FROM THE WATCH TOWER

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 60, 2 June 1927, Page 8

FROM THE WATCH TOWER

By the LOOK-O’JT MAN. JUDG E FRA Z ER' .S’ COXCI I. TA TIP X Roused by the cry of “Murder!” Mr. Justice Frazer rushes to the help of a steward on the Wahine, who is being badly worsted in a fight with a wouldbe suicide. Fair words failing, the Judge has to make conciliation compulsory, so he throws th,e man to the deck and holds him there until he is pinioned. It mus&have been an immense joy to the Judge to have been able to do on the deck of a ship what he must often have longed to, do on the floor of a Court. An occasional application of compulsory acquiescence would save the Court much worry. FALSE ALARMS There is a limit to the patience even of firemen, and if the members of the Auckland Fire Brigade catch one of the “humourists” who think it a good joke to ring the fire station and give a false alarm, his enthusiasm for fun will be dampened in a literal sense. Cold water, directed with force from the nozzle of a fire-hose, should prove an admirable corrective for a perverted sense of humour, and this could be followed by a magisterial sentence of 4S hours in a cell. The Auckland Fire Brigade has received 16 false alarms within the course of a few weeks. The next “joker” who is caught at this amusement for the brainless can take the assurance that he will be made such an example of that the giving of false alarms to fire brigades will at once become extremely unpopular. * * * MAY BE THE HOME WORK

In the district of the Otago Education Board, teachers’ examination reports show 6,105 retarded pupils in a total of 21,284. There seems to be something wrong somewhere with “the best system of primary education in the world”—so much so that one suspects that it is not quite the best system. There may be more than one reason for the lack of progress in so large a percentage of pupils. Perhaps it is the total lack of imagination in a dull and unattractive syllabus that seeks to impart so much knowledge that there is so little use for in the after-lives of most pupils. Or it may be that the youngsters are made “stale” by five hours’ work a day and two hours’ additional at night, doing “home-work.” Any number of men consider seven hours’ work a day sufficient. It seems more than enough for children. An interesting comparison between the children of the North and South might be drawn if a report were furnished as to the percentage of backward pupils in the Auckland Education Board’s district. * * * THE AMERICAN STYLE

In this country we hardly know the first thing about descriptive reporting. Observe, stranger, how they do it in the great Amurrican journals. A rather loathsome murder trial took place in U.S.A. lately, in which a Mrs. Snyder and her paramour, Henry J. Gray, were condemned to the electric chair for having murdered the husband of the former. This is how the newspaper reporter delivers himself of an incident in the trial: “Out of the dark tangles of this bloody morass there stepped for a brief moment a wraith-like little figure all in black — Lorraine Snyder, the nine-year-old daughter of the blonde woman and the murdered man. She was, please God, such a fleeting little shadow that one had scarcely stopped gulping over her appearance before she was gone.” We await, in agonised suspense, this reporter’s report of the actual doubleexecution.

OVEROROWEED BUSES Some day there is going to be a splendid smash, wherein several people will be killed on an overcrowded bus. One line, the vehicles of which are licensed to carry 30 passengers, outdoes the sardine-packers in its skill in squeezing people in. On these buses passengers occupy every inch of standing and sitting room inside, stand on the footboard, and even sit on the radiator and front mudguards. On one occasion at least 63 passengers were carried in or on a vehicle licensed to carry only 30, in defiance of all regulations. The City Council, by the way, passed a by-law prohibiting motorbuses from carrying standing passengers. When it was pointed out, however, that its own tramways packed its insufficient cars with “straphangers,” the council relented to the extent of allowing buses to carry an excess of 50 per cent, over the licensed number. There is apparently no supervision, and the buses now carry as many as can be squeezed in, until they become veritable Black Holes of Calcutta. In such circumstances they are beastly insanitary and dangerously unsafe. If rapacious owners refuse to put' on sufficient vehicles to carry their passengers in safety and with j some comfort, it is for the City Council j to take action before there is a whole-i j «ale killing—in which case the council I would be equally to blame with the owners of the death-trap bus.