A Brain Wave We have been worried all night. First everything's been much too quiet for a man to get a wink of sleep, the pet poodle fidgets, and the chatter of the goldfish is enough to drive one crazy. Besides that we have been thinking. Thinking doesn't really come so difficult, Al one has to do is just lie back, compose oneself, relax and well, just think. And it was the result this thinking that led us to the discovery that.we have a bone to pick with the Council.
The Council can't be expected to think of everything,—if they did poor In Parenthesis would have been out of a job long ago,—but as strategists they resemble the parboiled onion and as general peacemakers they have completely missed whatever, bus has been running.
What In Parenthesis asks) with all the gravity called forth by this unprecedentedly solemn occasion, what, he asks, has been done with the) Municipal Orchestra? Why haven't its services been used in this present schemozzle Here the Shanghai Municipal Council Has had the most potent weapon at its disposal, and has failed 6 use it. Perhaps they have refrained from a destré not to take advantage of the.weak, maybe in their strength they have felt that after all noblesse oblige, and, if it comes to that "boni soit," ete, applies in this instance, Or, perhaps, have done them an_ injustice they are reserving the Orchestra for bigger things.
Just think how a few days ago the Orchestra might have averted the: cri schemozzle, The mind of a Machiavelli would have grasped the point at once, Fancy the effect "Home, Sweet Home," upon the buzzums of the opposing forces, or "Til sing the songs of Araby." Pi ture strong men on listening to one of Brahms' lullabies, throwing down their arms and weeping on each other's shoulders; fancy opponent commanders-in-chief sobbing over their maps, tearing them up and making telephone dates with the enemy for a petting party. In Parenthesis is quite certain, quite certain, mark you, that, if in this manner an appeal had been made to the better feelings of the men on both sid the schemozzle would long ago have been transformed into a shemizzle.
But if it hadn't, what then? Well, is the repertoire of the Orchestra so) limited? Could it not assume a sterner note? Of course it could. All the chairman of the Council would have had to do would have been to call up the officer commanding the Orchestra and simply say "Get busy turn the fluence on." We could have had the. Orchestra on the Race Course, sufficiently far away from human' habitation, with loud speak-erg all along the perimeter of the Settlement, and at zero hour, after the contending forces had been given due warning to move on, hostilities could have been opened with a.blast
old Straf,—followed by a heavy bar-of Stravinsky—you know, a good rage of Respighi. Would the enemy fall back? You bet your sweet life they would, after which the orchestra could complete the rout with "Over the Hills and Far Away," or "My Bonny lies over the Ocean." If there fare any objections on the score of brutality, it should be pointed out that the time has come to do away with false sentiment, and to indulge in a little ruthlessness, In Parenthesis has not copyrighted this idea and makes no charge for its use.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.