FROM THE WATCH TOWER

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 237, 27 December 1927, Page 10

FROM THE WATCH TOWER

A CHINESE MISADVENTURE The good wife is accustomed to have the Chinaman call at the back door with his cabbages and carrots, but a Chinaman at Onehunga adopted a less formal method of visiting on Saturday. He dashed across Queen Street in his motor-truck, crashed through a picket fence, and dropped four feet below into a lady’s front garden. Naturally, the lady was surprised, but not nearly so astonished as the Chinaman, who had made this entry quite inadvertently as the result of trying to avoid a collision with another vehicle. THE SOVIET CHRISTMAS Pleasant fellows, these Bolsheviks. The Soviet’s special anti-religious bureau has issued instructions how to spend Christmas. The young people are particularly urged not to attend churches and to avoid the priests. Instead, they are urged to enjoy the entertainment provided by the Soviet. It is presumed that there will be pleuty of devil-worship provided by a government which abandons God and religion and governs along the lines popularly understood to prevail in hell. THE MAGIC VOICE Wonders of wonders that here we may hear the living voice of far-off England! On Christmas morning several Auckland wireless enthusiasts received Christmas greetings from the land where Christmas is being celebrated amid snow. They heard ringing the bells of Chelmsford, the voice of a woman singing a Christmas carol, and (O joy to the Cockney heart!), the deep notes of Big Ben booming out the time. Wireless has annihilated distance, and it has brought an immense interest into our lives. One doubts if any one man has done more to unify thought than Signor Marconi. His invention speaks all languages and visits all countries. THE CAROL SINGERS Some of the carol singers—in this case it was a band, really—did not invariably receive a hearty welcome on Christmas morning. To rouse people out of bed, after a late Christmas Eve before six in the morning is not calculated to evoke cheers and produce showers of coins anyway. The man who is awakened from a heavy slumber by the blare of a band, followed by a ring at the door bell, when he has intended to “sleep in,” cannot be expected to awaken in that true Christmas spirit which is so desirable. Therefore it was that one collector for the band received a curse as his Christmas salute, and went away empty-handed. He seemed to have fared much the same at all the houses in the neighbourhood, for there was no encore number given.

IN DAYS OF PEACE Old President Hindenburg, as the years go on, is becoming more and more the idol of republican (and monarchical) Germany. We all need some tangible figure upon whom to spill a little of the patriotic sentiment that, upon occasion, overflowes from us all, and it seems that the Old Man of the Marshes fills the bill very well as far as Germans are concerned. He is a martial figure, his rather forbidding Bismarckian exterior being now mellowed under his weight of SO years, and his devotion to the Fatherland is beyond question. There would be many additional “Hoch, hochs” pronounced over a stein of Rhenish wine this Christmas for the 12,000 prisoners who were granted amnesty in honour of President Hindenburg’s birthday arrived at their homes in time for the Christmas festivities. One wonders what the Old Man of Doom thinks about it all. The exKaiser is so shorn of his pre-war authority that he could not execute so simple a performance as the banning of his sister’s wedding!

AT ELEERSLIE Visitors to Ellerslie yesterday saw the racecourse under the best possible conditions. Outdoors the heat was tempered by a cooling breeze, and this blew directly into the crowded stands. It was a great day altogether. There were no serious accidents, the racing was magnificent, and the betting public fared well in the matter of dividends, for if they were not large, they were at least well divided. The lovely gardens were never in better order, and generally speaking, the arrangements made for the handling of the huge crowd were admirable. There was one noticeable disability, however. The bar in the lawn enclosure proved altogether inadequate to serve the needs of the crowds which visited it after every race—a long wooden shed, with an iron roof, it was terrifically hot. If not quite the “Black Hole of Calcutta” one man described it, the truth is that the building stands in incongruous relationship to the otherwise fine appointments of the course, and the service obtained there is by no means what might he expected. Th.e public would hail with pleasure the news that the club was going to erect a more suitable building and undertake its own catering.