Poor Country Lads

New Zealand Listener, Volume 2, Issue 35, 23 February 1940, Page 12

Poor Country Lads

a. Scots, we know, joke with difficulty. They are freckled, wear kilts, have red hair on their legs, go to church, keep the Sabbath and everything else they can lay their hands on. To forget these things is to forget them, and they are far too shrewd to let us forget. The Germans are too proud to pretend to joke. They expose jokes-and punish them, They are making the Poles pay for such an innocent diversion as eating Nazis for breakfast. Encouraging the Russians to punish the Finns for playing bogy-man’‘ in front of Leningrad. Sinking lightships for threatening battleships. Machine-gunning schoolboys for bringing down Heinkels. Torpedoing neutrals for taking their pigs to belligerent markets. Scuttling their own ships for crossing the shadow of passing cruisers. But the most disgusting joke of the war to date was exposed by Berlin last week. The Lokal Anzeiger wept buckets of tears over it. Mr. Eden invited some "poor country lads" to Egypt. Why they were there they did not know, nor where he would lead them next. But Berlin knew. They were going to the steppes of Russia and the bogs of Bessarabia to make an Allied holiday. Well, it is a long journey. Ten thousand’ miles from New Zealand and then another thousand on the heels of their enemies. No wonder the world was moved. No wonder Mr. Eden’s grimace curdled Berlin’s cafe-au-lait. Arrogance and conceit, and nothing to stop them. Poor country lads, and stormtroops giving way to them. If that is a joke, to Moscow with Kulturl