MARGINAL COMMENTS
By LAWRENCE ATHILL The chemist, it is true, segregates his goods in sealed bottles and packets labelled with doses and descriptions, while the newsvendor, leaving more to the discretion, risks occasional accidents. Tl-ere was the case, now ancient history, of the vicar's wife who bought the Sporting Times in mistake for the Globe because they both were pink. She recovered from the bite and both the dogs are dead, so that cannot occur again. Then there was the lifelong Morning-Poster who was found rabid in a first-class railway carriage tearing a Daily Worker with his teeth. Such mishaps are rare, and most of us, knowing instinctively what, in American, makes us "feel good," avoid experimental reading with its perils to digestion. But there is a graver danger.
The careful druggist marks his embrocations, disinfectants and the like "For External Application Only," and if you suicidally elect to eat corrosive sublimate the blame is yours. The newspaper proprietor should but does not copy him, for, to narrow the matter to the British Press, it is a commonplace that many of its tit-bits which the discriminating Briton swallows or spits out without discomfort react with poisonously irritant effect upon a foreign palate. Therefore, all but the rarest and most emollient articles should bear the label "For Internal Application Only," and editors who neglect this obvious. precaution should be thankful in the cause of peace that there exist dictators to apply it for them.
What, then, may safely be offered to the foreign newspapzr- consumer ? There are, of course, the innocent bread-pills of society and sporting news, but these, except for descrip- tions of the Boat Race, which miraculously-thrill the universe, are in no great demand abroad. Then, even in these days of desperately quarrelsome: ideals, nations other than our own do occasionally ha ie non-controversial triumphs on which they may be harmlessly congratulated. More common are non-controversial disasters, and it is a sad paradox that such calamities,- provoking an exchange of genuinely felt condolences between the common people as well as the rulers of the nations, do more than anything else to remind us of the brotherhood of man. But when it comes to rnedicinz in the corrective sense, things get much harder.
Speaking recently to the Empire Press Union, Mr. J. A. Spender joined Lord Hardinge in warning journalists not to preach, denounce or scold. Yet one of the functions of-the Press was, he said, to check complacency. Obviously what is wanted is a sort of journalistic bicarbonate of soda which, administered to the high-stomached alien under the guise Of sugar, will gradually and painlessly deflate him. But no one, so far, seems to have found the secret of its preparation, and in its absence that good old-fashioned bolus, the home truth, holds the floor. We all know the home truth. It is the most offensive of medicines to swallow, and when we start to offer it to each other in our own homes divorce-court lawyers lick their lips. The Duce would be doubly blessed if, when he bans its importation, he would also limit his export trade in blisters ; for, if the cooing of the dove of peace is to prevail above the intestinal rumblings of the world's dyspepsia, we all must give up bandying medicines and take to Christian Science in their place.
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