At last we have an explanation of a good deal of the social and industrial
unrest of recent months. Since April there has been a serious shrimp
shortage.
How far this is responsible for dissatisfaction among the miners and other
workers it is impossible to say; but in other circles of society this
shrimp shortage has been responsible for much. From golf-courses this
summer has come a stream of complaint that the game is not what it was.
Sportsmen, again, have gone listlessly to their task and have petulantly
wondered why the bags have been so poor. House-parties have been failures.
In many a Grand Stand nerves have gone to pieces. Undoubtedly this grave
news from the North Sea is the explanation. What can one expect when there
are no shrimps for tea?
For the eating of shrimps is more than a mere assimilation of nourishment,
more even than the consumption of an article of diet which is beneficial to
brain tissues and nerve centres. After all, the oyster or the haddock
serves equally well for those purposes.
But before one eats a shrimp a certain deftness and delicacy of
manipulation are needed to effect the neat extraction of the creature from
its unpalatable cuticle. Not so with the haddock.
Shrimp-eating is something more than table deportment; it is a test of
_sangfroid_ and _savoir faire_, qualities so necessary to the welfare of
the nation. The man who can efficiently prepare shrimps for seemly
consumption, chatting brightly the while with his fair neighbour and
showing neither mental nor physical distress, can be relied upon to comport
himself with efficiency whether in commerce or statecraft.
Watch a man swallow an oyster, and how much more do you know of him after
the operation than you knew before? But put him in a Marchioness's
drawing-room and set a shrimp before him, and the manner in which he
tackles the task will reveal the sort of stuff he is made of.
The shrimp test is one before which physically strong men have broken down,
while the seemingly weak have displayed amazing fortitude.
In these days, when it behoves every man among us to be at his best, we
view this famine in shrimps with grave concern, and we trust that the Board
of Agriculture and Fisheries is alive to the significance of this crisis.
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