FROM THE WATCH TOWER

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 78, 23 June 1927, Page 8

FROM THE WATCH TOWER

By the LOOK-OUT MAN TIME'S CHANGING HAND There are few soldiers of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force who do not remember Russell Square, London. Straight from the trenches in France and Flanders they went to the Soldiers’ Club, which stood on one corner, near the Russell Hotel. Just a block away was Bloomsbury Square, New Zealand headquarters in London—and the pay office. Russell Square is now the latest London shopping centre. Gone are the charming old houses and mansions whicli laced the squarerelics of the days when this part was the home of London’s celebrities. The quiet streets are now faced with windows full of gowns and tinned foods and the like. “Diggers” would not recognise it. UNDER ESCORT There can be a touch of comedy about protection against the menace of assassination. The latest statesman to suffer the embarrassment of official kindness is Admiral Saito, head of the Japanese delegation to the Naval Armaments Limitation Conference at Geneva. It is reported that the Swiss police have discovered a Korean Nationalist plot to assassinate the little admiral, hence the necessity for a vigilant guard of detectives. The precautions recall the resentment of the Russian delegates to the recent International Economic Conference at the Alpine shrine of peace. Because of fear of murder, the Soviet’s representatives were housed in barricaded quarters and led about the town under escort. This generous safety became so irksome that they complained they were being treated as prisoners and prevented from doing their work. Their ultimatum for more freedom and less safety was granted by officials who enjoyed the comic side of their precautions. And no one was assassinated. WIG AND GOWN Tradition is* a leech; it clings to much that would be better rid of it. It was in a strain of pained amazement that the fact was reported this Aveek of the Blenheim Supreme Court having “sat” without wig or gown. Mr. Justice MacGregor’s “ancient emblems of the dignity of the Bench” had inadvertently been forwarded to Wellington, and his Honour requested that members of the Bar should dispense -with robing, so that he might not be alone in his legal nakedness. There have been no complaints that the findings of his Honour or the forensic ability of counsel were any the less satisfactory because they appeared in ordinary garb. Wigs do not seem to brighten the intellect, nor gowns add passion to those pleas which the legal luminaries make “straight from the heart.” In fact, many people think there are far too many trappings in the slow process of the law, and that the law would be all the better for being permanently without some of them. USEFUL ASSASSINS

Poland seems a nice comfortable place in which to assassinate people. Kowerda, the youthful Russian, Avho shot Voikoff as an act of vengeance for the Soviet gentleman’s complicity in the obliteration of the late Tsar and his family, escapes with 15 years’ imprisonment, it being held by the Polish authorities that he has youth and “high moral character,” and that he may became “a useful member of society.” Soviet representatives who were part of the Russian Government during the first butchering business ought to keep well away from Moscow after this. There are thousands of Russian monarchists Avho would be only too willing to serve 15 years’ imprisonment in the care of sympathetic Polish gaolers for the pleasure of bulletins the Tsar-killers. Uneasy as lay the head that wore the crown of the Tsar, it could not have been more uneasy than those of his assassins today.

A JOB FOR THE LAWYERS There seems the possibility for a nice little point for the lawyers to settle (at a nice little fee, of course) in connection with the relies of the Takapuna steam tram, whicli (thanks be!) has ceased to run. The tramway rails remain, allegedly a danger and a disfigurement, and the Takapuna T. and F. Company has been requested by the Harbour Board to remove them. The Takapuna T. and F. Company says the Devonport Ferry Company, having bought it out, is responsible for the rails. The D.F. Co. says that although it has taken over the other company’s licence, it did not take over the rails. The question now is: “If you buy a dog, and the dog bites a man, and the man claims damages, can you successfully plead that, although you bought the dog, you did not buy the dog’s bite?”