VANISHED MILLIONS

Hokitika Guardian, 21 July 1932, Page 8

VANISHED MILLIONS

WHAT LAUSANNE MEANS. ■

k CHRISTCHURCH, July 19

The stewards JiS&ld a meeting \ in their mansion at Lausanne And now assert we put our shirt Upon an also ran.

a treat i To win in jogging pace. v .>,, . •. ; 1 ' - ■' •' V' , ; The stewards have now ' decided Was a “ready” and a “r00k,.”, And all our chips are in the grips Of a bookie who is crook, i.

None was licked And no one won, They call the thing a draw, 1 •.' A fake, a .froet, and vve have lost Our divvy from the war.

So now you see what it is all about,

ihe stewards na\e declared it no face and there is to be no pay r out.. Nobody has to pay anybody anything, and everybody is therefore relieved of lot’ trouble of maKing plans of what lie is going to do with the .monej inat ni owing to him by 'the other fellow t Life has suddenly become a very simple business. ..We are now merely in . the position that w e are broke, and our • contemplation of the fact is, not disturbed by the intrusion of an> golden dreams, bred of problematic riches to come. ■ • -

■ Had iu not been for the Lausanne Conference we would still have been heirs to £26,000,000. That, *pf course, wouid have been very bad for us. The fact | that we /were going to come into a- wholp lot of money some 1 day w f ould have affected our willingness to work. Why work when you are going to be dreadfully \ rich P Now the legacy has been revoked; and presumably all the .unemployed will iiovv > go back to work, all thei zealous -honorary ■ workers in the cause of relief will have to devote their energies to uplift work, the Unemployment Board *will ‘die of Munition and Mr’ Coates v 1 Will return from Ottawa ; to find himself i; deprived of his moot picturesque portfolio. And all of this is very good for ps; ■' So if anybody Asks you what the decision was all about you can ,tell them— ; !■

Twenty-eix million quid—that, /quite colossal stream ■ Of revenue has petered out, and vanished like a dream, ' ./// And left us but the arid bed where yet may be detected ■' > s The remnants of the things 'we might have done if we’d collected.

We haven’t got it—and we won’t. Lausanne has put the lid Upon our hopes of twenty-six million useful quid. '■ 1 And we are left bereft of wealth, hopelessly to dream Of >a never-ending wealth supply and the rosy might-have-been.

Let bright imaginations play about that princely sum And castles place across the face of a | new millenium, s TTo'v wondrously can fancy use that money if we let it And sweep the drerd depression off—but, Ah. me! we won’t get it.

The only thing that’s left for us-—a dreary consolation Tn days when finance shows a most pronounced attenuation^— Is just to dump aside the slump with all the ins that stressed it And think of what we’d do with all that cash if we possessed it. / ’loll- the figures round your tongue;. how richly they abound With dreams of needed' plentitnde—how sonorously the sound When carefully, articulated, spoke as though we did In fa'-'t nosseg* tbo<\e twenty-six million lovely quid.

Forget tli©'facts-—few facts to-day can

cheer the thoughtful mind Invade a land of dreams and leave realities behind;* Observe the fun the solemn .facteinevitably lend— ■■ < Twenty-six million quid, and—not a " bob to spend.

PARODY ON REGENT TREATY

The labours of aged statesmen and the diplomacy of greyhaired plenipotentiaries at Lausanne have 'resulted n the party, breaking up with mutual jongratulations and the conviction that all fhe delegates from everywhere the jolly, good fellow**, (writes Baxter O’Neill in the Christchurch “Times”). Portentous decuments have been signed, scaled and. sworn to and iots ofthings' ,‘tliatr had been ~?aid before have been unsaid; It is all very satisfactory, but what,is it all about?

Of course, you don’t know. 1 You • ought to know; everybody ought to (know. I ought to know; . Ldo know The candour which is the particular charm that endears me. to 1 all my friends compels me to admit that, >at the outset, I was a bit hazy, about it, and the comments with which:! sought to spread enlightenment among, l my leSs informed friends were justs a trifle broad in their scope. But then : there: appeared: that small ■ paragraph which stated that New Zealand would' definitely not receive the £26,000,000. .reparations which it hnd not received. That made the thing quite plain; The stipendiaries; had met and reversed the decision' of the judges.

The decision of the judges In the 1914 race, When we thought We beat old Fritz

vv”e thought we won the point to point i s Through Flanders by a. street. But' now they place all in the race In miraculous dead heat. 1 ; 'v%