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Press, Volume LVI, Issue 16853, 5 June 1920, Page 8

A large sntn —about £2500—has Been very quickly subscribed for the erectioti of a, war memorial column in Cathedral square. , But while it is necessary that a good sum should be raised, it is desirable that it should come from the widest possible public. The number of subscribers is already large, hut most of tho contributions have been for fairly substantial amounts. Wo are convinced that tho proposal has far more supporters than can be found for any other scheme, but it would seem that the general body of citizens are under the impression that small contributions will not greatly help. This is a completo mistake. We should liko to see everyone contribute, no matter what his contribution might be. In these matters it is not the amount that counts, hut the act of subscribing. Half-crowns will bo as welcomo, and will count for just as much, as large chequcs, and we hope that the friends of this proposal will make a willing response to Mr Gould's appeal.

At this distance fi'om Aucki-ind +ho absurdity of tho tramway strike in that city is perhaps clearer than it is to the harassed Auckland citizens, ivho are more concerned about its tlian its absurdity. Because a, named Hewitt refused to attond a stewards' meeting, the people in Auckland are deprived of their trams. There has rarely been a more extraordinary example than this of tho ramifications of " sympathy" in an industrial . dispute or of tho long chain of contagion beginning with the declaration that something or other 13 "black." If they wore logical, the direct aetionists could just as reasonably order a baker's strike becauso some reactionary baker ordered his man to deliver broad at the house of a member'of the body that controls the tram 9 whoso drivers refused to carry people to see the races on the course cf a club governed by the Racing Conference that incurred tho wrath of tho Red Feds. 11 is not even as if thero were a jockeva strike. There is no jockeys' strike. Jltacing is going on as usual, and nobody is disturbed except a few disgruntled horsemen. Tho average worker the average Auckland tram-conductor —probably cannot understand in the least how ho is helping himself or nnybody else 'by striking, but he thinks that 'somehow it is his duty to obey the Transport Workers' Beard. The strike is an excellent example of the folly of the workers in handing themselves over to a body of dictators whoso delightful privilego it is to avoid the hardships of the strikes they create. Unionists often enough condemn the irresponsible potentates who ordered wars; it is strange that they nevertheless tolerate dictatorship of the same sort in their own 1 kingdom.

Hitherto the palm for longevity has been held witnout dispute by tlio living bactcria which liave been collected in somo of tho tombs of ancient Egyptmicrobes which have seen (if microbes do seo) tho laying of the foundations of tho Pyramids. But, as a recent writer points out, tho microbe which did his .bit in the plagues of Moses or worked the ye?ist for Pharaoh's baker, must bo a baby of a few thousand years compared with the bactcria which a French scientist lately found in amber, and which, on the application of tho proper methods to restore tho apparently fossilised, became very much alive and kicking. Amber, as every school child should know, is the fossilised resin [of coniferous trees that grow some millions of years ago—so long ago .that their gum was a fossil in the days when the cave-bear and the mammoth provided sport for tho men of the Stone Age. Dead bacteria have been found before this in fossils from tho coal measures, but this is the first time when any organisms of such inconceivable antiquity have been resuscitated. Possibly kauri gum possesses a similar con-, nexion with tho past. Imaginative people, remarks the writer we have quoted, "have sometimes sought to depict tho ultimate doom of tho human race, and tho desolation of the world. The microbes, we may be sure, will be in at tho death, and it will bo a commentary on our history if somo of them are tho same creatures which were here at tho start."