RATS!

New Zealand Times, Volume XLIV, Issue 10291, 28 May 1919, Page 4

RATS!

' We often hear the cry of “Rats,” but seldom from Ministers of ■ the Crown! /As they have some experience of the political variety, this reticence is natural enough. But in their experience of the natural rodent there is not the same reason for reticence. In the holds of ships Ministers are not on forbidden ground. Neither are they in the .warehouse, or the wharves,, or in any place which servos as a convenient' Rialto for the profiteering, unprofitable rodent. .Nevertheless those Rialtos 1 are respected for some reason by the governments of men. Seldom do they venture in, and when they do >t is with ' bated breath and whispering humbleness. Once upon a time a Minister so far forgot himself as to issue a ukase for the sweeping of the Rialto where the ship rodents most do congregate. He even went so far as to prescribe by stern decree of law the sweeping instrument, A trap has been invented superior to all other traps applicable to the highways of rodciitial entry, which are the cables by which arc moored to the, wharves the ships that arrive crammed with rats able and willing to import deadly diseases to plague the children of men. Promptly it was discovered that the whole realm of vested interest was behind this rat invasion. There uprose the despots of monopoly, the grand viziers of privilege, the knights commanders of profiteering, the dukes of the ring, the slaves of subsidised economics, and all the standard-bearers of tho right divine of business profits to do wrong. The clash of their onset on the Government was terrible, and the vested rat interest remained in possession. inventor of the trap was punisheql for daring to think of hurting a hair of tho disease-sheltering rat, and tho realm of vested interest rested secure in its monopoly of poisoning mankind. The excuse of the Government thus humiliated was that a treaty hound them to a foreign Government and incidentally to tho purveyors of disease. But in due course the treaty ended, but the. privilege to poison remained, proving the excuse solemnly given to be a common variety of the noxious plant of evasion. Sinco then there have been many health proclamations full of sound and fury signifying nothing. If anyone doubts let him look at Somos Island and study the history of that net spread for all di seaac!S in the eye of all the birds of science and palaver in tho great Department of Health. But the rat was always carefully and beneficially ignored, and friends of the inventor of'the only trap capable of hurting that protege of the fat shipowner were systematically bamboozled. The last of these proclamations is just eight and forty hours old. It actually mentions the rat. All the King’s lieges are invited to keep their places clear of the rat. and the shipowner is informed that his long-exploded diso may continue to do ornamental duty on the high roads of rodential import from crowded holds arriving from plague-stricken countries. It reminds ns of a story. A certain man wrote a treatise on the art of emptying a fourhundred gallon tank with a wineglass in his left hand while directing with his right a twolve-inoh pipe into tho tank from a high-pressure main. This man being persistent was declared insane. He is now developing his theory at Pori run, or some place like it, with*, out much hope of success. The man who issued flint proclamation to extorminnte by' traps the rats brought in l.y crowds of TO.nm-ton ships is similarly ermago'l. But he en.ioys Ids privilege without haying to bo formally declared a lunatic.