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Evening Star, Issue 22459, 2 October 1936, Page 12

NEXT CENTURY PRESS

HOVEL COMPETITION Prizes were offered by the 1 Manchester Guardian’ for an extract, in not more than 100 words, from a newspaper of the year 2000. Competitors were allowed to draw their extract from whatever part of a newspaper’s contents they liked, including the advertisements, ■ Many things, of course, may be much the same, even in the blessed year 2000, and we had considerable sympathy with the selectors of such extracts as “ Rain again interfered with cricket yesterday, not a ball being howled at Old Trafford ” (Ashton! or “ Further outlook unsettled ” (too many senders to specify), which stood out pleasantly against the intimidating concourse of autogiros to New York and rockets to Mars. Yet, after all, is was the unusual 70 years on rather than the habitual that would mainly interest us to-day if wc could see it, and accordingly it was that which this competition mainly looked for. If, for example, the present widespread objection to the “tyranny” of infantrearing continues, a Hitchcn writer’s advertisement might be the logical conclusion for that distant period:— YOU CAN HAVE BONNIE BABIES 1 Wc Have Produced the Last Word in Baby Incubators. Why Stay at Home? “ Multibator ” looks after your Baby until the troublesome stage is over. Have your evening out until Baby becomes interesting. Politically (and in other ways) pretty grim reading was predicted for the daily paper buyers of 2000. Much of the advertisement columns, we gather, arc to be filled in that year with announcements of proprietary gas masks, patent bomb shelters, and other aids to prolonged existence, though how many purchasers for these interesting articles will still be surviving was not mentioned. On slightly lower levels of savagery we might have fragments of the parliamentary report curiously redolent of our own time. From London, S.E., for example:— . . . asked the Prime Minister whether the Government had yet evolved any settled policy in home and foreign affairs? Mr Baldwin: The policy of the present Government and of the preceding Administrations of which I. my father, and his father have been privileged to be the successive heads was best outlined by my right lion, grandfather during the years 1931-30. There cannot, I think, ‘be much justifiable criticism possible of a policy which has served this great nation effectively for 70 years A Voice: What about our five million unemployed ? Mr Baldwin: The Government is doing, and will continue to do . . • ■ The use to he made of future inventions seems indeed mostly appalling. The Manchester suggestion for the year 3,000’s “ Business Opportunities ' column, Fire the Drones! Watch your staff. Television secretly installed. Box seems to have taken a hint from Charlie Chaplin’s ‘ Modern Times.’ And one noticed some obligation to Aldous Huxley’s ‘ Brave New World ’ in a Kent "Writer's. “ Nostalgia,” the stereoscopic lie at the Buckingham Palace, will be diffused for another week. Oblivio intoxicates without deleterious effect on the nervous system. (Advt.)

However, even in this world of terrible possibilities, cheerfulness did occasionally succeed in breaking through. We like a Windemere competitor’s prediction for the sports page: The test match at Lord’s yesterday was interrupted in a curious manner. Grace, the great-grandson of tho almost legendary Victorian cricketer, exercised his right of appeal to the sight-and-sound apparatus against the decision of both umpires that ho had been caught at the wicket. Reference to the apparatus revealed that it had ceased to function about an hour previously. The batsman declined to leave the wicket and the Australians to bowl him. However, a torrential downpour shortly put an -end both to the deadlock and to the match. The first prize went to DERBY DONATES HORSES ZOO. Two line pairs of American horses were yesterday presented to the Royal Zoological Gardens, Whipsnade Park, tho other for the country Zoo at Oswestry. Only 20 years ago this animal was in use in this country, and old folks can remember when.it was quite common. Many horses however were poisoned in the Groat War of 1950, as thev were not considered worth gas masks. Lord Derby’s grandfather possessed manv fine specimens, which no used to race every year on what is now Epsom Air Port. The second prize went to an extract which envisages simplified spelling lor the year 2000. . A meeting waz held yesterday in the London Solarium to consider the rebuilding ov the Houzez ov Parliament in pre-war style for use az a IMuzeum ov the National Period. Mis Jane Smith, Childrenz Komisar, objected to the use ov the original site, which haz been rezerved for the new bity Nursery The meeting waz in favour ov rebuilding, tho Mis Mary Jonez, reprozenting the Muzcumz Konutee, arrived too late to speak bekauz fog had delayed the Kontmental Wmgz by which she travelled. There were several men among the speakerz.