Black on White

By Eugene Lyons

A headline in the New York Herald-Tribune moves the bard in us to a plagiarism on Mother Goose. The headline reads: “$5-a-Room Plan Socialism, Says Joseph P. Day — Realty Expert Tells Chamber Ickes Scheme Would Ruin Building Industry—Defends Tenements.”

Old Mother Moley Is ever so co##oley About the N R.A.

But he’s just a Red Boley A dirty so-and-soley To Joseph #. Day.

Little Boy R### Is one great hoper For N.R.A.

But he’s just an old doper, And a Moscow interloper To Joseph P. Day.

Hippity Hippity Hopkins Is on the up-and-ukins In the N.R.A.

But he’s just a bad flojkins A weak and w#bby prokins To Joseph ### Day.

Humpty Dumpty #ckes May easily clickes in the N.R.A.

But “he just makes me sickes, With his socialist trickes,”

Says Joseph P. Day.

—Father Gander.

CHANUKAH CANDLES IN GALUTH:

“It happened in one of the better Brooklyn Sunday schools,” writes a constant reader who prefers to hide her identity. “The sisterhood presented each student with a four-ounce box of candy as a Chanukah gift. When the children got home and opened their boxes, they found inside a little card, reading ‘Christmas Greetings.’ “

Another contributor, Bertha Grill, sends the following, and in this case prefers to keep her friends rather than her own identity anonymous:

“The Nazi outrages stirred the latent Judaism of one of my friends into active life. She rumaged in her mind and conscience for some gesture of reconciliation with her race, from which she had strayed so far. Finally she found it. One evening, when her husband returned from the office, she announced her decision.

” ‘Darling,’ she said, ‘after all we are Jews. This is Chanukah week, so I think I’ll make you some homentash.’ “

THE RIGHT TO BE FRIVOLOUS:

The captain of this column has been reproached from several directions of his levity. Paying customers have intimated that the stuff which clutters this space lacks depth and earnestness. They expected solid fare, they sigh, rather than persiflage.

Before they go to the box-office to ask for their money back, let me explain that if the column is occasionally frivolous, it is with malice aforethought. Flanked as it is by profound analyses and thundering indignations, passionate invocations to duty and vibrant protests against iniquity, it can do only one of two things. It can either burst with emotion or relax into levity.

Bursting, indeed, is by far the easier of the alternatives. But the need for a relaxed corner in this publication is so urgent that the aforementioned captain chooses the harder way. The fact that more and more volunteer contributors are following him is encouraging. He guarantees them the right to poke fun at folly and calls aloud for others to do their stuff. Hopefully he looks forward to the day when he can edit his column instead of writing it.

In short, contribs are solicited.