From The Watch Tower

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 318, 31 March 1928, Page 8

F rom The Watch Tower

By

“THE LOOK-OUT MAN.”

“ CURIOUS ” ASKS A QUESTION “Tlie present vehicular terry route to Devonport is 2 7-S miles; time of journey, 16 minutes. The proposed new route from Mechanics’ Bay is 11 miles; time of journey estimated at 12 minutes. If nearly three miles can be covered in 16 minutes why should it take 12 minutes to cover a mile and a-quarter, which, according to mathematical authority, should be traversed in a little over six minutes? Is it that the water is thicker on the new route?—Curious.” .1 POOR PROPHECY An English weekly newspaper finds itself rather discredited as a prophet. On January 14 it remarked; “Churchill will be ‘up against it' with his fourth Budget. ‘Shaking the trees’ has not yielded this year, the expected fruit. Unless he makes a big cut in expenditure, three bad Budgets will be followed by one much worse.” And the reply of Churchill is a surplus of "revenue over expenditure for the financial year ending to-day of £10,000,000. * * * MUSSOLINI AGAIN Mussolini is again. This time he threatens to abolish the Boy Scout movement. The Hero of Mafeking, who founded the movement which is now world-wide, should go to Rome and speak his mind to Mussolini. In England at any rate the Scouts continue to do a good deed every day, and only recently an English newspaper greeted Sir Robert Baden Powell with the following open letter:— _ “Gallant Sir, —You have indeed solved the secret of real happiness, since your life is dedicated to others, and these the young. Mthile preparing the youth of to-day to become the citizens of to-morrow, you recapture the rapture of your own early days, and at the same time perform a duty of inestimable service to the nation. The measure of your own felicity is the measure of the nation’s good.” Nobody ever said anything so nice about Mussolini. * * * INCONSISTENT ARGUMENT There is an aspect of humour about an English newspaper which v;gorously condemns sweating. It points with one hand (or, rather, in one article) to the scandalous wages paid some employees, and with the other it directs the public to deprive the shopkeeper of his profits. The best check on high prices, says this paper, is to refuse to pay them and thus compel shopkeepers to see reason. Apparently the writer fails to see that if the public insists upon low prices it must be supplied with goods made on low wages. THE POT AND THE KETTLE There is something funny in William Morris Hughes reviling Mussolini as an autocrat. During the war Hughes was a Duce, a Tsar and a Kaiser in one, and some of his War Regulations were acts of oppression. One of his most amazing decrees under war-time powers, was that none should criticise his actions as Prime Minister. “You may not talk aboul Mr. Hughes,” observed one news paper—“but they can’t touch you foj thinking.” Of all the tyrants in office ever experienced in Australia, little „ “Billy” Hughes was the greatest I Still, like the porcupine, he had hii good points.