LISTENINGS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 5, Issue 125, 14 November 1941, Page 15

LISTENINGS

Perpetrated and illustrated by

KEN.

ALEXANDER

Mush On!

he said to Harry Hopkins of America: " We Russians will win the war. .. . Russia is big and inexorable, . .. The Russians are fighting for Russia. Once we trusted this. man." (Hitler.) Mr, Hopkins adds: "I hope I shall never be hated as Stalin hates Hitler." Hitler can’t complain that he has got the bird when his carrion crow of hate comes home to roost. STALIN gave it words when

The British are not accomplished haters. Generations of sport may explain it. A fellow just can’t hate the chappie who bowls him out first ball or dives between his legs and scores between the posts. The fellow with an extra ace up his sleeve is a cad and is dismissed as completely as though he had passed out while cutting the first deck. Perhaps ridicule is a refinement of hate-hate in top-hat and spats, but none the less deadly for its well-bred air. Britain seems to do pretty well without taking hate straight. Every nation to its own notion! The French can hate but, unfortunately, their hate is late. Nevertheless it is piling up rapidly and will eventually fall upon the Reich and help to ratify humanity’s pact with decency. Hitler knows the efficacy of hate. He has always regarded it as a German weapon. He must be annoyed to hear that Stalin has adopted it and improved on the Boche design by fitting it with the bomb-sight of inexorability. Hitler must be snarling: "This hate that we invented, Goebbels! How did the Russians get hold of it? There has been treachery somewhere, Shoot everyone in the hate Gepartment! You may exempt yourself-for the time being. To think that, after hating my way to the top, on my own merits, I should find my original design pilfered and improved on by another. I’ve half a mind to try

brotherly love. But I’m so out of practice. Besides, it’s un-German. Issue an order that everyone must tighten his belt and hate harder. If we don’t out-hate Stalin we are gone coons. Besides, hating takes the mind off the stomach." Hitler and his Killy Gang are finding that the hate they have roused against themselves is likely to prove stronger than the Boche brand. Hitler has created a hell of hate in Russian snow. It has proved to be the hottest snow that ever was. He is beginning to wonder if he really did sign up Victory on the dotted line and guarantee delivery of the world, f.o.b., Berlin, in blitz-time. He now shouts to his soldiers, " Mush on! Freeze to final victory! Mush, mein heroes!"

"Mush!" mutters a general who knows. He is taken for a walk with a squad of soldiers. He who hates last hates longest, as Hitler may find when the world puts on the black cap while pronouncing sentence on him in the Court of Decency.