KING FAMINE’S SWAY

Hokitika Guardian, 2 August 1932, Page 8

KING FAMINE’S SWAY

WAITING FOR RATIONS ISSUE. PITIFUL CHRISTCHURCH SCENES CHRISTCHURCH, Aug. 2. Jjach week the battalions of • the destitute : descend on the Hospital Board offices. Tliey were there yeserdav. On a cold, drab, rainy morning they;tame in a - stream that began about nixie o’clock and was still arriving two hours, later. They banked .up in the big public office till they filled all/ ; the availabe space. Ever the doors opened to admit more, and ever ,the mass within packed closer and closer. 1 Damp and miserable humanity. They jostled one another in a close crammed,; feebly steaming mass. The air grew stuffy with the taints of. a hundred .different odours. The temperatures rose, till the world outside peered in through steam-clouded wix\tl ,wfi. They waited with a sort of fatalistc patience; the talk droning, in a subdued monotone. There was no colour, no life; no animation. Just talk and steam.

Extremes <pf poverty had . driven them to where the hunger line was an imminent and deadly thing. Tne»r faces.spoke of tragedy and dull suffer? ing;. v Want taunted their misery with the motley ; qf, a hundred grotesque, and ragged gariisu There were , some, who might have been animated scarecrows, men and women whom the tyranny of long priviition had left without r the spirit, to care, or the pride to resent Fate’s cruel burlesque. J-They shuffled one; against .the other, crowding ever closer arid closer. But there was. no. other movement. There was no relieving splash of colour, -no compensating note of gaiety; or hope. Just , the monotone of . talk,, the clammy steam, tht conflict, of ;b, hundred, odours.

I To a wasted form here mnd there ! clung some of the weli-guarded finer, of better days; A fur coat could be found in incongruous juxtaposition with shoes whose toes gaped wide ana tyhos© heels were gone. Memories of plenty laughing at present poyer- .; Faces' lined and hungry gave the stajmp of tragedy where had not nljrjiady. implanted' it tfi" other ways. Duil eyes in? young heads....a shuffle ;in young limbs....the stooped shoulders and furrowed cheeks of premature, .age....the? uttei* hopelessness of age .♦jtself. These were the accoutre- . ments of the courtiers‘of King Famine ns they waited. And malice conspired .with Fate to make it all ridiculous, to call deri,Biye laughtey .. where tears alone should have''been inspired. But tlioy didn’t care.'' They seemed long dead to all these'things. They , were hungry or ill of both. That, was all they knew. And-so- they shuffled and mumbled and. crowded and waited. Dfitside the rain and the cold. In here I the temperature stfll vising and the air | becoming even mote vitiated. . Poverty , burlesqued and made more ridiculous. Who cared?

;,‘Why must poverty : * make its creatuleV thipgs to ■ jeer at? Why put misery. a ulways in motley? The only compensation is" that' misery dosen’t seem to cafe. These people bore their sufferings in silenffe., It was fortitude, or the hopelessness that dare not hope. To them this tragic parade was just a matter of routine—a thing they did every week as l a matter of course. Here was, food* They needed., food. And so they waited till it was given to them.- There were .no protests, no complaints, nothing -to, show that resentment burned against" the injustice of the Fates. Nothing -but the dr on ing monotone of talk, the steam and the taint of the air.