FROM THE WATCH TOWER

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 916, 8 March 1930, Page 8

FROM THE WATCH TOWER

By "THE LOOK-OUT MAN.” THE SLEUTH “We are non-committal,” * said Senior-Detective Quirlte, of Palmerston North, Questioned concerning the Palmerston shooting mystery. When investigating- crime. If a mystery you’d skittle, While you’re busy marking- time, Just be strictly non-committal. Just look knowing, like the owl, And though clues are scant and little, Let the hungry public howl, And be sagely non-committal. Spare them nothing but a sniff. Though you solve no mysteries, it’ll Get you sure promotion if You are simply non-committal. * * * DISTRESS “A 1 Wil”: Not only did the flag on the Power Board building the other day appear to be half-mast, but from the street it also appeared to be upside down. Not that the trifling error matters much, except that at sea a flag both upside down and half-mast signifies acute distress. Had Queen Street wayfarers been signal-conscious they might have been seen rushing through the bronze portals to render aid. * * » THROWING MUD Cheers for the originator of the bril liant suggestion that Thames mud may make an excellent fertiliser. Impressed with the possibility of starting a new industry and at the same time acquiring a cheap harbour, the Thames Harbour Board intends submitting a sample of mud to the School of Mines for testing. There is so much on hand’ that a sample will never he missed, any way. m * * FLOUNDERS’ FAREWELL The danger Thames seems to have overlooked is that any irresponsible meddling with the mud deposits may interfere with the local flounder industry, which has’ done so much to place Thames on the map in the outer world. Flounders are notoriously sensitive fish, and in pursuing a cheap harbour at their expense the good people of Thames may be sacrificing the substance for the shadow. Most readers not centred in the salubrious Hauraki town don’t care much whether Thames has a harbour or not, but life will undoubtedly be emptier if something happens whereby Thames flounders fresh from the mudbanks are no longer obtainable in Queen Street at Is, Is 6d and 2s (0.5.). * * * TRUE TO LABEL Whether every flounder that is labelled a Thames flounder actually comes from there is a moot question, but the ones thus accredited seem to taste sweeter. Perhaps it is merely auto-suggestion. The discussion is purely academic, but it gives opportunity to introduce a man who performed the rare feat of catching »a flounder on a hook and line. The scene of this exploit was off Wellington Head, Great Barrier, where the water is a mere 40 fathoms deep, and when a flounder came up on a schnapper hook it is difficult to say whether the flounder or the fisherman was the more surprised. * - * * THIS FREEDOM Where is our boasted British freedom when a man cannot even plug a howling cat without incurring the wrath and vengeance of the law? More in sorrow than in anger, Mr. F. K. Hunt, S.M., after pointing out that a man who owned six cats had five too many, informed one of the delinquents arraigned at the court yesterday that the most he could do when a cat kept him awake or preyed on his pigeon loft was to chase it away. Probably Mr. Hunt knows as well as the next person that in a midnight race between a cat and a pyjama-clad householder, the conditions are all in favour of the cat. But somehow we don’t think Mr. Hunt seriously intended yesterday’s convictions to be a deterrent, and when the citizen is awakened by amorous noises from the garden fence, his first instinct will still be to reach for his heaviest boot, if not his gun. ESCAPE In Taranaki, an abiding respect for the judiciary is instilled into the populace. Hence the implied compliment to Mr. Justice Reed’s physical powers in a New Plymouth message, which stated that a burglar who entered a hotel was lucky, “as in the room next to that he entered was Mr. Justice Reed." This is a nice tribute to his Honour’s capacity for holding up law breakers and administering severe castigation on the lines adopted by Sir Charles Statham a year or two ago, when he surprised an intruder in his Dunedin garden, Dr. P. F. McEvedy, of Wellington, an old international footballer, is another who gave a burglar the surprise of his life. But not every light in the medical or legal professions is cast in heroic mould, and there is a bare possibility that it is Mr. Justice Reed who was lucky.