FROM THE WATCH TOWER

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 255, 18 January 1928, Page 8

FROM THE WATCH TOWER

By “THE LOOK-OUT MAN”

IGXORAyCE Out of 2,000 “dry” agents ill the U.S., 1,500 failed to pass the intelligence test. One question was: "It 3‘ou came upon a truck-load of whisky which was deserted on a lonely road, what would you do?” The majority ot the men failed to answer the question. To the majority of men in New Zealand —and especially in Dunedin—the answer is obvious. What else is whisky for? VICKERS-ARM STRONG Previous to the Vickers-Armstrong amalgamation, which, according to December files of the English newspapers, had been approved of by the shareholders of both concerns, Vickers had written off £12,000,000 of lost capital. Armstrongs announced that they proposed to write off £11,000,000 In their next balance sheet. “This drastic blood-letting, it is hoped, will restore health to the diseased bodies, and provide the conditions for a fertile marriage,” wrote one critic. It is asked can £23,000,000 of capital vanish so lightly into thin air. Clearly it could not if it had any real existence, but, says the critic, part of this vast sum represents no more than a fictitious writing up of assets during and after the war, and a great deal more represents the inflated purchase prices paid for undertakings which those two giant concerns acquired during the boom period. A realisation of the true value of these concerns demands that the lost capital shall be written off. “The operation is painful but salutary,” remarks the critic, “and for every business that has carried it out there are several others which, with results highly damaging to British industry, are still—to put the matter plainly—funking it.” And the New Zealand critic might well remark that it was the funking of the job of writing down inflated values in this country that so protracted the period of depression from which it is only just emerging. LABOUR AND THE SURTAX The British Labour Party is discussing the proposed surtax on unearned incomes. Optimists of the party hope to get £85,000,000 from the surtax. What will be done with it? Two methods, both “Socialistic” in character, “yet opposite as the poles,” are considered by an English economist. Firstly, it might easily and most usefully, he thinks, be spent in making the unemployment dole “more adequate” (what a godsend to the unemployable!), in providing new parks and playgrounds for city children, in multiplying free libraries, increasing old age pensions, and so on. It is not suggested, however, that tho whole £85,000,000 should be spent in this way in one year. Secondly, and alternatively, the amount could be devoted to the reorganisation of the coal industry. The reconstruction and development of electric power systems, and the creation of a distributive organisation which would save the people of England “from having to pay for their eggs and milk and beef and fish from twice to ten times as much as the actual producer is able to get for them.” Such expenditure, this economist considers, would be a splendidly productive investment, the advantages of which would enormously outweigh any disadvantages which might arise from adding to the burden of the taxpayer. And, judging by the experience of the farmer who wrote to The Sun this week, complaining that he received only Id to 3d a lb for pork, which was retailed at from 8d to Is 6d a lb, a distributive organisation which would save both the producer and consumer from being robbed would be a very good thing for New Zealand.

THE BODY OF THOMAS SARPY The authorities who took it upon themselves to bury the remains of Thomas Hardy in Westminster Abbey did so in utter disregard of the wishes of the dead author and of his brother and sister. Hardy’s will expressed a wish that his ashes should be interred among his own people in Stinsford churchyard. It is by no means certain that even such an honour as being buried at Westminster would have appealed to Hardy, or have overruled his desire to rest where he had indicated. His first wife lay there. And his second wife—his widow—was “entirely with” his brother and sister that the novelist’s spoken and written desire to be buried at Stinsford should be carried out, and only “after much perplexed discussion” was she persuaded to “allow her husband to be regarded as a national possession.” If a man’s dearest wish, formally expressed in his will, is to be thus disregarded, why not disregard his instructions for the disposition of his property? The work and memory of Hardy may be a national possession, but his body was his own to dispose of. To pacify the people of Dorset his heart was removed for burial there! One wonders how the great man of letters would have regarded the proposal to mutilate his body and tear out his heart before cremation! To the people responsible for this decision it may seem a great thing to have a great man thus “honoured”: but to the humble mind of the L.O.M. seems a ghoulish impertinence.