Patriotic Patter.

National pride, tradition, patriotism, demand that New Zealand uphold, with foot and mouth, the pride and prowess of all All-Blacks, past, present and yet on the bottle.

Patriotism! There are more brands of this superlative sentiment than there are of breakfast foods, psychology, floor-cleaners, peace-panaceas and ladies' head-gear. The chief patriotisms are national, territorial, parochial, local and personal. Their expression may be through shirts or shorts, jamborees or jerseys, killings or kilts, cheers or cheese, batter or butter. The Eskimo's emblem may be a frozen fish, the Hottentot's the tom-tom's tintinnabulation, the American's the Statue of Liberty or the statistics of lubra-cancy, the English, Commerce recumbent on a field of soccer; the French a franc frisky on the Bourse; the German and Italian, shirts and shouts— and so on ad noiseous.

Parochial patriotism may centre round the village petrol pump, personal patriotism may fructify in pumpkins or progeny, piano-playing or pigs.