LISTENINGS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 3, Issue 74, 22 November 1940, Page 10

LISTENINGS

Perpetrated and illustrated by

KEN.

ALEXANDER

THE FATHER OF INVENTION!

BBC commentator says that the authorities receive an average of three thousand suggestions a week relating to armament and defence. Although some of them do constitute a potential poke in the eye for Hitler there is the usual heavy quota of disordered brain-children such as the helicopter designed to go by perpetual motion, and, of course, the dear old Death-Ray that kills only Hope.

Not so long ago someone suggested dropping millions of rats over Germany, but the idea was dropped when it was pointed out that the rats and the Nazis would be certain to fraternise. To-day we quote Mr. Belfry McBatts to whom bright ideas are as commonplace as spots in a measles ward. He is the man who says, "Don’t call in the plumber, I can fix it." He represents a probable two thousand nine hundred and ninety of the three thousand weekly "saviours of the Empire." For instance, Mr. McBatts has several schemes for combating air raiders. His best is the hiccough barrage based on the fact that you can’t beat hiccoughs for shaking the morale and everything else in its vicinity. His idea is that we should put up a heavy barrage of shells containing a mixture of beer and cabbage fumes with perhaps a tincture of Gorganzola cheese -ultra-fruity. He says that he once had the misfortune to ride a bicycle through London while under the influence of hiccoughs and it was while doing his fourteen days that he thought up the idea. Knowing the Germans to be healthy hiccoughers he guarantees that within a few minutes the sky would look like high jinks on St. Vitus Day. The water cure being widely recognised, the ‘planes would immediately dive into the nearest

liquid. But he has an alternative plan. Bearing in mind that England absorbs nine-tenths of the world’s umbrella output he says that if every inhabitant of London sat on his roof under an open umbrella with the family aspidistra impaled on the ferrule the Germans would imagine that they were over the jungles of Darkest Africa. With the illusion heightened by the performance of concealed jazz bands they would run out of petrol trying to find their way home and crash round about Kurdistan. Mr. McBatts also has a plan for doing Adolf in. He suggests that, during darkness, our Air Force should drop hundreds of rubber effigies of Hitler all over Germany. When discovered in the morning, the cry would run through the Fatherland, "Our Fuhrer ‘the bucket has kicked!" The evidence would be so overwhelming that Hitler would wear himself to death trying to prove that he wasn’t one of his own doubles. To lure U-boats to their doom, Mr. McBatts would train seagulls to follow German periscopes and keep breathing on them. As he says, "It’s hard enough to see where you’re dipping when you tackle hot soup with your spectacles on."