WHEN LITTLE BOYS FIGHT.

Auckland Star, Volume LVI, Issue 53, 4 March 1925, Page 8

WHEN LITTLE BOYS FIGHT.

WHAT SHOULD A WOMAN DO ? LUNCH-HOUR "MILL" IN ELLIOT STREET. It looked like a dreadful accident or a bad runaway at the least. People from all over were running towards Elliot Street. Carts stopped, pedestrians halted. All eyes were turned to something evidently exciting that was going on in Elliot Street. A reporter rushed to the scene and speculated on the nature of the calamity that could be attracting the lunch-hour crowd in such numbers, or as much of it as could see along Elliot Street, or could see others gazing intently along that thoroughfare. When one got to the corner of Victoria and Elliot Streets and looked along one searched in vain for the cause of the intense interest. It looked like another April the First joke. But suddenly one caught sight of two tiny figures right in the middle of the roadway, just about half-way between Victoria Street and Wellesley Street.

Barefooted, coatless ancl hatle=s, they were going at it hammer and tongs. What round it was no one could rightly tell, for the whole thing was one long round with no gong, no watches, no towels, and no corners. It was most willing, however, and the extent of the ring did not detract from the interest — it merely gave the man on the defensive more scope for his footwork. Grey shirt was well over 11. the right-hand kerb, and black shirt, with a fe.v well-directed body blows, etc., etc., as they say at the Town Hall. Poor little grey shirt was getting decidedly the. worst of it when a big carter rushed in and separated the two by grabbing black shirt. Another big carter grabbed grey shirt, and after putting him on his feet, pushed him good-naturedly but emphatically into the mill again, just as one encourages the "animal that is getting the worst of it in a dog-fight. What the result was one could not see from the end of the street, but apparently both youngsters had had enough, and even the kindly-meant encouragement of the carters could not prolong the contest, for in a few seconds black shirt and grey shirt were scuttling away in opposite directions.

The real interest in the incident was the amazingly quick time in which a crowd collected. There must have been nearly a thousand men, women and children looking on. And there was the most astonishing unanimity in letting the contest go the full number of rounds. A few years ago there would have been half a dozen distressed females rushing in to prevent the little dears killing one another, but this lunch-hour scrap was watched by office girls with no more emotion than they evince when they powder their noses in the sereet, "What's the matter?" asked one thing of another young thing who was a bystander, "Oh," said the bystander, "two kiddies having a go!" and she emiled a smile that would have called forth from her Early Victorian grandmother the epithet "unfeeling hussy!!" What is the cause of this difference in the attitude of the women to a street fight ? Were the Early Victorians milk-sops? Are the women of to-day becoming more frankly primitive? And which attitude is the correct one for a woman or a girl when two little bare-footed boys start a •'mill , in the middle of the street?