LiSTENiNGS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 5, Issue 124, 7 November 1941, Page 15

LiSTENiNGS

Perpetrated and illustrated by

KEN.

ALEXANDER

Straws In The Wind

OST of the news these days is so sensational that. doublehead streamlines are liable to smother the little bits of potential significance by sheer weight of words. We are prone to overlook the meaty little morsels tucked into corners of newspapers or briefly briefed by the BBC. And then we find, perhaps, that the little straw we ignored yesterday is blowing into someone’s eye to-day. Or, even more so, that what we took for a straw is a ton of bricks, Big news can arrive in small packets, The acorn says to her friend, "My dear, I think I’m going to have an oak." The pearl is only an oyster with sand in its eye, and the mouse puts the wind up the elephant,

Therefore, if, after reading a hundredweight of type to the effect that the Germans are, or are not, in the out-

skirts of Moscow (according to how you like to read it), you come to a semi-facetious paragraph telling that Hitler lost his tin hat while jumping for a dugout on the eastern front, it is wise to bear Hitler’s header in mind. Having lost his headgear he might lose his head. The water on’his brain might freeze, He might "stop one" on the crust. His brain might become so affected that he might lose his reason, which, seeing that he ‘is crazy now, would be equivalent to areturn to sanity. There’s much to be taken from news which apparently isn’t all there, Deduction my dear Watson, deduction, What about that small announcement not so long ago that Mr. Churchill had gone for a short sea trip? And the other one that Mr. Roosevelt was enjoying a rest on his yacht? Hitler probably said the German equivalent of "Pooh!" if he noticed these insignicant paragraphs at all. But what did he say when the said paragraphs joined in holy wedlock and produced the Atlantic Charter? He had to give orders for a New Order. As King Solomon said at the annual family gathering, "It’s the little things that count." The Nazis are clever at raising the wind to blow out propaganda straws designed to do the Allies in the eye. If a little message were to come from Berlin, via Stockholm, to the effect that Hitler had shaved off his Charlie Chaplin it would be unwise to dismiss it as a spot of fun. It probably would signify something deep, dark and dirty, It would more than likely mean. that Goebbels’s -crazy brain had reasoned, "Now if we say that Adolf has dedicated his lip to the nudists the Allies will deduce that he is disfiguring himself for a quick get-away and will conclude that we are finished. Result!

Complacency in England while we spring -on Turkey-whatto!" | But to the wise, a morsel flung willynilly over the air to the effect that Hitler has a cold in the head will be red-hot news. If a cold in the head can make a human being fly off the handle what can it do to a Hitler? The wise reader waits a day or two and then searches for news that all the best German Generals have been shot up and Hitler has launched a winter campaign against the North Pole, De-duction-Hitler on the up-and-going! _Reading news is like finding the current in the bun. First find your currant and-hie pres-dough!-you have the bun. Likewise-show me the door and I'll find the house! Moral: always look for the straw in the chaff.