"TIME PLEASE"

Among the favorite topics of the day are those which have to do with time. Efficiency experts are as keen for the salvation of a minute as for the elimination of a bead of sweat. Jazz, with its syncopated notes, follows the fashion by trying to crowd more "music" into a shorter period. Nor are legislative bodies free from the influences of this movement. Daylight saving, a recurrent cause of conflict, is merely a means to make the most of recreation hours.

Time-saving is in vogue in France, as well. Prevented by the Chamber of Deputies from setting the clock forward thirty minutes, the French government has ordered business, theatres, trains, in fact everything, to start half an hour earlier. According to this plan, the erstwhile midnight express will leave at 11.30; and commuters will have to get up at half past six instead of seven. Though the idea sounds plausible enough, it has not been stated how the order will be enforced.

This craze for temporal economy is reminiscent of a certain thrifty emulator of Phineas Fogg. Obsessed with the desire to store up time, he spent his life travelling westward, gaining a day on each trip around the world. When he died, it was computed that he had "saved" several months. Nothing is said of the years of effort wasted in his pilgrimage, or of his failure to benefit anyone except the transportation companies.

This unfortunate was, perhaps, in the same predicament as the author of "Backward, turn backward, O Time in your flight," and he was certainly no more successful. Mechanical means of saving time are always ingenious and often convenient, but they lack the necessary "human factor". The use of "fifteen minutes a day," for instance, will lessen the disappointment when "time itself shall be no more".