LiSTENiNGS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 5, Issue 118, 26 September 1941, Page 15

LiSTENiNGS

’ Perpetrated and illustrated by

KEN

ALEXANDER

FOOD AND WAR

tion, war is the father of digestion. The dish that turns the liver in peace often turns the tide in wer. Substitution becomes part of the constitution. The diet that filled the soul with sorrow yesterday fills the soul-case with pep to-day. If most of the world had known in the past what it knows in the present it would have said: "Eat, drink and be merry for to-morrow we diet." The vitamin-vamps and calory custodians estimate that the health of Britain has improved on war fare, which proves that with pep to-day. It has long been recognised by dietary table-turners that all the nice things are indigestible and malnutritious while all i necessity is the mother of inven-

the unattractive things are stuffed with pep properties. It is a toss up between fat and fancy. The herring industry which languished when herrings had no competition from torpedoes has swum back into favour. More than 500,000,000 did their bit for Britain last year. Cooks who would have laughed in a herring’s face in 1939 have found it is a fish of many spare parts. It is estimated that if all the vitamins in a school of herring were concentrated and dropped on Berlin they could cause an enormous educational upheaval in the Reich, In Germany substitution is a passion. Eating is a guessing competition, Digestion is a deception and pot luck a sheer gamble. Besides food for thought the Germans get thought for food. Tea drinking is being encouraged because even mock-coffee has become a mockery. The Nazi propaganda machine, which has so often referred to the British people as tannin-fodder and _ tea-for-tooters, now exhorts Germans to sip tea. But the catch is that when they sip tea they don’t. The sip is a sop and the sipper a sap. He gets an infusion of dried asparagus berries instead of the bud that bucks but does not inebriate. This brew is said to be a relic from the Napoleonic Wars. Standing so long in the pot hasn’t improved its flavour. One pound of asparagus tea produces tw hundred cups; which will enable the bibbing Boche to drink with asparagusto. An

expert in America says that tea-drinkers usually are happy and contented and make good neighbours. Now we know why Germans are not tea drinkers.

Substitution fs a habit in Germany. The Nazis themselves are substitutes for human _ beings. The man-in-the-street has been fed propaganda for so long that he can swallow anything now. Hans, returning from his job in the poison-gas factory asks: "What’s for dinner, Gretchen?" "Mash," says Gretchen. "I mashed up that old straw hat of yours. You never wear it." " Aw, well," says Hans, "dish it up. The tapioca pudding you made yesterday out of your minced sand-shoes had a kind of asphalty flavour. But I liked it better than the mackintosh fritters. As dear Hermann says, it must be either guns before butter, or buns before gutter. That reminds me: I had a lovely dream last night. It was about pigs’ feet. Pass the sawdust pepper, will you!"