"Scrap Your Peace Time Habits."

Levin Daily Chronicle, 16 October 1917, Page 4

"Scrap Your Peace Time Habits."

OR "HOW TO DO IT." HARRY LAUDER'S HINTS TO "SLACKERS," ETC. Smoking my pipe, and watching the smoke curl into the words and sentences of this article, I suddenly burst out laughing—you will never guess at what. Well, it's at myself; and that, some folks will tell you, is a very difficult process for a Scotsman. And, after all, it's not precisely at myself I'm laughing; it's at what I'm doing—shoving a wee bit of amber into my mouth, and sucking smoke through it. Sirs, if a man from Mars was to pop his head through the window, what a funny figure he'd think me. It's just a habit I've got into, and I don't mind telling you it's a habit I should find hard to break. I formed the habit as a weo boy. And almost contemporaneosuly my mother formed the habit of going through my pockets to find my pipe. She found it on several occasions, and then I came to the conclusion that I would plant my pipe at night in a secluded spot in the garden. I did so, I and my mother was puzzled, for my | claes still kept their smoke.

YOUNG HARRY'S REWARD. There was a special pipe I was coloring under expert advice. An old Scots cobbler lived up the street who was a great hand at coloring pipes. They'd turn a deep gold brown near the stem, shading off to a pure white at the top. I was anxious to do the like, but I did not know how. I could not ask tho cobbler, for we had not been introduced. Then one day, as I was going up the street, I saw him standing at his door in his leathern apron, his great horn-rimmed spectacles on his brow, with just a few hairs sticking like a plume above them, his sleeves rolled up, and a boot in one hand and a hammer in tho other. Evidently he was looking for somebody, and when I ventured to ask him what he wanted he said it was a newspaper. I fetched it, and asked would he be wanting a paper every day. He said he would. I fetched it. Then I took to fetching him other things, such as pails of water. I got no monetary payment you understand. And yet I was paid in full. Ho told me how he colored his clay. So I planted my pipe, and I did not toll the young lads who were my smoking partners. But whether any of them acquired the habit of digging for buried pipes or not I don't know. Anyhow, somebody dug for my pipe, and so I lost my beautiful clay. The habit I acquired then I have never lost, and I should find it very hard to break. Yet, if need be, I am ready to break it to-day. A HABIT I CAN'T BREAK. Habits—they're curious things. One day you start doing something or other for no particular reason. You do it the next day, just because you did it the day before. And you do it the day after. And, before you know where you are, the thing's become as natural to you as taking your boots off when you go to bed. The habit twines Tound your heartstrings like the ivy round the oak. Often it is an adornment, but sometimes it helps to strangle the tree. Often a habit is a flower or a fruit in the garden of your life, but sometimes it is just a brilliant weed that cumbers the ground. Habits are hard to break. Who should know that better than I? Since my boy was a young lad it has been my habit, when I went into a shop to buy a tie for myself, to buy two ties —one for John. And later on, when my boy started smoking, and was thinking of buying a pipe it would be two pipes I'd buy. It's a way with fathers, I suppose-, 'out almost every time I looked into a shop window I'd wonder what was there would suit my boy. Ay, I have proved that habit is very hard to break. It still clings to me, though in this life I shall see my boy no moro. I still look into shop windows and wonder; I still think I'm for buying two pipes, two ties, instead of one.

WHEN I FEEL LONELY. And there's another thing. We were in Glasgow when John was a wee bairn, and in the language of the place, he called his mother "Maw." It's over 20 years since I heard him say that, and yet now, when I sit by the fire, desolate and as lonely as a lighthouse in a wintry sea, when the house is so quiet that I can hear the cinders cracking, then in the silence I hear him cry: "Maw! Maw!"—as plainly man, as I can hear this fist of mine banged upon the table. There's many of you will have felt the grip of that habit, and the need to rise up, square the shoulders, stiffen the jaw, and determine not to surrender to it. I've been talking a great deal of babies lately—well, babies are a habit. But, no! They're better than that they're a gift. Some folk think they're a burden. Here's one fellow writing to know how I dare ask poor folk to pile more burdens on their backs. And here's my answer: A friend of mine has travelled much in China. In a street of one of their swarming cities lie met a little girl, bowed down with the weight of a great bundle she carried on her back. Said my friend, speaking in Chinese: "I'm sorry to see so little a maid carrying so heavy a burden." "Oh, sir," says the Chinese lassie, looking up at him with her grave almond eyes, "this is not a burden; it is my little brother." Now isn't that a bonny tale?

SOMETHING IN YOUR TEA. Of course we ought to bear each other's burdens, and the Government, which is eager for the people to have large families should see that the poor have the means of supporting them. Which brings me to another habit—the habit of taking things in your tea. I do not allude to the practice, said to have originated in Scotland, of taking toddy in your tea. Yon's not a habit, it's an inspiration; but it's not for war time. I was thinking of the milk and sugar we consume with every cup that ''chsers but not inebriates." Well, that's just a habit. The Chinese take it neat, and like it (which is perhaps what makes them so yellow). But that's no reason why we should not take it neat, for he is no white man who wastes the milk and sugar of the bairns to-day. I've tried neat tea myself and I find it terrible; but here's a habit to be broken. The less milk we take the more there '11 be for the bairns. The less milk we take the cheaper will be the milk for the bairns —the better it will be, too, for the nursing mothers. Spare the milk—or spoil the child! THE BAIRNS AND THE LASSIES. ,

What I said last week with regard to bread, applies with, even greater force, though in a more restricted way. If we have any thought or care for our country we shall make certain that the wco bairns are fed; for they are our capital, they are the Britain of to-morrow, they are what we are fighting for. As for the bread habit, I have said enough to show you how, if we cannot break ourselves of it, we can modify it for a while so that it shall not break us— which reminds me to say that the bakers must be made to help us. Then there's another habit —the habit of walking out with lassies. I think I must class that with the babies, and call it a gift. It's a grand gift, and if you. haven't it at birth you'll never acquire it —not to do it naturally; though a habit of khaki will help. And remember that a habit is a dress. Some habits i are dirty rags, some are glorious robes, and there is no dress more glorious

than, a khaki suit. Strip off all those habits, and there remains something native to a man —the love of wife and children, the love of home, the love of country, and the love of God. He who has lost these things has not lost a habit; he has stripped off part of that which makes him a man. A JOB FOE THE WON'T-FIGHTS.

And the man who loves a thing is ready to fight for it. Whcnee it follows that all men have the habit of self defence. I call not him a man who will not risk his body for his country's sake. I call Mm a cur, a dirty cur. Lot us not put the conscientious objector to honest toil! Let us rc-labcl them C.D. —cleaning department —and put them now and after the war to look after the sanitation of the streets. That habit will fit them well. There was another dirty habit we had acquired before the war —the habit of buying cheap German goods. We have broken ourselves of that habit. We must nover form it again. We have suffered much to break the German power. We will never suffer the Germans to regain in peace time what they lost in war. If we had been more wary this war might have never been. The price wo have paid for the cheap German goods |is a heavy one —we have paid it in blood. We cannot pay it again. Our sons have been given once and for all, and tho young mothers of to-day are not rearing their babes for such another desperate bargain. The German habit has not only been broken it has been scrapped. A MAN IS NOT A MAN. Habits are often very necessary things. The habits of prudence we form in youth arc the staff of later years J our habits of innocent indul-. gence keep us from the hardness of the Pharisee. Knowing the force of the people's habits ,our rulers must interfere with them as little as possible. But a man is not a man if, when the great moment comes, he is not ready to break all his habits for the sake of what he holds most dear.