remarked tliat in taking Queen Mary into consultation about the alterations at Alarlborough House the Prince of Wales is showing greater wisdom than his grandfather, Kins Edward, who, when Prince of Wales, made numerous alterations in the same building to suit himself, and then learned, to his consternation, that Queen Victoria proposed to come and see the result. The Prince had installed a smoking lounge, an innovation which he well knew his royal mother would abominate, and he was fearful at the prospect of a lecture. His friend Lord William Beresford invited the Prince to leave the matter to him.. Queen Victoria, escorted by the Prince, came, and saw—but not everything; and the Prince needed all his self-control when the party came to the door of the smoking lounge and read an emergency notice, in chalk letters: “Lavatoryunder repair.”

Some , interesting examples of “Doughboy Humour” are given .by Mapjor J. M. Scannell, of the United States Army, in the current “Army Quarterly.”’ For instance, there is the tale of the Jewish ex-serviceman to whom an acquaintance remarked, “So you was in the army, Ikey?” “Sure, I was in the armv.” “Did you get a commission?” “No; straight salary.”

Here is a new version of the story of the recruit on guard for the first time:—Late at night an officer returned to camp. “Halt!” came the challenge. The officer halted. A long, painful silence ensued. The officer impatiently began to advance. “Halt!” came the order once more. Another pause. Again the officer began to advance. A rifle bolt rattled—“ Halt!” The officer, now thoroughly exasperated, demanded: “Sentry, what are your orders?” In a trembling voice came the answer: “To say ‘halt’ three times and then shoot.”

This one, of the private who made a slight mistake, is true to life. Having pause.! Jn his task ol digging a trench section he had extracted a cigarette from his pouch, and, seeing a khaki-clad figure passing, he called out: “Hey, buddie, gimme a light.’ The other obligingly held out a burning match. The doughboy, looking up to thank his “buddie,” discovered , to his amazement the star of-a brigadier. “I beg vour pardon-, sir,” he said; "I didn’t mean any disrespect. I didn’t notice you was a general.” “That’s all right, buddie,” said the general—who apparently was a ‘regular guy’— “but you should thank God I wasn’t a second lieutenant.”

A coloured division, Major Scannell relates, was under fire for the first time when many of its members broke and ran. One of the culprits was legging it past divisional headquarters, when the major-general stepped out to stop him. “I’m your general,” he began. “Golly, boss!” was the conscience-stricken reply. “Is I back that far?”

This latter story has reminded the “Manchester Guardian” of what it describes as the perfectly true report made by one of two second lieutenants in hospital in England in the summer of 1918. Said one to the other, “Were you in the March retreat, then?” “Was lin the March retreat?” came tlie reply. “My dear, sir, I very nearly led it!”

SONNET. When it is done, that last long voyage and we Fave come to where they tell us there is rest, . . . When it is done, that last long voyage, and we Whatever name you will, so let it be . .. Shall we remember all the friends we met Upon tills dear old Earth; the haunting days O ' springtime's coming; all the browns and grays G English autumns? Or shall we forget? Will there be sunsets in the Western skies, A.id great big silent seas for us to sail Beneath a crescent moon, all silver-pale? Will She be there with laughter in her eves? And shall we smell the heather wet with rain, Or sec the yellow daffodils again? —A. R . U., in “G.K.'i Weekly.”