FROM THE WATCH TOWER

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 527, 3 December 1928, Page 8

FROM THE WATCH TOWER

By

“THE LOOK-OUT MAN.”

SAFETY LAST Racegoer: At Takapuna races on Saturday, I was -with a friend who suddenly paled, and whispered in hollow tones that he had lost his wallet. There was no occasion for alarm. The wallet was lying at his feet. But another present told a tale of the recent Grand National meeting In Christchurch. A group of three consisted of the speaker, a friend, and a well-known detective. The friend put his hand to his hip-pocket, and then said: “Great heavens, I’ve lost my pocket-book. My pocket has been picked.” Said the detective, “But, good Lord, man, you should never carry money in your hip-pocket. It’s just inviting trouble. Carry it here, in your inside pocket ” Then he stopped, and his eyes bulged. For his money was gone, too. AT THE CAUCUS Reference to the word caucus is frequent in these days of uncertain politics. The exact meaning of the term, which is of fairly recent American origin, has changed. Fifty years ago, when it embraced not only the Parliamentary representatives of a party, but also their hundreds of representative supporters, it carried a direct implication of political wirepulling. In America the word was first used in almost a derogatory sense. It was first used in England in the later ’seventies, and was applied by Disraeli to the powerful organisation of the Birmingham Liberals, on whose success and influence Joseph Chamber, lain first rode to power. Disraeli, as a Conservative whose position was threatened and rfltimately undermined by the influences that tie caucus represented, naturally used the new term in its derogatory sense. However, the Caucus in later years declined in power, and the word gained accepted usage as signifying merely the occasional gatherings of political parties in Parliament. AUDIENCE SURVIVES One of those amusing little slips that sometimes happen, even with the best of speakers, fell from tbe lips of Mr. L. P. Leary, when he was addressing the audience after the Little Theatre Society’s entertainment on Saturday evening. “The audience has done extremely well,” he said., and then recovered himself quickly—“i mean, the performers.” There was an appreciative chuckle from one of the players. “And, of course, the audience has done extremely well,” rejoined Mr. Leary quickly. PATRIOTS CELEBRATE Although Auckland Yugo-Slavs who yesterday at St. Patrick’s Cathedral 'celebrated the tenth anniversary of the union of the kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes had no picturesque shooting such as marked the festivities at Zagreb, they did have at least one compensation. Their preacher, the Rev. Father Milan Pavlinovich, is a member of a family of patriots that struggled valiantly in the ’seventies of last century for the union that was celebrated yesterday. One Pavlinovich made a dramatic but unavailing plea to the Austrian Assembly. He continued the struggle, and the reward of his efforts is a statue, and the final liberation of his people.

'A yr A rc rh -A -A- -r Vr rl- -y- -V- -yON FRAUDS The ingenious effort of a young man in Wellington to defraud the postal service by removing the stamps from parcels, so as to leave the gum-mark and cancellation, giving the impression that the stamps had fallen off, is a reminder that, although the perfect fraud, like the perfect crime, has yet to be perpetrated, some frauds have come very near to earning the designation. There was a man in the mental hospitals branch of the New Zealand Health Department who had a way of charging up for imaginary bags of potatoes. The system was acknowledged later to be fool-proof, and it defied the auditors for months, until the ingenious miscreant erred in his addition. The error made the auditors do a little extra checking, and the fraud was discovered. In another case money was embezzled from the takings at a railway station. False entries and the fact that the cash in all the cash-boxes, in the separate branches, was always at the proper level, deceived the auditors. Then one day, in counting the cash, an auditor noticed a curiously-marked half a crown, which recurred in all the cash-boxes. He ordered all the doors between the different offices to be locked, and called for ail the cashboxes at once. The defalcations were immediately evident, as the cash had been kept at a false level by circulating money from one box to another But bad it not been for the oddlymarked half-crown, the task of the auditors would have been much more difficult.