FROM THE WATCH TOWER

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 347, 7 May 1928, Page 10

FROM THE WATCH TOWER

By

“THE LOOK-OUT MAN.”

.1 QUESTION OF LOCATION Scene: Arbitration Court. Witness: I broke my pelvis at Maungaturoto, and later I broke my ribs. Mr. Justice Frazer: Where did you break your ribs? Witness: About here (motioning toward his chest). * * * Ay UNFORTUNATE START A coolie under sentence of death for the murder of another coolie has escaped from one of those formidable Samoan gaols. We thought that Samoa would arrange some entertainment for the army of police that recently arrived from New Zealand. It is hoped the army won’t be allowed to go about unchaperoned while the escapee is at large. The pension list is large enough as it is. CANNY COMMONER *

The oldest member of the House of Commons, Sir J. T. Agg-Gardner, has broken a silence of 25 years, so the cables tell us, to move the second reading of a time-payment Bill. Apparently the canny Commoner made up his mind a long time ago to wait till he had paid off the last instalment on his motor-car, furniture and gramophone, as well as those on his wife’s sewing-machine and birthday presents, before committing himself on the subject. WEEK-END * WEATHER * Now, Mr. Weather God, don’t you think you are a bit over the odds? You gave us months of line weather, and just as we were hoping you had permanently mended your bad manners of years past, you get up to your old tricks again. You were given all due thanks for the generous showers you furnished the pastures, and all that sort of thing, but “enough’s as good as a feast,” especially when the fare is plain water, and no one appreciates floods. Don’t you study us city people at all in the footners of years past, you get up to your old game, pouring it down at week-ends, just as you did almost every week-end last year and the year before that. You drench spectators at football matches, and make the fields so sloppy that the players break arms, legs, collarbones, and skulls; you spoil the quiet Sabbath by sending rain in torrents, thereby preventing pious Aucklanders attending church, or going out motoring, or ministering to the garden that has been neglected all the week. Why can’t you keep the rain up there at week-ends, and send it down on working days? You can’t go on interfering with pleasure like this. Dash it all! You’ve filled the reservoirs. Be satisfied! * * * "SAVED!" How New Zealand’s bank clerks—beg pardon—officials—were saved from the dreadful plebeianism of unionism is stirringly recited in the “New Zealand Banker,” by a former general manager of the Bank of New Zealand. “Allurements were being held out to employees of all classes by militant unionism, and there was Imminent danger, owing to prevailing unrest, of bank officials being enticed into the fold of extremists anxious to extend their borders and so increase their powers for political purposes. . . From such an unholy alliance, bank officials were saved by the advent of the Bank Officers Guild.” During the period of the dreadful danger referred to, a leading bank, which was not making as many millions profit as should be with such a bank, cut the salaries of its officers by 10 per cent., and kept them cut. But as the former G.M. points out, those in authority are “often depressed when adverse circumstances block liberality,” so they must have suffered agonies of mind thinking of the poverty of their employees—the while they drew their own miserable dividends. The G.M. urges bank officers not to be too exacting or impetuous. How could he think they would be? UNIONISM IN VICTORIA If the cable message published in the morning Press, stating that 15,000 men are members of unions in Melbourne is correct, Australia is not the great land of unionism that we have been led to believe. Melbourne has a population of about 1,000,000, and if it has only 15,000 trades unionists, unionism in Melbourne is more noisy than numerical. New Zealand, with a total population of under 1,500,000, has well over 100,000 members of industrial unions. The largest industrially organised section in Melbourne is said to be the Carpenters’ and Builders’ Labourers’ Union, with a membership of 2,500. Building and construction unionists in New Zealand number about 15,000 —which is equal to the whole of Melbourne’s male unionists, according to the figures cabled. The suggestion is that the figures refer to unionists unemployed in Victoria. ♦ * * THE QUALITY OF MERCY Of the six natives sentenced to death for murders committed at Nanaki, New Guinea, one died in prison, one has had his sentence commuted to seven years’ imprisonment, and the remainder will serve 14 years. By deciding not to hang these men, the Commonwealth Government has not strained the quality of mercy. The natives of New Guinea, head-hunters and warriors until restrained by the laws of the strange white man, are not yet far enough removed from the savage law which provides for the survival of the fittest in regard to killing as murder. Hanging doesn’t educate them. And, in any case, it is doubtful whether hanging is a real deterrent. The New Guinea native does not fear death, but he does dread long imprisonment, and if it were drilled into his head that killing anybody would mean the certainty of many years’ confinement and slavery, he would be very effectively restrained. The same commutation should be made in the case of Basiana, the Solomons chief, now under sentence to hang. Basiana does not fear death. “I knew it would be that," he said contemptuously after his trial; "what has all this talk been iabout?”