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Show fkl.PhiIIipr V THE END IN EUROPE The war started by a screwball with a screwball book and a screwball screw-ball philosophy, fought under a screwball emblem in a screwball cause ended in a screwball manner. The German surrender was like a panic hour on an ant hill. I The goosestep became the gander-gallop gander-gallop and the rabbit-gavotte. It was the first surrender in military history his-tory that resembled a slide for home without touching second or third. It was not so much an unconditional uncondi-tional surrender as an unconditional uncondition-al dive. The Junkers became Tankers. As you watched the Nazis give up you were seeing one of the great circus acts of all times: The attempt of Superman to leap from a 10,000 foot platform into a row of empty beer steins. It was the first time our side ever had to employ whirling dervishes to keep track of events. There was never a finish like this, except the time the house flies' fell into the egg-beater. What a spectacle! The army that terrorized millions when it had the UDDer hand hename strictlv an as- gregation of safety-firsters. They wanted but one new weapon: A non-skid array shoe. The Wehrmacht went to pieces like a paper napkin in an electric fan. Its only question was, "May we surrender with positively no waiting? wait-ing? Or must we phone and make a reservation?" It was not a surrender. It was just a notice to us that we were to have unwelcome guests for dinner. There was no digrnity, no color, no manhood in the Nazi picture. The books all called for field marshals mar-shals drawing up Impressively and handing over their swords, with appropriate ap-propriate words and music. All that the Allied generals had to do was to tag the marshals as they came into the bag feet first. For once there was no material for great paintings. There is no appeal in a picture of men turning into mice. A LAST WISH Let me go out in the hills of my boyhood. . . . Amid the old fields and the homesteads. home-steads. . . . Breathing the air of my forefathers Seeing the sun sink behind an old mill. Let me cross the great divide As a crossing of familiar pastures, Let the last scent be that of meadows. mead-ows. . . . The last sound that of a whippoor-will. whippoor-will. . . . For in the end, having all, I have little. .... Nothing consuming me like the spell of boyhood. . . . The love of farm and fireside and dear ones. ... Please God, let me go now as through an old lane! CAN YOU REMEMBER rAway back when a man was considered consid-ered well fixed if he had money? And when a man would face without protest a prospect of doubling his income in-come for the year? mm Noise Abatement Week has come and gone, and we fail to notice any permanent results. As we see it, i noise abatement applies to the fellow fel-low who drives exclusively by electric elec-tric horn, the apartment house vocalist, vo-calist, the stooge handclappers on the radio programs and the pest just back from a fishing trip who wants to describe it to you. WHAT! ! ("President Truman began cutting cut-ting the budget" News Item). Pile the praise And don't begrudge it; Someone somewhere's 1 CUT a budget! ' Bob Hannegan is becoming postmaster post-master general for $5,000 less a year than he gets as head of the Democratic national committee. Yes, but think of the fun he will have at letter-carriers' outings. Reconversion plans at Washlng-I Washlng-I ton, it is announced, put high on the ! list of first things to be manufac-! manufac-! tured: 'Fishing tackle, electric fans, flashlights, band instruments, pianos, pi-anos, cash registers and movie picture pic-ture equipment." Back to normalcy?" normal-cy?" j ... "Thirty-three Truck Loads of Meat Seized By Police" Headline. i The truck drivers, of course, climbed down and demanded, "Ler""p see your points!" |