A Cockroach—And A

Moral

HAVE we just time for a story, though the days be dark and gory, With this trouble over Hitler and his bloody lustful staff?

For this tale concerns our fathers, all

our great-grand-blooming-fathers.

And though sordid, dark and dreary, it may somewhere cause a laugh.

We are sitting at our table, being cheerful, if we’re able, When a cockroach fights his neighbours over who will eat our cheque.

There is just one fiery tussle, with a deep and throaty rustle, As the signature so noble disappears into his neck.

And we feel that his digestion will sure meet with some congestion When he £.s.d. encounters and on figures does encroach; For we’ve had the same dashed trouble, and it makes our blood all bubble, When we try to make the figures and last month’s accounts approach.

Looking roachward we are humbled, for that roach has never stumbled, Nor has faltered in his downward thrust of all things that appease.

Then when he has eaten luncheon he sits there contented, munchin’.

Most respectfully, we watch him as we sit back at our ease.

For in all of roach’s capers he has cleaned up all our papers.

In an evening he’s demolished half our worries and our ills.

In his awful lust for succour, he has eaten as plain tucker Our cheque from our last pay-day—and the whole of last month’s bills!

Then some more come out to plunder, and they tear this roach asunder.

And devour him leg by whisker, while he jumps about and kicks.

So we see now in the precincts of these low and uncouth insects A moral that is golden, which will weather stones and bricks.

Back in dim and distant ages our fore fathers (now in cages), Fought their battles for their kaikai in the treetops side by side, But when one had full and many, and the others hadn’t any, Then they ate him, without cooking, from his shinbones to his hide.

Now we have the German nation, all goose-stepping in formation, As the over-greedy cockroach, but in creasing all our woes.

But they’ll sure be torn asunder, from their everlasting plunder— Even, in the end, it may be, by their friends and not their foes.

Papua.

L. H. W.

Private Frank Burke, who was the first man to enlist in the New Guinea Quota of the AIF, has returned to Rabaul after serving overseas (mostly in England). He has been discharged from the Army owing to ill-health. It is a rare occurence that the first man to enlist from a town is the first to return.

Mr. J. H. Dawkins, Registry Clerk in the Joint Court of the New Hebrides Condominium, who arrived in Australia from Vila early this year on four and a half months’ furlough, resigned from the Service at the expiration of his leave.

He now has a post in the Navy Depart ment, Sydney. Altogether, Mr. Dawkins spent 12 years in the New Hebrides.