The Akaroa Mail, FRIDAY, OCTOBER 27, 1939. THE MAN WHO KNOWS

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume LXIV, Issue 6580, 27 October 1939, Page 2

The Akaroa Mail, FRIDAY, OCTOBER 27, 1939. THE MAN WHO KNOWS

jJERE in New Zealand though we are far from the centre of the war disturbances there are happenings which the ordinary person does not understand and most people realize that it is a war necessity that the ordinary citizen should be content to re-

main in ignorance of many strange happenings. Mr Hore-Beliska speaking recently stated that the thing most needed in the war is patience and part of that estimable virtue will have to be used in agreeing to the necessity for our ignorance of much that is going on. In Britain the patience of the ordinary man will be tried

much more severely as so many more mysterious happenings will be going on continuously and the public will have to be kept in ignorance lest any knowledge divulged will reach the ears of the enemy. In these times of forced ignorance there are people who claim to understand everything that is going on and infer that they have inside information. Everybody is acquainted with these "know-alls." They are trying at ordinary times, but in these days they are really exasperating as their friends are chafing to know the real facts and cannot, heip listening to the supposed explanations. An article in an English paper entitled '' The Man who Knows," gives an amusing account of the irritating claims to inside knowledge which these people make: "He is, it must be admitted, an asset to the community in these confusing times. Frontiers are closed; censors are at work; Europe, big with her own momentous destinies, is—if it is not irreverent to say so—egg bound. The news-bills tell us something,

but not much, the Press and the ■wireless tell us more, but still not ' everything. We should, in fact, live in a state of painful curiosity were it not for the man who knows. "He did yeoman service a year ago, and now he is back in harness again. His numbers have, if anything, increased and his stock of information is as varied (and as reliable) as ever. He has his ear to the ground, his finger on the pulse. He is, practically, the horse's mouth. It is really extraordinary how much he knows, for he does not claim to move in the very highest circles. He relies, rather, on a sort of informal (but absolutely reliable) intelligence system, a network of relatively humble ears and eyes which, without any effort to speak of on his part, fill up in his mind the blanks that exist in ours. The rest of us can only speculate about the identity of a passenger in one of the "mystery planes" which have been running so regularly recently, but there is no need for him to speculate. He knows, and is generously willing to share his knowledge with us. A friend of his sister's, it seems, has a cook who

is engaged to the actual attendant who carried the suitcase of the enigmatic visitor, who was, of course, Herr X. "Herr X!" we exclaim. "But what can his arrival portend?" This question, too, the man who knows is in a position to answer, for he has just been lunching (as it happens) with a man who has the next flat to the Ruritanian Commercial Attache,

whose Government's secret scrvice knew all about Herr X's visit days ago. We listen, spellbound, while the man who knows lays bare without emotion the tortuous workings of Weltpolitik. We dine out on the story for two nights, after which it transpires that the mysterious figure was not Herr X at all, but a Mr A, who was coming to London to have his teeth seen to.

"It might be thought that this would disillusion us, would impair our confidence in the man who knows. Not a bit of it. Events are moving too fast for that. Already we are hanging once more on the lips of one of his incarnations, whose cousin's gardener's son is an office boy in the Radish Marketing Board and who accordingly possesses some striking information about the Government's plans for makivg torpedo nets out of seakaie. It is indeed almost impossible—and dreadfully unkind—to criticize the man who knows. In a difficult time he supplies a need. He stimulates. Criticism, in any case, would not produce the slightest effect on him. It never has. It was, as some of us recall, his aunt's chaffeur (a very reliable man) who, on Perth Station, saw them sweeping the snow out of the. Russian troop trains in the last War. No ; the man who knows has had his setbacks and survived. To-day, for better or for worse, he is back in our ranks —back in harness, with his aunt, and her chaffeur, and (mutatis mutandis) the snow.''