FROM THE WATCH TOWER

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 235, 23 December 1927, Page 8

FROM THE WATCH TOWER

By “THE LOOK-OUT MAN” SANTA CLAUS’S AIRPLANE Gone is another friend of our childhood days, supplanted by the airplane. . Ask any youngster to-day, and you will be informed that Santa Claus alights on the house-tops in an airplane. Very convenient, too. But alas for the reindeer! Is everything to be sacrificed to convenience? Santa Claus’s postman has been superannuated also. No longer does Santa Claus send printed Christmas greetings to his immense family of children. He greets them by voice, over the wireless. It only remains for Santa to get his whiskers tangled in the propeller of his plane one of these fine Christmas Eves, and there will be the greatest smashing of toys known in the history of the world. Then the old gentleman will wish he had stuck to his faithful reindeer. BOTTLES ON THE BEACH Mr. J. Massey told the Devonport Borough Council he had never seen so much broken glass on a beach as at Narrow Neck. “Yes, there are far too many bottles out that way,” said the Mayor, significantly. What Mr. Aldridge meant, of course, was that the bathers should take greater care not to get sunburnt; then they would not require so many bottles of oil and flasks of emolient “for external application only.” THE “ AUCKLAND ” Some of Auckland’s principal hotels are exuding more than the usual Christinas spirit this year. The great “Hotel Auckland,” which was to have put them in the shade and tapped much of their trade, is not to be, the flotation having become flotsam. They were .having a little chat about it last night. “I feel Grand,” said the Princes Street palace. “I’m more Central than ever,” observed the Victoria Street edifice. “I waver no longer,” remarked the Waverley. “Albert the Good” is right, smiled the Queen Street hostelry. “I am brighter than ever,” chuckled the Star —“and not all Stars can say that.” Then on the midnight air ascended the strains of “The more we stick together the merrier we’ll be!” GERMANY AGAIN * Hitherto British locomotives have been considered, by British countries at least, to be the world’s finest. It is a blow to British engineering prestige that the Johannesburg Railway administration has accepted a German tender for the supply of SO locomotives, at a cost of £560,213 —the successful German tenderers quoting 28 per cent, below that of their British competitors, though the latter had been cut so as “to leave no margin of profit.” “Britain Well Undercut,” the cableman headed this unappetising news item. An undercut that was a knock-out uppercut, as it were. When British engineers recover from this blow they will have to exercise their undoubted ingenuity in discovering methods of manufacture that will further lessen the cost of production. THE MUG'S GAME Dealing with an incipient "crook” at the Supreme Court yesterday, Mr. Justice Reed disillusionised him in a businesslike manner. Wasting no time on preaching, his Honour advised prisoner to go straight in future. "I am not advising you for any other reason except that it is a mug’s game

—there is nothing in it,” he said. “ ... You are still a young man. You should know that a criminal career is about the rottenest game there is. There never was a criminal who could earn more than about 5/- a day.' It will pay you infinitely better to go straight.” Anybody but a lunatic would go straight after such plain advice. • • • AS IT MIGHT BE As it was at the local bodies’ conference with the City Council regarding transport, yesterday: Mr. H. E. Dobbie (Waitemata): You must admit that the city in the past has been unsuccessful with the services. Mr. Allum (chairman of the Tramways Committee): Sit down. I can’t allow reflections on the council services. As it might be: Mr. Dobbie: You are to he congratulated, sir, on the magnificent services your committee has rendered to the citizens. The city tramways are the finest South (or North) of the Line, or West (or East) of the 180th Meridian. Your administration of the transport has been superlatively splendid. Your enterprising and yet highly profitable management of motor-bus services has been beyond all praise. Your

Mr. Allum: Yes; it is good to have some slight appreciation of our very splendid services—Mr. Ford, kindly arrange for Mr. Dobbie to have a free pass for life over all Ojir transport routes.