FROM THE WATCH TOWER

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 109, 29 July 1927, Page 8

FROM THE WATCH TOWER

By

“THE LOOK-OUT MAN"

DOOMED TREES — Mount Victoria is to be robbed by the Devonport Borough Council of the picturesqueness given it by its pine trees, on the ground that the trees are old. The mount will then look like the head o£ a dear old lady shorn of its silver tresses. It is true that it is intended to plant young trees on the mount, but by the time these have grown big enough to enrich the prospect most of the present generation will be dead. There is a certain comfort in the knowledge that this embraces even councillors who hate old trees. But for the present the trees are reprieved, for the timber mills don't want them. What about chopping them down for firewood? Surely they would look better blazing upon the happy hearths of the Devonport councillors than waving their green branches across the skyline? QUITE CLEAR Miss Ruby E. Watson, of St Heliers, whose praiseworthy efforts to force attention'to the need of conserving the fish supply are deserving of all encouragement, has addressed a circular to all the Auckland boroughs, asking them to urge the Government to close Hauraki Gulf to trawlers. “I trust,” writes Miss Watson, “that you will support the movement by yourself forwarding yourself to your M.P., or me, a resolution supporting this to be sent with others to Parliament.” When the local authorities so addressed have disentangled themselves from themselves and have returned from forwarding themselves from their M.P. and Miss Watson, the position will be perfectly clear, and they will be able to send the resolution along with others to where is will do most good. ‘■PERVERSTOy OF FACT. s'” Sir James Parr, far away in London, denounces the reports in London newspapers of the Samoan situation as gross perversion of facts. Doubtless Sir James has been in touch bycable with the New Zealand authorities. He denies that chiefs have been deported, and say-s they were merely ordered to leave Apia and return to their own villages. The truth is that they have been officially’ degraded, stripped of their hereditary titles, and ordered to leave their own villages and live elsewhere, else—in some instances, on other islands. When they have refused, they have been handcuffed and dragged off to gaol. New Zealand, says Sir James, has been repeatedly complimented by’ the League of Nations for its administration of Western Samoa. He might have added that this could be largely accounted for by the fact that the New Zealand Government, in its gushing reports of its own administrative perfection in Western Samoa, annually writes its own testimonial. And, if all the evidence concerning degradations, gaolings and deportations is true, we may be pardoned for raising an eyebrow at Sir James's statement that no New Zealand Government would last a day if it were harsh or unjust toward the natives.

WIRES AXD TREES Nothing caused so much trouble with overhead wires as trees, remarked Mr. W. J. Holdsworth, chairman of the Auckland Electric Power Beard, at a recent meeting. And, contrawise, nothing causes so much trouble to trees as overhead wires. If It comes to an argument between trees and wires, it is the tree that is doomed. In Green Lane there was a fine row of trees from the Great South Road toward One Tree Hill. They were trimmed back year after year as they reached toward the wires. Now they have been sawn off, leaving a line of stumps about oft. high, and look for all the world like a line of logs set in position for a choppingmatch. When new branches shoot from these sawn-off trunks they will shoot out just high enough to grow over the footpath on a level with the faces of pedestrians. The ways of local authorities are like unto those of “the Heathen Chinee,” which is to say, “vain and peculiar.”