FROM THE WATCH TOWER

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 164, 1 October 1927, Page 8

FROM THE WATCH TOWER

By

By “THE LOOK-OUT MAN” “SOUND AND FURY ” Comments on unemployment by Mr. Parry, M.P., were referred to by the Minister of Labour as “sound and fury from Auckland.” By the way, there was quite a lot of “sound and fury” heard from the Minister when he was up In Auckland in the way of denunciation of the slums he saw here. It has been wasted in the air; the slums remain. Now Mr. Anderson says that anyone who takes any notice of what is appearing in the Auckland evening newspapers should "think a bit. - ” Mr. Anderson needs to think considerably more than the little bit he has been thinking in the past. Sneers at criticism do not furnish a defence for the administrative incompetence which results from failure to think. MAKING BOLSHEVIKS Every man should be encouraged to own his own home; it makes a man contented to own his own home. Yes, that's so. He is filled with content when he pays out the interest on his mortgage; he simply overflows when the rate collector calls. Yes, it is the best protection possible against Bolshevism for a man to own his own home —until by borrowing money at high interest on second mortgage, or by slaving and saving, he gets sufficient to put an extra room on his little home to make provision for a growing family, and is served with a notice to say he is to pay £2 a year more in rates for having improved his property. Then it is that you find the real, raging, dyed-in-the-wool New Zealand Bolshevik, “and then some,” as our American friends would say. • • * HOARDINGS AND HORRORS There is a new and alert public body which may do something to stimulate interest in the aesthetic and open the eyes of people to the horrors of some advertising hoardings. It is the Great South Road Beautifying Council, and it makes its first assault on the Railways Department, denounced as the worst offender in hoardings that are eyesores. The beautifiers are up against a tough antagonist, for the Railways Department draws a very large revenue from letting space for advertising. A protest from the Institute of Architects against the defacement of public buildings by advertising brought the reply from the department that it considered the “defacements” to be “neat and tasty.” There is no accounting for taste*, of course, and there are tastes —-and tastes. The Esquimaux loves raw blubber, and the wild coast aborigines of Australia dote on putrid fish, for instance. Some, of the hoardings to be seen along the Great South Road are the limit in ugliness, cheapening the scenery and striking the artistic sense with horror. Yet those who make the soap and pills whose virtues are thus forced upon the public notice (and those who draw revenue from the hoardings) consider them to greatly enhance the beauty of the landscape. If they could have their way, they would plaster every hill and tree and paint the skies with their advertisements.

W-4J? THERE REA'LTjY A 'WARI Returned soldier Cramer, of One Tree Hill, is a “T. 8.” man—the result of being “gassed.” He has had to live outdoors. Some weeks ago, however, the tent given him by the Government became so decayed that It was no longer a protection from the biting blast of winter, and Cramer had to sleep indoors. The change tvas so damaging to his health that he was unable to go to work. An application to the Pensions Department at ■Wellington for a new tent brought this reply: “It is no longer essential for you to sleep out of doors.” Now that the war is over, and “T. 8.” soldiers are of no military use, anyway, it is “no longer essential” that the Government should do anything for them. Fortunately, there is a Returned. Soldiers' Association, and in this case it provided the money for a portable sleeping hut, which was built at less than cost price by another returned soldier. But some “T. 8.” men have fared even worse than Cramer. There have been cases in which the Government has refused officially to recognise them as tubercular; even when they died it seemed to preserve the suspicion that they had been “swinging the lead.” When convinced against its will, it has contended, -with the utmost obstinacy, that their illness was “not due to war service.” One of these days we may be reading an official denial that there ever was a war —or that, if there had been, the soldiers had only themselves to blame for having been killed in it.