FROM THE WATCH TOWER

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 627, 2 April 1929, Page 8

FROM THE WATCH TOWER

By "THE LOOK-OUT MAN.’’ DOWN THE SCALE A SUN correspondent, tallying the outward traffic on Good Friday, counted 667 cars, 70 motor-cycles, and one horse and trap. Oh solitary Jehu, whither bound? To Pokeno or Taupiri, mayhap; Put this the major question J -propound — Why go by horse and trap? Six hundred cars and more went whizzing 'by, Leaving their dust upon your ancient rig. Were you content, or- did you wonder why You drove a horse and gig? Is it to hallowed images you cling , Or do you lack the wherewithal to pay For gasolene , and all that kind of thing, So run a one-horse shay? Still, if you have no, Cadillac or Sluts Or stately Rolls , in which to ride aloof. Yet spare a glance for even lowlier Nutts Like me-—who pad the hoof. — SHANKS. WAIPIRO BAY The City Council's laudable intention of sprinkling a lot more Maori names round Auckland, and the comment thereon in an article In last night’s Sun, turns attention to the name given to the little bay that formerly lay at the foot of Hobson Street. Eighty years ago, when sawyers cutting timber for Auckland’s first houses dwelt there, It was known as Waipiro Bay, which suggests that even then a noble subject was not treated with the reticence it deserved. Hobson Street has long forgotten about the little bay at its foot. The bay has gone, but the Waipiro remains. * * * HIS MOVE Ministers in their day play many parts, but not many have done what the Hon. E. A. Ransom did the other day, ceremoniously open a draughts tournament. These were not liquid draughts—more’s the pity, Mr. Ransom might say—and so there was no joyous carolling of the Frothblowers’ Anthem. Instead the Minister perhaps “kicked off” by decorously moving one of the rank and file of draughtsmen, or possibly he “huffed” mightily, a practice at which he should be adept, as the main business of a member In opposition—and Mr. Ransom was a long time in opposition —is huffing the Government, though it is not known by that elegantly expressive name. STUDENT JESTERS When Bishop West-Watson consented to act as chairman of the interUniversity debate at Christchurch on Saturday, he became the figurehead of a function that New Zealand students have always regarded as a prime Easter jape and an occasion for wild and violent foolery. Had the Bishop sought the advice of Mr. H. L. Tapley. Dunedin’s portly ex-Mayor and M.P., he might have thought twice, for Mr. Tapley had his baptism of fire in a Dunedin hall a few Easters ago. Otago’s capital may be dour, but its students have no peers in the gentle art of ragging. Hoping to control the debate Mr. Tapley armed himself with a tiny bell which he tinkled resolutely. When the bell was silent there was a continual roar of noise, while flour bombs burst on the stage in snowy showers, but when the big man produced that diminutive signal, the place became a bedlam. In desperation Mr. Tapley rose, secured a second’s silence, and said in a loud voice: “Order please, gentlemen.” Quick as a flash came a reply from the rear of the hall: “Two beers.”

AT LAST So Wellington is to have its “Citizens’ War Memorial” at last, the signing of the contract being apparently the final intimation that the protracted feud between two opposing camps has been closed. There will be a Dominion War Memorial Museum in the salubrious region above Taranaki Street, and the Citizens’ Memorial down by Parliament Buildings. Wanganui was another town that had a lot of trouble with its war memorials and finally solved the difficulty by having two, one being later the subject of litigation in which Mr. W. J. Poison, now M.P. for Stratford, was concerned. The first plan for a Dominion war memorial—and perhaps it was the sanest —aimed at the construction of a War Memorial Highway to run the full length of both islands, trees beside the road to be the monuments for the dead. Instead there is now a strange sequence of various memorials at all the little wayside hamlets, and the abundant crop is to many visitors the most striking characteristic of our rural scenery. The trouble is, the form is rarely original. Mercer, with the turret that was a gun-casing on a Waikato gunboat in the Maori wars, then a lock-up for tha local inebriates, and is now the plinth of a war memorial, has perhaps the only one that has not been duplicated.