HAPLESS GUY

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 812, 5 November 1929, Page 16

HAPLESS GUY

Empire Must Fire Its Crackers “PLEASE TO REMEMBER—” If Guy Fawkes, snooping with his incendiaries in the basement of Parliament Buildings, could have foreseen his later fame, there would have been a certain zest added to his little scheme. * GUY didn’t think of this as he stuffed an extra bomb inside his leather jerkin. An incendiary just can’t think of everything. So here, on November 5, 1929, are the communities of the British Empire jealously guarding bonfires and effigies of the hapless Guy, rending a perfectly good sky with rockets and giggling nervously as they dodge crackers. Only one nation can equal the British Empire in firing crackers. Each July 4, 100 per cent. Americans set to with a vim. Each July 5, they read in their daily papers of a casualty list even larger than last year’s. The Chinese, too, in moments of national exuberance, are apt to fire crackers. Thege weirdly clothed young Aucklanders we have been seeing in the streets for days past will have their fun tonight, we hope. Staid elders will pause by the bonfires, and, remembering their own celebrations of many years ago, will perhaps shed a tear. And Guy, who is at the bottom of it all, will have no tear running down an aged cheek. Wherever the British flag flies, it is the same on November 5. Sikhs in Rawal Pindi, negroes in Barbadoes, Hottentots in Transvaal, and Maoris in the Urewera will fire their crackers, not fully cognisant of what it’s all about. “Please to remember the fifth of November . .