FROM THE WATCH TOWER

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 326, 11 April 1928, Page 8

FROM THE WATCH TOWER

By

“THE LOOK-OUT MAN.”

SYDXEYJURIES A mental patient served recently on a Sydney jury, it is reported. So that is -what is wrong with juries! It ; explains why a jury is sometimes rej ferred to (by the losing side) as “a j pack of idiots.”

EXPORT OF EELS Another commercial possibility is announced—the export of eels. It is explained that millions escape from New Zealand rivers into the sea. While we are about it, we should also seek a market abroad for political eels, borrow-and-dodge-eels, and the “Industrial” eels which slide into the Labour movement and wax fat on the discontent they create. “PICKED MEN” There was undue haste in dispatching from Auckland into camp at Trentham the 22 “picked men” who are to form portion of the new police army for Samoa. General Richardson is to arrive here in a day or two, and they could have been formed into a very appropriate guard of honour to receive the retiring Administrator. Our authorities are always missingopportunities like this.

THE COOKS Three large steamers are held idle and several hundred men forced into unemployment because a few marine cooks can’t have their way. The cooks will eventually spoil their own broth, for shipowners will be forced to employ more mechanical contrivances in the galleys, and there will be fewer cooks and better cooking. Then the seamen and the firemen will be more contented and ships may sometimes be able to sail to schedule. BULL AND HORSE Madrid’s bullfighting season opened with a trial of the new armour for picadors’ horses. From the horses’ point of view it was very successful, for though several were wounded, none was killed. The Government, therefore, has ordered the use of armour for all these horses, and the lions and tigers at the Spanish zoos will go on short rations, while the price of meat will rise against the oppressed poor. But if “sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander,” why not provide the bulls with armour, too? * * * IGNORANCE HO EXCUSE When several defendants pleaded ignorance of the Motor Regulations at the Timaru Court, they were reminded by the Magistrate of the wellknown axiom: “Ignorance of the law is no excuse.” His Worship advised the Automobile Association to have copies of the regulations printed and sold at a nominal figure. It would then, he said, be the duty of motorists to procure copies and study them. Having attempted to comprehend these regulations,_ however, the L.O.M. asks whether their “study” would not make motorists even more ignorant and, consequently, even less excusable?

THE CALLOUS TRUTH In sentencing a young man to two years’ imprisonment for having knocked down and killed a pedestrian while driving a car which he had unlawfully “borrowed,” the Chief Justice of W.A. stamped the offence as a most callous one. Then he spoke the callous truth. “This socalled joy-riding,” he said, “has been encouraged by undue leniency on the part of magistrates in the lower Court.” We have long been awaiting a remark of this nature from one of our New Zealand judges. MOORE, HARDY AND CONRAD The veteran author, George Moore, deplores the lack of genius in modern British literature: “Thomas Hardy never wrote two successive lines of good English! Joseph Conrad’s work will be dead in a year: anyone can write his sort of stuff”! Surely even Moore’s claim to fame does not justify such harsh criticism. According to Moore’s lights, Hardy's English may have left something to be desired; yet it makes no reader wince, and Hardy’s popularity is unquestioned. Conrad’s works will last more than a year: “The Nigger of the Narcissus” and “Lord Jim” are each over 30 years old, vet librarians say these romances are well np in the list of popularity. Moore deserves respect for his labours in promoting the Irish literary revival, but, if serious, one regrets his condemnatory criticism of eminent authors whose pens are now forever dry. There is some probability, however, that Moore spoke with “his tongue in his cheek.”