FROM THE WATCH TOWER

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 600, 28 February 1929, Page 8

FROM THE WATCH TOWER

By "THE LOOK-OUT MAN.” ! THE VETERANS' SONG In a game of bowls at Te Awamutu, a team of Cambridge veterans, of an average age of 78, beat a team of Te Awamutu veterans, whose average age was 72. Play inn the noble game of bo icls, Is sport for men. not boys. Let striplings fool with cricket bats , And other toys. Upon the green , with skill a)id guilc 3 The Cambridge ciders prance, While Te A'mutu battles on A losing chance. The Cantabs win. It was foregone. Young blood must wait its turn. The greatest charm of bowls is that Yore live and learn. — ISIS. BUOYANT The Hon. P. A. de la Perrelle is reported be having difficulty with the allocation of two floating totalisator permits. If they “float” as well as all that, it seems possible that a little “punting” at the next Auckland regatta may be arranged. EVERY GOOSE A UWAX In his comments on a recent traffic tally, a member of the One Tree Hill Road Board has been made to say that a remarkable feature was the number of trucks which were escaping taxation. Practically 80 per cent, were motor-cars. After making this ingenious statement, the member presumably hopped into his Thornycroft limousine and drove merrily away. PROLIFIC SHEEP At last we know why New Zealand has so many sheep. It was all explained to Mr. W. J. Jordan, M.P. for Manukau, when he was in London a month or two back. Going to a butcher’s shop to purchase New Zealand lamb, Mr. Jordan chanced to remark to the butcher that New Zealand lamb seemed to he procurable all the year round in the city. “That is easily explained,” said the guileless dealer. “You see, sheep in New Zealand breed twice a year—the only country in the world where they do.” “Fancy that, now,” murmured the purchaser, as he wandered out with his parcel of meat and the conviction that New Zealand publicity abroad is indeed doing good work. PLAGUE ISO M ISH Sir Berkeley Moynilian’s revelation about plague bombs sent over by the Germans in 1916 comes on the heels of one of the most sensational prints of recent years, a categorical denial by the Hon. Arthur Ponsonby, former Minister in Ramsay MacDonald’s Cabinet, of the tales of German atrocities during the war. Mr. Ponsonby states that it was found absolutely impossible to authenticate the stories of atrocities in-Belgium. Vicious propaganda was used on both sides, the British propaganda toward the end of the war being organised at Crewe House under Lord Northcliffe, who discharged his task with considerable ability. When America came into the war, states Mr. Ponsonby, there were 10,500 Allied agents working in the States on behalf of the Allied cause. The author of the sensational document quoted is a descendant of the famous Lord Greys, and a member of the family from which an Auckland suburb takes its name. In his boyhood, being blue-blooded and handsome, he was one' of Queen Victoria’s favourite pages. Apparently his blue blood has now turned at least pink, if not faintly red.

OH. BOY! Advertising a recent series of articles, “In the Footsteps of FanWomen,” by Dorothy Dix, the American woman journalist, an American syndicating agency lets itself go: “Dorothy Dix’s favourite heroine (says the broadsheet) are Cleopatra the Vamp, Ruth the Widow, Eve the First Woman, Scherezade the Spellbinder, and Helen of Troy, the Self-Starter. She makes you see Mark Antony and Cleopatra in their historic pettingparties. You go with her to the fields of Boaz, where the beautiful young widow, Ruth, developed the technique iu husband catching that has made widows able to get any man they wanted ever since. She takes you into the steaming valleys where scientists locate the Garden of Eden, and in this case Miss Dix thinks Mother Eve showed a good deal of judgment ih getting us evicted from it.” All of which seems to be much on the same lines as the favourite exclamation of a young lady who recently travelled on a ferry launch from Devonport. Repeatedly she exclaimed, to the delight of other passengers, “Oh, boy, get hot!” Exactly how Helen of Troy was a self-starter is not clear. Soon we shall need the aid of an interpreter iu reading English.