Mr. Maloney!

The Drinks Were On

ABOUT three months ago, in Port Moresby, sundry friends took Mr. N.

F. Maloney firmly by the arm and led him to a place of public refreshment, and introduced him to sundry exciting liquors. For Mr. Maloney had let it be known that a new son, Peter, had been born to Mrs. Maloney at a private hospi tal, in Brisbane: and the glad occasion had to be suitably marked.

A couple of weeks later, along came the June “PIM,” with a brief intimation that a Maloney son and heir had been born in Melbourne.

Melbourne? What did this mean?

Maloney friends called forthwith upon Maloney pere, and took him apart, and demanded the truth of these things. They had drunk happily to a Brisbane birth; and now they insisted on going into re verse, and drinking to a Melbourne birth —and the cost of it was on papa!

They would not believe him when he protested that it was “a printer’s error”; and he has appealed to us. Sadly, we admit the mistake: Peter’s first glimpse of this tortured world was gained in Bris bane. But the drinks are still on Mr. Maloney. Established institutions, whether newspapers or taxgatherers, have no mercy upon paterfamilias.

During the absence on furlough of Mr.

Henderson, British Consul in Tahiti, Mr.

George Hunt is acting as British Con sul. Mr. Hunt spent most of his life in the Royal Air Force and served in both World Wars. He took his discharge about 1944 and has been for some years in the South Pacific—especially Auckland, Rarotonga, Fiji and Tahiti. His re lationship with the French authorities is particularly happy.