From The Watch Tower

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 663, 15 May 1929, Page 8

From The Watch Tower

By “THE LOOK-OUT MAN.”

FIGHTING FLEETS It is stated that acceptance of the United States’ plan for reducing fighting fleets would result in the wholesale scrapping of British vessels: Once we used to play at navies With the wash-tub or the bath; The soap-dish was Gibraltar . . . There were cautions in our path .’ The sponge—is was an islands To annex it was required . . . Oh, in those days of paper boats What stirring shots were firedNow grown men play at navies, The Atlantic for a tub; And they want 16 limit warships, Trusty sailor-men and “grub;” But if we scrap the vessels At the rate of one a day. How are we going to rule the waves And hold our foes at bay l In the days of bath-tub navies There was very little waste, For those important paper fleets Were never made in haste, And we chorused “Rule, Britannia During peace and during war, And tried to keep each boat afloat — That’s what we built them for. SQUIDGE. HIS RELIGION A lot is heard about sport being a religion. Hear, then, the answer of an alert young man who was asked whether he followed the tenets of his fathers and was a Congregationalist. “No,” he replied, “I am a University footballer.” SO THIS IS FRIENDSHIP From an account of a double tragedy:—A revolver was found beneath the woman’s bullet-riddled body. The man’s skull had been fractured and one of his eyes had been gouged out. The two deceased had been on friendly terms fc>- some time.” Since they were on such friendly terms, the injuries noted were probably inflicted In a spirit of gentle playfulness. THE SYMBOL “Travel 1 with safety, comfort, and economy,” says a poster issued by the Railway Department. Under the word “economy” sits a Scotsman, which is right and proper. Under “comfort” sits an average citizen of the easeloving type. And then under “safety” sits a minister of the kirk. It is a little difficult to see whether a compliment or the reverse is intended. * * * STARTED ON EGGS There is a noted New Zealand magnate who claims that he laid the foundation of his fortune on eggs. At the tender age of ten he began to operate a poultry yard, and the knowledge of finance absorbed in selling the produce thereof enable him ultimately to own warehouses and become a company promoter, which means, of course, a Croesus. That being so, there is an Auckland youngster who in the future should be a Rockefeller. In a sitting of eggs he was given a twelfth share. The eggs hatched, the chickens grew to maturity, the child’s pullet became productive. The eggs it laid were gathered in with the others in the usual way. Then the proprietor of the hen took a hand. He piresented a bill: “To Mummy. For eggs, Is 7d. Please pay me.” BREAKWATER FLAYED In sunny Hawke’s Bay the children are not horn Wesleyans or Anglicans, or anything frivolous like that, but Breakwater supporters or Inner Harbour supporters. Tbe great harbour controversy has raged so long and feverishly that the people are cleft as by some great social division. “He is a Breakwater man” —that pregnant utterance in certain circles damns its target for all time. Meetings of the Napier Harbour Board are immense fun for anyone who is not involved by accident of birth or persuasion in the terrible seething maelstrom of harbour politics. There you may see the standing orders trodden under foot, while the members assail the chairman and the chairman assails the members. People sworn to such great causes are immune from the shafts of penetrating argument or the sweeping net of logic. Thus it makes no difference that engineers have come and gone and reported against the proposal to delve an inner harbour oat of the mudflats of the Tutaekuri entrance, and that a Royal Commission presided over by Mr. J. S. Bartcm (also of Auckland Transport Commission) made the same sweeping condemnation. At the recent elections country people in Hawke’s Bay, Inner Harbour by birth and conviction, voted solidly inner Harbour, and the Breakwater representatives are in a minority. The crowning infamy was a tie in the Taradale riding. The Inner Harbour man and the Breakwater man drew lots, and the former won, while strong men stood by and wept. With that luckless number went, apparently, the last hope of the Breakwater party.