From THE WATCH TOWER

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 287, 24 February 1928, Page 8

From THE WATCH TOWER

| By "THE LOOK-OUT MAN.” | DECADENT! To “Oak”: Yes; British blood is decadent and lacking in its former courageous and enterprising qualities,” as you observe. Have you noted that Bert Hinkler, an Australian, has I achieved the most wonderful lone perj formance ever essayed by man, i deemed by the greatest critics to be I “the finest flight in history,” in shattering all air records in a baby 'plane? Have you noticed also that Captain 1 Campbell, an Englishman, has | smashed the world’s record for speed in a motor-car? When we consider these things, having regard to the British blood of Hinkler and Campbell, and to the fact that the engines of the plane and of the car were both British-built, we must agree with you that we really are “a decadent lot.” THE PERILS OF DANCING Ordinary mortals never think of dancing without visualising happy couples whirling around as just the natural thing. Not so the delegates to the Methodist Conference which is now being held at Christchurch—or is it that they cansider it far too natural? The conference warns its people against “the great moral and spiritual peril” attached to mixed dancing, and it has decided to write to the newspapers to this effect. Suffering sub-editors! Have ye not enough to endure? The Press is a great educator of public opinion, but wgre it to advocate that man should dance with man and woman with woman, holding mixed dancing to be morally and spiritually perilous, it would become as a voice crying in the wilderness—just as will the conference re- ! solution which condemns a happy and I healthy recreation. 11 'HEN THE WORM TURNS j A schoolboy once defined a cater- : pillar as “a climbing worm.” Caterpillars from the larvae of the Cinnabar moth have been released on a specially-grown plot of ragwort to demonstrate that such caterpillars will ; eat ragwort and nothing else. By and by, it is proposed to release countless millions of these specialists in destruction. The scientific theory is that when the caterpillars have eaten all the ragwort they will die, exclaiming, like Nelson, “Thank God we have done our duty”! Experience has taught the mere layman that most forms of life are remarkably tenacious and adapt themselves more or less j readily to widely varying conditions. The farmer, therefore, is wondering what is going to happen to his grass and his crops when untold billions : of caterpillars have exterminated ragwort. He has a dim suspicion that even “the climbing worm” will turn—■ |to other vegetation, the theories of ! scientists notwithstanding. * * * FLIGHT PIONEERS | Bert Hinkler’s solo flight from England to Australia recalls the shrugs of pitying contempt accorded the ; "madmen” who pioneered this method |of travel. One daring spirit, an Englishman, A. V. Roe, actually was sought with a warrant on a charge of attempted suicide, owing to his persistent efforts to imitate the birds of the air. His arrest was not effected, however, because the authorities were | confounded by the successful flight made across the English Channel by iM. Bleriot, a Frenchman. Attempts i had been made for centuries to dis- ! cover the principles of flight, but it i was not till Langley, in America, made his experiments on a scientific basis, | between 1890 and 1900, that any real advance was made. The first important fact he established was that a flat plate of material could be made to support itself if forced through the air at a certain angle and at a certain speed, and the later experiments of Lilienthal and others showed that curved surfaces were better than flat ones for flying. To the engineer, the rest was easy—comparatively. But it is really to the birds that man owes his power of flight, for it was by studying their motions that man was led to imitate. Had the air been birdless, would flight have been thinkable?

] THE SWIMMING HAFT An example in enterprise has been | set the City Council by the action of | the proprietors of Dixieland, who have purchased the floating stage of the old vehicular landing jetty at Devonport !to use as a swimming raft at Point : Chevalier. The City Council being ! more concerned with limiting bathing hours than in encouraging swimming ; of course any such idea as that seized ; upon by the private enterprise mentioned would not occur to it. There may be some excuse for the council ! just now, however, because of its thoughts being too entirely occupied with the plight to which the citizens ' are reduced, owing to its failure to provide a sufficiency of fresh water, to bother about facilities for sea bathing. The stage is being moored off Dixieland —and it remains to be seen 1 how the City Council will regard the innovation, since it has so far blocked 1 private enterprise constructing baths at Point Chevalier.