FROM THE WATCH TOWER

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 571, 25 January 1929, Page 8

FROM THE WATCH TOWER

By “THE LOOK-OUT MAN.” SONG OF WAHABI TRIBES MAN It is now explained that the shooting of an American missionary, who was crossing the desert with a party of motorists, was not due to a Wahabi ambush, but to the travellers becoming unwittingly involved in a fight between Koweit tribesmen and Wahabi raiders. —Cable item. All care but no responsibility — Meet us in the desert and 'We’ll shoot you down on sight; But you really mustn’t mind For the Korocits arc behind. And whenever rival tribes meet there's a fight , If you stray across our desert frontiers, Do so in an armoured car , Or p'raps an aeroplane; For we have our playful ways In the desert nowadays , And a bullet finds a billet now’n’ again. All care but no responsibility — For both Koweits and Wahabis In the desert there’s not room If you cross the line of fire You’ll be plucking at a lyre In a heaven (not Mohammed’s) pretty soon —EL KAN TAR A. * * * FISH BONE AND IVORY A Sydney man has had a piece of fish bone in his head for 33 years. This is surely bad enough; but if current critical chit-chat is to be believed, there are many people who have been carrying cranial cargoes of ivory for longer periods than that. THE DEAN HITS OUT Dean Inge complains that leading English churchmen are socially in evidence and intellectually in hiding. Perhaps that is the reason why a young English poet Avrote the following liues during a sermon: Much as I revere your office, priest, I doubt if I could feel much more contempt Than at your sentimental insolence. Your lazy, everlasting platitudes. WHEN SOUTH MEETS NORTH Plans are being made for a party of South Island farmers to tour the North Island. The party will visit the Waikato Show. Hosts and guests will have to preserve nice diplomatic balance, and let’s hope no Hamilton man asks a Southerner how the penguins are laying, or whether Commander Byrd has dropped in for a cup of tea. MUD AND HAND Alarm is expressed because mud is replacing the sand on the beach at Point Chevalier. There is, however, no occasion for surprise. Enough mud has been thrown in the locality to bury the whole beach. BOTTOMLEY ON AMERICA Horatio Bottomley, who has been awarded & 1,500 damages for a Hoe; made against him In a book published last year, has lost no time in coming to the front as a critic of international affairs. During the war his paper, “John Bull.” Avas the last authority for English soldiers and sailors, and he now seeks to recover some of his old power Avith “John Blunt,” a eheapwitted though outspoken, weekly. Writing on the American question, Bottomley said: “America doesn’t care a damn either for Anglo-American Union or for the prosperity of the Anglo-Saxon race, or, for that matter, the peace of the world. War is in her nostrils. It means filling her coffers with European gold, and the creation of an ever-increasing army of millionaires^ —increasing by the way at the rate of 50 a year.”

GOLD BRICKS News is cabled that a large cargo of bullion was loaded on to ships taken from the Bank of England to Paddington, with no precautions worth mentioning. It is a reminder that nothing on earth is reputedly harder to get rid of than a gold brick. A famous short story tells how a workman managed to get away with a gold ingot from the Bank of England. Carting it round furtively, he was unable to dispose of It, and finally threw it in the Thames. Yet in other days the “gold brick” swindle, by which a lump of lead coated with gold was sold to an unsuspecting millionaire eager for an Interesting souvenir, was regularly practised. It is far easier, of course, to dispose of neat gold in a mining community. Covetousness based on that axiom led to the Maungatapu murders, a series of dreadful crimes in the vicinity of Nelson. Three of the perpetrators were hanged, and a fourth escaped by turning Queen's evidence.