Current War Poetry

Levin Daily Chronicle, 1 August 1918, Page 1

Current War Poetry

BELOW THE WATER LIKE. Did ever ye serve in the waship'a hold, Deep under the water line, . VViili hatches locked and the blowers on Close to a hidden mine— Bare to the dripping wet, A grimed and gaspmg crew, To shovel coal and feed the fire Until the sea fight's through Where check valves sigh with the hissing steani And the greedy waters cry "More!" Like galley slaves in the olden time, Chained to the bench and oar? No cherubs sit in the bunker's dust •To watch over us below, While overhead the turrets clank As they turn to find the foe. The guardian angels keep aloft— None here where the turbine moans; There's nothing ahead, if things go wrong, But tickets to Davy Jones. Forget yourself, forget the world, Forget the sun and skyl In the boiler room you face your doom You're there to do and die! —Scribner's Magazine.''

In a letter to the Wellington "Post" Mr H. A. Parkinson, secretary of the N.Z. Educational Institute, says:— "For the present it is sufficient to Bay that the chief value of Education Boards has boon not to education, but : to actual and prospective politicians, in whose hands they have been a convenient means of sweetening the electorates. The shocking waste of money in the sowing of certain districts with small, unnecessary, and inefficient schools is sufficient proof of this. Apologists for the existence of Education Boards arc in the habit of saying that the Boards must be retained as a cheek on the tendency to centralisation, and as a means of giving play to local interest. The actual, facts are',,'that they exemplify in themselves nearly'aU the evils of centralisation' multiplied'nine fillies, since there are ! 'nine Boards administering districts as large 'as * provinces; and they constitute an'effective check on any display of local l interest, in the ordinary sense. What else could be cxpectcd, when the quostion, say, for example, of new tank to a school in Pelorus Sound has to bo settled by a body of ■ twelve o-'grave reverend seigniors assembled once' a niontli in Wellington from as far apart as Marlborough, the Forty Milo-'Bush, and Manawatu Is not this centralisation run mad?"