FROM THE WATCH TOWER

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 526, 1 December 1928, Page 8

FROM THE WATCH TOWER

By

“THE LOOK-OUT MAN.”

OUR CANDID MEDICO According to X)r. E. Graham Little, the English M.P., who spoke at a meeting of the Royal Institute of Public Health, the doctor’s consultingroom, far from being a gold mine, is often the shortest route to the cemetery. Exactly! THE WAY THEY HAVE ■ . ■ Reinhold von Scheer, who commanded the German fleet at Jutland, is dead. The British Admiralty, with nice solicitude, has conveyed its regrets to the German naval authorities. The big guns of the Maryland, greatest warship of the United States, are grinning in South American ports. Lo. There is no trouble. Herbert Hoover, President-elect, is on his goodwill tour of the Republics. FATED NAME If German sailors are superstitious few of them would be willing to go to sea again in a ship bearing the name “Pommern.” The fate of the German training ship, which has gone ashore in the Channel Islands after being abandoned in a gale, and that of its predecessor, the old battleship Pommern, which wus sunk at Jutland should be enough to make even the most sceptical hesitate. Just after 2 a.m. on June 1, 1916, the morning after the Battle of Jutland, British' destroyers made a determined attack on the German battleships, which, passing behind Jellicoe’s main fleet, were endeavouring to regain their home ports in the darkness. A torpedo hit the Pommern amidships. A sheet of flame split the darkness and, following a series of explosions, she broke in two. As the blackness closed down again the two halves went to the bottom of the North Sea, carrying with them every soul on board. OUR HERBERT The Ohinemuri district takes a personal interest in Mr. Herbert Hoover, America’s President to be. The reason is that Herbert Hoover, then a mining engineer representing Buick, Moreing and Company, spent a short period on the Karangahake field about 30 years ago. He was one of a number of American mining engineers who came to New Zealand and Australia at that time, another being an engineer named Wilson, who remained in Australia and became the father of Miss Strella Wilson, the noted o;» ratic singer. Hoover was by no means a prominent man when he was in New Zealand, but he began to make a name in Australia a little later. In aiy* case, the link is strong enough to give Ohinemuri a justifiable pride in his success, and the County Council has with much gusto decided to send him a letter of congratulation. Had he remained At Karangahake, Mr. Hoover might have been chairman of the council himself by now. * * * COST OF PROGRESS The death of a workman in an accident with a pump at Arapuni is a reminder that few big construction works of magnitude are completed without fatalities. At Arapuni five men have now been killed since the job was started some years ago. One man was drowned, another killed in an accident on a light railway, a third electrocuted, and a fourth killed by falling rock. It is all part of the price we have to pay for our improvements.

A POLICY AT LLOYD’S The latest freak insurance to be accepted by Lloyds is a £50,000 policy against Labour’s obtaining a clear majority over the other two parties at the coming General Elections. To do so Labour will have to capture 30S seats, over 150 more than it at present possesses, and over 100 more than it held during the brief period of Mr. Ramsay MacDonald’s Ministry. Nevertheless, Lloyd’s was taking no chances, as a £IO,OOO premium was demanded and paid. The great group of underwriters dominating the world’s marine insurance will usually insure against anything, from triplets to a shower of rain, but it shied at the American millionaire, Clarence Chamberlin’s, proposal that it should insure him for a return flight across the Atlantic. On rejection of his proposal, Chamberlin promptly offered to bet the concern 1,000 to one he would succeed, but this offer, too, was gravely declined. Other institutions bearing the same name such as Lloyd’s Bank and Lloyd’s newspapers, are not connected with the insurance group. Even Lloyd’s register is not directly connected therewith. But the name of Lloyd is a great power in the world’s commerce, all because one, Edward Lloyd, owned a popular coffee-house in the garrulous old London of the seventeenth century.