TWO IMPRESSIONS OF THE SQUANDER BUG

New Zealand Listener, Volume 9, Issue 231, 26 November 1943, Page 11

TWO IMPRESSIONS OF THE SQUANDER BUG

REACTIONS differ. Here are two impressions of the current "Squander Bug" Campaign, sent to "The Listener" by readers:

AN AMERICAN MARINE HAVE heard the sound of the Squander Bug over the radio several times. I have become very interested in him, and have been watch-

ing closely tO Feta glimpse of this dangerous fifth columnist. Well, the other day as I was standing near our club bar, a Squander Bug came up and tried to purchase a beer. I got a good enough look at him to

make a hurried sketch. 1 noticed that his buzzing sound seemed to be made by the exhaust going through the propeller. He gets around very fast, and I think he has many fellow-conspirators. I am enclosing this picture of the Squander Bug for the benefit of those who are interested in exterminating him once and for all. It will help them to be able to identfy him. ' A NEW ZEALAND WOMAN "\VHAT'S this here religion, Bill?" asked a friend of my brother when we were young. He was no "jesting Pilate’-he spoke "sad brow and true youth." "What's this here Squander Bug?" I ask. "The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen" a more loathsome object than this ubiquitous bug. I see it on hoardings as I ride in the tram. I meet it in English journals that I turn over in the hairdresser’s chair, I meet it in the daily papers, in The Listener, in shop windows. It gives me a feeling of nausea like the nausea produced by cinema cartoons or animal films where the animals talk out of the corners of their mouths. Hateful distortion of Nature — the cheapest form of wit. In the cinema I can take refuge by closing my eyes or gazing af the starry vault (if it’s that kind of cinema). Then the tortured eye

rests, and only the forced and foolish laughter of adults disturbs the ear (I could always carry a bit of cotton wool with me). But from the Squander Bug there is no escape. We all know the havoc wrought in our country by the introduction of the so-seeming innocent rabbit and pig and deer. Surely we have our fill of insect pests without this

fresh importation. And to continue the analogy (I’m warming up to this): Those animal pests, introduced to help the settler, proved his bane. This bug, introduced to promote thrift, is defeating that object, and, with nice irony, proving true to his name. Business firms have not been slow to seize upon his possibilities. We see him alighting gloatingly on a pair of gloves of soaring price: we read the insidious slogan: "Don’t Squander! Buy Wisely! Save Your Coupons! One pair of these gloves will outlast three pairs of cheap ones." (Never a word about uncovered hands in wartime-unless, of course, a glove-lotion were produced by an enterprising chemist). Stout fellow!

E.M

D.