GOOSEY, GOOSEY, GANDER

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 105, 28 January 1935, Page 8

GOOSEY, GOOSEY, GANDER

The Lithuanian Government has issued an order requiring all State and municipal officials to eat geese in proportion to their salaries, the ratio being one fat goose to every 50 litas. This ingenious device has bepn adopted in order to save the Lithuanian geese-breeding industry, which is struggling with export difficulties. I here are abotn 30 litas to the.pound stealing. Thus, for every £l/13/4 of salary a goose has to be eaten. The lower-paid public servant may contemplate such a repast without undue foreboding; but what will be the reaction of his superiors? Even the most prodigiously-appetited head of a Lithuanian department will lose his zest for the restoration of “cuts” when he realises that with wealth there can be no pleasure, but only goose, and fat at that, for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Perhaps'there will shortly be a shortage of high officials. Ihe Prime Minister, Chief Justice and General Manager of Railways will find the burden of their offices a little too much for ijiem, while humblei workers, with helpings of goose just sufficiently frequent to make them delectable, will be unwilling to change their state. Then, tc maintain the strength of the State and municipal services, the Geese Act will have to be extended to the whole population, whereupon the geese-breeders will rapidly become some of the richest men in the land, and, what is sauce for the goose being sauce for the gander, will be required to gorge themselves on the product of their industry. The law of supply and demand will then operate with a new twist, geesefarming will be gastronomically unattractive, and (Lithuania having no Permanent Commission of Agriculture) there will be a sudden swing-over to the production of other foodstuffs, necessitating an emergency session of the Diet to enforce the compulsory eating of, it may be, turkeys and turtle-doves and sucking pigs. So, m these fevered times, must politics chase its economic tail.