"AFTER-THE-WAR" TALK.

Taihape Daily Times, 3 January 1919, Page 5

"AFTER-THE-WAR" TALK.

To-day we are beginning to discuss the problems to which lately we have been giving increasing thought. What will happen now? Opinions differ, but nearly all arc reconciled to great changes. "The activities of war will be turned to the arts of peace," cries the optimist. "Trade will boom and the world, united in a League of Nations, will live in brotherly love.' ' The pessimist grunts: "There will bo years of unemployment, poverty, starvation, and misery; industrial chaos, followed by another war." "Both wrong," declares the clubman. "Nothing is going to happen at all. We shall all fall back into our old habits; the party game will go merrily on, and the Hun will be invited to all our most luccrative posts." "How lovely it will be to have real white bread again," sighs the housewife, "and no more rationing." "Cook's must run a conducted tour to the battlefields," says the ardent woman traveller. "B'ut the crossing, any dear; think of the stray mines!" "Oh! They must build the Channel tunnel." "Wait until 'Tommy' comes home and finds his job taken by a pack of women; then there'll be trouble," the loafer. The labour agitator insists: "It's the working man who's going to boss the show henceforth. No more bloated millioniares! '' But the British working man does not worry. "Open the hotels all day and give us good ,be)fcr [at (the old price.'' That's what he wants. What says "Tommy" in the trenches? Surely, having paid the price for peace, it is his right alone to dispose of it. But "Tommy" is modest and only once have I heard him speculate about "after the war." There wore three soldiers in a little estaminet behind the lines, and Bill was asking. "What are you going to do after the war, Alf?" "Well, I reckon the old job will just about suit me fine, Bill . . . May get a new barrow, if things run to it, you know."

"What about you, old son?" turning to the third man, a bearded poilu Their comrade put down his glass and a light shone in his eyes. "Moi? I returned to my lettle farm, to my vineyard in the Sunny South. There I marry Henriette, and we call our first bebe "Tommy' ' for a compliment to ze brave English soldat. Zat is what I go for to do, apres la guerre."—"K.W.B-." in (the "Daily Mail."