FROM THE WATCH TOWER

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 597, 25 February 1929, Page 8

FROM THE WATCH TOWER

By “THE LOOK-OUT MAN.” WINTRY EUROPE Harrowing tales o£ Europe’s Arctic winter recall the cold snap which prompted au English schoolmaster to set for his pupils a paper on “The Ice Age.” “I do not know much about the Ice Age,” wrote one learned youth, “but it cannot be any worse than the Margarine Age.” AT CANBERRA The English cricketers are spending a week-end at the Australian Federal capital, Canberra. Fortunately, the famous “Canberra drought” is now over, and Australians will hope that their week-end at Canberra will make it impossible for them to spend future week-ends at the wickets. ENGLISH CENSORSHIP Mr. D. H. Lawrence, the novelist, whose manuscript poems, “Pansies,” have been seized by order of the Home Office, has had previous experience of English censorship. In 1913 a novel called “The Rainbow” was suppressed in England. There was nothing particularly vicious about it, and America had no qualms about permitting publication. So the book, although unobtainable in England, was quite accessible to readers in other parts of the Empire.

HEALTH BULLETINS

The issue of bulletins concerning the illness of the King brings to mind other health bulletins that have been issued. There was once a famous Judge who Insisted upon writing his own. The various stages of his sickness were chronicled with marvellous attention to detail. With the late Lord Curzon it is reported that melancholy records of his sickness were read by him in the papers with a result that his condition became worse. Arrangements were made for a fake newspaper with more eneohraging news to come into his possession, hut before this could he done he was dead.

POLITICAL PROBLEMS

With the present squad of Ministers moving over the countryside, hamlets which are the objects of their attentions are plunged in perplexity. There is a town in the Auckland Province through which a regular procession of Ministers has passed in the last few days—and there are more to come. Well, hospitality to visitors is a guiding precept with the people of this centre, but the combined resources of the borough council, county council, chamber of commerce, and Rotary Club (if any) would not permit a banquet to each Minister; so the good burgesses are still waiting to see which of their visitors shall yet be the most exalted and the most compliant. Then will worthy dishes be prepared. There is still another problem with these new Ministers Most of them are quite unknown to their prospective hosts. At Wairakei last week the Hon. W. B. Taverner was expected, and the local caravanserai was on tip-toe of expectancy. Thus when a jovial stranger was introduced as the Minister, there was much hurrying and scurrying. Not until Mr. H. H. Sterling came in to greet his chief did the premature clamour subside.

“ JWANTA. ” One of the pleasant features of travel over New Zealand roads, whether arterial highways or links with the remote back-country, is the recurrence of daubed road signs. Most travellers are not unfamiliar with the informative notification stating that hereabouts occurred some notable event. Even the coastal seaways may be thus decorated, as is testified by a rather weatherbeaten “W” on the cliff face where the Wairarapa hit the Great Barrier. There are also the forbidding injunctions written of earnest people. “You must be born again,” says a conspicuous inscription on a prominent piece of country in the thermal regions. More familiar than any of these, however, is the sign “Iwanta.” What the cryptic message means need not be debated. The outstanding fact is that “Iwanta” represents a crude form of publicity which obtrudes itself on the sight in the midst of some of the choicest highway scenery. In the North of Auckland, or on the beautiful roads of the Coromandel Peninsula, the traveller sees it confronting him from deserted huts or the butts of trees. Its author has made the hitherto unspoiled trails of the Urewera Country the scene of his latest operations. Possibly the problem may commend itself to the attention of the Auckland Automobile Association,