From The Watch Tower

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 720, 20 July 1929, Page 8

From The Watch Tower

By

"THE LOOK-OUT MAN."

THE FIRING SQUAD It is alleged that a military instructor has been teaching boys how to shoot to kill. The target raised its pasteboard head. t( Take sice o’clockthe sergeant said. “Take six o’clock, upon that figure. Then shut your eyes—and pull the trigger.” The gentle youth was seen to start. He said: “Oh, sergeant, have a heart! 1 could not plug that poor, stiff dummy Through head, or heart , or even tummy.” The lad was right. It’s unrefined To get the cruel sights aligned, Thus to despatch the deadly ball. And yet—why use a gun at allT McSHOVEE EASTER HAMPERS Speaking at the annual meeting of N.Z. Breweries Limited, the chairman, Mr. A. S. Bankart, attributed an increase in output to the fact that two Easters happened to come into the financial year. Of course, that is why they call it the Easter tide. SLEEVELESS ERRAND In this age of political change and shattered convention it is heartening to know that the masses will still be unable to take liberties in that most impregnable stronghold of propriety, a London restaurant. If “Emperor” Cook, the Labour leader who is dispensing with lunch because he can’t eat it in his shirt sleeves, had gone into a New Zealand restaurant one knows of, he would have seen where he stood straight away. There is a notice on the wall; “Gentlemen will not eat in their shirt sleeves. Others may not.” Still, a man who has hobnobbed with the Prince of Wales should be forgetting these suburban habits, any way. ♦ ♦ ♦ POOR GAME Boxing contests in Kansas City, Where William L. (Young) Stribling has won a newspaper decision over George Cook, must be fiat affairs. Kansas is one of those Arcadian States where announcements of decisions from the ringside are prohibited. Hence all the referee is for is to separate the combatants in the clinches. The judgment on the matter is left to the newspapers of the city. If six newspapers are for Stribling, and four for Cook, Stribling wins, and since there is no other authority to whom the matter can be referred, those who disagree must suffer in silence. They cannot, as in the usual order, stand up on chairs at the back of the stadium, and count the referee out. They could write letters to the offending papers, but probably there is some prohibition against that. At least, it is a satisfactory arrangement for the scribes. Not theirs the usual lot of judges. They don’t even hear a hoot or catcall. PITY THE POOR HUSBANDS In the potato boycott instituted by Sydney housewives —more power to them —as a reprisal against the alleged cornering of the market by the big operators, it is likely that less will depend upon the fibre of the wives than on that of their husbands. It is well-known that in industrial troubles it is always the woman who suffers, while the striking breadwinner simply goes down to the wharf and fishes, but now the boot is to be on the other foot. Husbands who welcome the potato as their staple diet will toy discontentedly with substitutes, and perhaps pine away for lack of starch. In the interests of solidarity we hope that the husbands can Hold out, allying a rugged resistance with the spirited measures of the wives. But when spring comes round, and those delectable new potatoes make their appearance on the market, our bet is on the potatoes.

NOCTURNE Cats and policemen are popularly supposed to have. certain zero hours of the night to themselves, hut there is another entrant for the "nocturnal championship—the steam shovel. Folk who dwell on the favoured routes know all about it, because a steam shovel in transit places a pneumatic rivetter in the oyster class. And it‘s impossible to move them round in the daytime, because a steam shovel on, say, the Grafton Bridge intersection would keep the traflic officer posed with his signalling arm in one position until paralysis set in. Of course, we can’t all be Segraves, so the steam shovels do their slow motion antics in the depths of night, and people who hear them passing are uncertain after the first half-hour if it’s nightmare or just vlain dementia. One steam shovel, it is said, can drive 50 navvies out of a. job. But on the word of a sufferer that is nothing to the number it can drive out of their senses.