Lions and Lambs

New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 487, 22 October 1948, Page 8

Lions and Lambs

HE chairman was as much to the fore in last Monday’s 2YA discussion on the Accommodation Problem as the ref in an all-in wrestling bout. And his job was equally tough. For under present accommodation: conditions the gulf that divides Landlady from Boarder is wider

than that which divides Capitalist from Worker, Haves from Have-Nots, Exploisters from Exploited; ‘and even on the neutral ground of the studio it is impossible for representatives of each class to work as a team for the benefit of all those-concerned. On this occasion the exploited were too obsessed by the memory of ancient and recent wrongs to give thought to the betterment of the industry, but expressed themselves in terms of inefficient geysers, low-powered light globes, and sixpence for the iron. These elbow-jolting tactics were consistently discouraged by the referee, but with little effect, which emboldened the opposition (who up to’ now had been perfect ladies) to rabbit-punch with charges that many young people to-day have no sense of moral responsibility, and to deny that they knew any landlady who wanted to make friends with her lodgers. ‘Towards the end of the discussion the referee, exercised his authority to such an extent that lions and one lamb (the other had been virtually disqualified) got together to voice a few pious platitudes on Give and Take, and the Spirit of Service. But it was much nicer being shocked by the savagery of the class war than being edified by the bogus amiability of the United Front.