RANDOM SHOTS

Auckland Star, Volume LV, Issue 170, 19 July 1924, Page 18

RANDOM SHOTS

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What has passed in Three weeks. No, Horace, I cannot credit at all the report that a City Councillor has been seen riding in a motor bus. The clock at the top of Symonds Street still points to 12.15. Evidently I"a land where it is always afternoon." Wednesday was a red-letter day. The All Blacks won the third test, and the Allied Conference on Reparations opened in London. An excited critic describes the New Zealand Court at Wembley as "ludricious." Another case, I suppose, of thoughts being too deep for words. An Auckland child has produced a new version of the Fifth Commandment. She came home the other day and announced that she had been told, "Humour thy father and thy mother." This variant, however, is widely observed. "All tho squeaking in the world will not get it done now," says the Minister for Public Works of the new Rangiriri Road. Is the Minister's heart so hard that it remains unmoved even by the last squeaks of those who disappear beneath the Rangiriri mud? lie sinks Into thy depths with bubbling groan. Without a i-'rave, unknelled, uncofflned, and unknown. According to one of the distinguished American doctors who was here early in the year, if a commission had been appointed two hundred years ago to pick the most favoured lands on earth it Mould have chosen New Zealand and Australia. "Why drag in Australia?" asks tbe New Zealander. "Why drag in New Zealand?" asks the Australian. But if such a commission had so reported, no doubt its report would have been pigeon-holed and forgotten. The crowd that watched the All Blacks' first match in Sydney was so delighted nt the novel sight of a player helping another player to "•Lis feet that it applauded loudi... Evidently there are some people in Sydney who "take their football very seriously, like the Irishman who, in choosing a spot from which to watch a steeplechase, said, as a recommendation, "We'd be apt to be seeing a corpse here." Such Sydneyites would be disappointed at the tameness of a game in which men were so effeminate as to help opponents, and I presume they went north to see the League game in Brisbane, where there were free fights, and the police had to be called in. Some of tho things that are done in the name of sport aro almost as curious as some of those done in the name of liberty. ! I have been sent a picturesque leaflet about the proposed park at Stanley Bay, with a letter asking for a little "moral support" in this column. Thank you very much! ,A professional humo-' rist—l mean one who tries to be a humorist —must feel a few inches taller when his column is taken so seriously. 1 gladly give a few lines to this attempt to make the desert—or, rather, the mudflat —blossom like the rose. One or two of tho arguments used against the scheme are quaint. One is that if this park is made, people from other parts of Auckland will use it. Dreadful! Aucklanders on the south side of the harbour had better bar the North Shore people from the Domain and Eden Park. In return for this compliment from the promoters of the park, I make the suggestion that a statue of Zamiel be erected on the ground—a thing of beauty and a joy for ever. What is he like? Exercise your imagination. Mr. Massey is the Big Chief of New Zealand, hut there are some visitors to the Palace of Arts at the Wembley Exhibition who may to-day be under the erroneous impression that he is a tattooed warrior, still liable to go on the warpath bedecked in a dressed flax mantle and flourishing a taiaha. And this all owing to the trick of some wag. possibly an attendant weak in ethnology. A letter received by this week's mail by lan Auckland resident from a friend at I present in England contains the follow- [ ing passage: "I was at the Wembley Exhibition last Tuesday, and while I I was in the Palace of Arts I noticed the head of a Maori chief in bronze, and round its neck was a string, to which was attached an official card. Judge of my astonishment upon going closer to read the inscription to sec the words. 'The Right Hon. \V. F. Massey. Prime Minister!'" I have no doubt that many visitors thought it was a genuine likeness of our own William. Do not we call our football team the All Blacks': "I lliink it is monstrous," said a member of the "Manawatu A. and P. Association at a meeting the other day. What was monstrous? Cruelty to dumb animals, robbing a till, or public recitations by small children? None of these tilings. What was monstrous was giving policemen tea during the show. Rome, woman had given the gate-keepers tea, then extended the hospitality to the police, nnd billed the Association. .But why shouldn't a policemen be given tea — unless he is an English policeman and prefers beer? The objecting member of the Association probably had half a dozen teas every day during the Show. I should say the objection was more monstrous than the entertainment; but not so monstrous as this misuse of a strong and honourable word. Someone in Christehurch wants to know something that has puzzled most of us. The statement is sometimes made at inquests; and in obituary notices, that "the operation was successful." He asks, in a letter to the "Press," how an operation can bo considered successful if the patient dies immediately afterwards. "Why not revise the matter and say: 'An operation was skilfully performed, but did not have the desired effect,' or merely 'was not successful'? If a gardener transplants a tree and it dies, would he say he was successful?" I take it that when a doctor says the operation has been successful he means that he lias removed the cause of the patient's trouble, and that whether the patient lives or dies is another matter, but the usual way of expressing this docs look contradictory. You very rarely find it stated that an operation was unsuccessful. The contradiction has been observed on a larger field than the human body. The Bolshevik revolution in Russia was a successful operation in the opinion of the operators—hut the patient died.