From The Watch Tower

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 184, 25 October 1927, Page 8

From The Watch Tower

“THE LOOK-OUT MAN”

By

NO EARLY SCRATCHING A member of the Manawatu County Council has decided to defy the Summer Time Bill. “I am not going to scratch before daylight in the morning for all tile Sideys under the sun,” he told his fellow-members. One understands that he is going to instruct his hens not to scratch any earlier, also. The first worm is said to be immensely pleased about it. BEER FAMINE THREATENED Workers in the brewing industry in New South Wales are demanding that they shall work only a 44-hour week of five days. This is the most dreadful calamity threatened since Lang took office. If the brewers will not work on Saturdays, their near relations of the hotel bar and cellar may also refuse to do so. One of Sydney’s chief occupations on Saturdays is to drink as much as is possible, and to carry home as many bottles as there are pockets for, so that the Sabbath shall not be altogether drought-stricken. Still, mother and the children may get more Sunday outings, and there may be no longer so much truth in the boast, of the man who always takes home all his wages at week-ends: — “Fire shillings in silver, and 55s in beer.” SCHOOL ANlf THE SEXES A London school teacher tells us that the co-education of the sexes as practised in this country is better than the separation system of the big schools of the Empire’s metropolis. Here the male is “chivalrous” to the opposite sex; but it is no unusual thing in London to see a man and a woman make a rush for the one seat on a tram or bus —the man usually winning, and keeping his prize. Well, the mail who would beat an Auckland woman to a seat like that would have to be more than usually athletic, especially in a smoking compartment, for which the “weaker sex” seem to have a strong preference —and a strong arm to claim. Let those gentlemen of London who strive so successfully with their own ladies come and try their strength and skill on an Auckland tram, and they will learn something. THE VANISHING RACE Appealing for the better treatment of subject races, the Rev. J. C. Fussell, of Waiuku, refers to the annihilation of the natives of Tasmania and the driving of the Australian blacks into the inhospitable interior. It is so that the original possessors of the country were permitted to exist only on those tracts of country which were considered to be useless to the white invader, and that the spearing of a sheep was at one time regarded as quite sufficient excuse to round up and shoot the natives. Then the blacks would be regarded as diabolical murderers, when they took the opportunity of spearing the noble white. I)r. William Lloyd Warner, the noted American anthropologist, who recently made a seven-months’ study of the aborigines in the Northern Territory, considers it tragic that “the happiest people in the world” seemed doomed to extinction. Apparently it doesn’t take much to make some people happy. Dr. Warner wants these blacks to be segregated and left alone by the white men. It doesn’t seem much to ask, to give the original owners of the land a reserve or two, seeing that there are nearly 3,000,000 square miles of land in the continent.

TRAGEDY OF THE TASMANIANS Possibly the most callous treatment of any native peoples since ancient days was that of the aboriginal inhabitants of Tasmania, who were hunted down like wild animals and shot on sight by some of the unpleasant white settlers who were either the products of, or in association of ideas with, the infamous convict system which made Van Dieman’s Land a horror in the eyes of the world. For their protection, the poor 200 or so who survived in 1832 were removed to island reservations. The last man, known as Billie Lanee, died in 1865: the last woman, Truganini, died in 1876. A few half-castes, the descenants of these unfortunate people, are to be fouEd on Flinders Island, where they are engaged in the mutton-bird Industry. ■tv EXHUMATION The Yugoslavs of Auckland have decided to form a library so that they may read Dickens and Scott in translations. The elected executive includes a “disputes committee” which will possibly be called into action when the Shakespeare-Bacon controversy becomes too hot. And that reminds us of W. S. Gilbert’s suggestion for the sohltion of this age-old controversy. “Exhume both Shakespeare and Bacon’s bodies in their coffins,” he said, “and engage Sir Herbert Tree to recite Hamlet’s soliloquy. He who turns in his coffin wrote ‘Hamlet.’ ” t