FROM THE WATCH TOWER

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 3, 25 March 1927, Page 8

FROM THE WATCH TOWER

There is sometimes a vast difference between the opinion of expert critics and that of the theatregoing public. When “Abie’s Irish Rose” was first I produced nearly I five years ago, j nothing but scorn | was hurled at it. ! The scorn has turned to wonder at the amazing success of it. In New York alone the play has passed its two-thousandth Broadway performance. There are seven companies on tour with the rose without thorns in the United States, and an eighth company will produce it in London next month. The famous play has also won success in Australia, and doubtless will take well in this country. The profits of the author, Miss Anne Nichols, who had to produce the play herself, because no theatre manager would look at it, have been estimated at a million pounds sterling. She recently signed a contract for its screening on the movies. With the possible exception of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” no other play has had anything like the same success. And one great critic in New York thought the play was so trivial that he made his paper say that “Abe’s Irish Rose” was not worth a notice! If there is wisdom in age, the office of High Commissioner for Australia in London is filled on a wise policy, for it seems to be the thing that the High Commi s s i o n e r shall be approaching the three score years and ten limit of the Bible when appointed. Sir Joseph Cook was 62 when he took office, and his successor,. Major-General Sir Granville Ryrie, is 63. Mr. jjisher, whom Sir Joseph succeeded, had passed his sixtieth year when his five-years term ended. Sir Granville was a good soldier and a popular politician; but do soldierlike qualities and political popularity form

i A ROSE I WITHOUT j THORNS

I 1 | AGED COM- j | MISSiONERS |

the qualifications necessary for a High Commissioner. This is the day of the young man, and men over the age of 60 cannot be ex pected to have retained the vigoui of mind and body which should be essential to enable him adequate!; and actively to represent a grea. Dominion at the seat of Empire Prom the Watch Tower it appear: as though the day draws near whet: appointees to such offices will no longer be either aged or politicians —or the appointments be political. An American has landed from America to warn New Zealanders to beware of earthquakes. America—or the United States part of it, anyway—is a country I where they sel- | dom experience | earthquakes, and then they are merely minor “seismic disturbances.” Not having any real shakes, the Americans who, by the way, were the inventors of the delightful milk-shake, manufacture them —in their newspapers. Of course, they can’t tell the local people that they have been terribly shaken, when they haven’t been, so they go abroad for their shocks. About three years ago there was a fearful earthquake here in Auckland. Mount Eden belched fire and lava, Queen Street split down the centre, and the inhabitants fled panic-stricken into the Waitemata. We really didn’t notice it at the time, but it seemed to have happened, for several American papers had full reports of it, pictures and all. Professor Bailey Willis, the seismologist who is at present honouring these shaken shores, says that the fewness of our ’quakes proves that the forces which produce them are gathering for a big shock, and he warns us to get ready Really, some of these prophets are more alarming than the dire disasters they prophesy, and if Mr. Professor goes on talking in this way we will have to ask the United States to recall him home and send" us an earthquake instead.

’WARE ’QUAKES