THE CHINA MAIL, MAY 24, 1940.

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EVEN PROVERBS ARE SUBJECT TO CENSOR

CENSORSHIP, BUGBEAR of French editors and journalists, was recently the object of an amusing fable which itself was allowed to pass the censors without any deletions.

The fable, told in typical French fable style, recounts how a journalist, tired of seeing his efforts cut and slashed by the censors, made up a message consisting entirely of such old saws, French and international, as the following:

Kindness is better than violence.

A door must be open or closed. Providence tempers the wind to the shorn lamb.

Like father, like son.

A rolling stone gathers no moss. As one makes his bed one lies in it,

Kindness is better than violence- That means: let's stop the war. Sup- pressed in the name of the Ministry of War.

A door must be open or closed-An evident allusion to the Maginot Line.

Providence tempers the wind to the shorn lamb-This is clearly addressed

"La Lumiere” ·

Parlo

Hitler: "Well, are we to play this three-handed game or not?"

Don't put off until to-morrow what to the taxpayers. You wish to insinuata Where Murder, is Cheap No Conscientious

you can do to-day.

The man who comes from a dis- tance is a good llar,

that the Minister of Finance is not Providence. Suppressed in the name of the Finance Ministry.

The censor, the fable runs, pounced Like father, like son-This is a cri- on each of these innocent looking and ticism of all naturalisation. Suppress- venerable sayings and refused to let ed in the name of the Ministry of the one of them pass. He saw treason, Interior. sedition, betrayal of secrets every- where. This was the censor's inter- pretation of them:

Don't put off until to-morrow, etc.- The Government will put off, if it chooses to do so.

"Evening Standard”

London-

“Sieg Hell! · Here come the supplies from Russia!"

Murder is cheap in Germany. Here Objectors on

is a comparison:-

A man found listening to foreign broadcasts got four and a half years' gaol. The same day a Berlin husband who had strangled his wife received a sentence of eighteen months.

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Had £3 A Week

Left £5,000

Minesweepers

The Admiralty has decided that con- scientious objectors cannot be accept- for service in minesweepers because every member of the "crew must be prepared to help to defend the ship. This was announced by "á" Ministry of Labour representative at the South East Tribunal when an objector offer- ed to undertake minesweeping work.

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2 To-4 Air Fight

The Hague, April 15.

A retired railway messenger, who probably never earned much more than £3 a week, has left £5,000.

He was Mr. James Ault, of Hey- worth-street, Derby, who was former- ly chief messenger in the accounts de- A British 'plane, apparently partment of the old Midland Railway scouting machine, crashed in flames (now L.M.S.) at Derby. He retired in Dutch territory near Emmerich this in 1934. after forty-four years' ser- afternoon after a fight over the Ger- vice.

man frontier. He was a familiar figure on Derby Station, his job being mainly to take messages for the accountants, and he wore a top hat while carrying out his duties.

The fight took place very high up, and seemed to be between two British and four German 'planes. There were no survivors from the wrecked machine.

"HI-YA BOYS!"

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