* * * * *
AMERICA AGAIN.
A situation of extreme international delicacy has recently arisen.
We understand, with regard to the impending strike of Italian
organ-grinders and ice-cream merchants in the Metropolis, that Signori
Rimbombo Furioso and Fagiuolo Antico, representing the Amalgamated
Society of Itinerant Instrumentalists and the National Union of
Refrigerated Tuck Sellers, have lately been invited to a conference
with Dr. MACNAMARA, and their economic grievances are now under
the consideration of the MINISTER OF LABOUR. These, briefly, are as
follows:
(1) The high price of sugar.
(2) Restricted hours and insufficient emoluments.
(3) Undue interference by the police.
(4) Inadequate supplies of monkey nuts.
It now appears that in order to make a bid for the large Italian vote
in the forthcoming Presidential elections in the U.S.A. a violent
anti-British propaganda campaign is raging on the other side of the
Atlantic, and that an enormous amount of spurious sympathy is being
manufactured on behalf of the purveyors of rotary music and frozen
confectionery in Soho. Beautiful Italian girls are daily besieging the
British Embassy at Washington with placards bearing such inscriptions
as--
SHOULD HOKEY POKEY SUFFER?
ENGLAND COERCES HER TRAVELLING ORGANISTS.
AMERICANS! HELP THE DUMB APE!
The agitation is the more uncalled for since, as a matter of fact,
both Signor Furioso and Signor Antico, like most of their compatriots
in this country, are pronounced Irredentists and filled with
aspirations for a larger Italy, so that they have little or nothing in
common with anti-Imperialistic America. Nevertheless, so bitter is
the feeling which has been aroused that large subsidies are being sent
overseas and Black Hand gangs organised to resist the London police.
All over the outer suburbs organ-grinders are refusing to move on,
and insist on playing well into the early hours of the morning.
Deleterious substances of an explosive nature are being mingled with
the ice cream, or else it is being supplied in such a watery condition
that it is impossible for customers to lick it out of the receptacle
without ruining their shirt fronts and waistcoats. Monkeys are being
trained to give violent manifestations of ferocity, and, should the
present heat-wave continue, rabies is anticipated.
The latest development is a rumoured suggestion from the U.S.A.
Government that a repres
|