THE PASSING SHOW.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 255, 27 October 1928, Page 8

THE PASSING SHOW.

(By THE MAN ABOUT TOWN.) j Gentlemen engaged in the making of! money may be temporarily disturbed by tho news that the Bank of England and other printers of bank and NOTE MONEY. Treasury notes are making it more difficult to produce forgeries of tliein. Fine and intricate designing and wonderful printing will apparently make copying a despair to the crooked experts. One wonders, however, if superlative craftsmanship will really end the circulation of forged notes, for the common user of paper piopey is npt an expert, and a crook note might circulate with great freedom before it got to a bank or other expert, whq would instantly spot the difference between it and real ipqney. In short, the bulk of humanity is so unused to handling notes of many denominations that an average man would l>e just as likely to accept a tea coupon nicely done wjth the requisite figures as a fifty-pound note. Most ordinary people, suddenly preseuted with a "fifty,'' would be so paralysed with joy as to affect the eyesight. Some crooks from abroad h« v ® recently been operating quite successfully with a relatively crude plant, deceiving Aussies to' the tung of many thousands. Revives tlje ipemqry pf Russian paper money. Russians, who are the world's finest bank note priqtprs, issued incredible millions of them during the curreucy impasse occasioned by the war, people payiqg for a shoe shine or a currant bun with notes of the pqpiinal yalue of ten thousand rqijbles. Ope yoppg Aucklapder, who had escaped out of Russia together with his Russiau wife, presented his local friends with fortunes aggregating millions of roubles. Lovely things to jqok at, a pound weight of them being equal ill value tq a pound of sugar.

PERSONALITY Of THE WEEK.

The Right lleverpnd C. West-Watson, D.D.. Bishop of Chrjstchurch. succeeded in that diqeese the Most Reverend Pr. Julius, Primate of New Zealand. Dr. QP West-Watson had already CSRIfTCHURCH. been a bishop for twelve years in a West of England diocese, find lie brought to !>is task in New Zealand culture, digiiity and spirituality. He is able to create and maintain an atmosphere of quiet reverence, and iji Auckland recently, prior to the holding of Synod, instituted a Quiet Day of preparation. It |s known that the clerical ''family" of Dr. West-Watson is a happy one, and that the laity of his diocese reflect tins satisfaction. Mentioned, apropos the colony of .apes on the steamer Kqsama on a previous Voyage, that the average mortality of monkeys pboard ship is fifteen per cent. As it appears tliat. many APES. travelling piopkeys arp travelling for the health of liii||ia|iity and not for their own, it is as well to die of homesickness as vivisection. Monkeys Bre so grotesquely human that they sometimes Commit suicide by leaping overboard, for the jungle born never understands the spa, and it scarps them to self-destruction. This peculiarity is shared by some busli-bprn human beings. A man brought up in the Kever?never of Darkest Africa and suddenly confronted with an illimitable expanse of water wants to climb the sky to get awav from it. One such person, at last persuaded to go aboard a steamer, on the voyage sneaked about with his hands over his eyes, and hid in sheer terror. Later on he got so extremely scared that he went overside, but happily (or unhappily, as the case may have been) "a herpic fireman wept over, too, mid hung on till Baviaaii was picked up. Nobody wanted him for vivisection, and he was allowed to die of pneuiiioni;i. lhat amusing genius and chapeaugraphist, Winston vChurchill, disdaining party phonography (the only system known to our own politicians), lately told his NATURE'S constituents a fable of , WEAPONS, the zoo. The animals he|d a disarmament conference, ami each species, while agreeing that the other fellow's horns or teeth were barbarous and objpctjonable, declared his own "arms" to be natural, justifiable and admissible. Winnie, with true art, left the application of the fable to the imagination of his hearers. But despite Winnie's amusing comparison between the lower animals and the higher, he did not sav how much fairer a rhinoceros or a cobra is than man. The horns, teeth and hide of the rhino are part of him. Pb doesn't hide in a bomb-proof shelter seven or seventy miles from the foe and bplt blazes out of him without seeing him. The tiger isn't much of a sport, and he will collect t|ip lanib who hasn't got a hopp, but lie's a saint to a Christian general who couldn't knock a wafer off a plate personally, but who will wipe out a whole town, women, children and all. If the lower animals and the higher were on "all fours" man would continue to fight with the arms that Nature served out to him- A war on natural lines would be all the fun of tile fail". You see, Marshal Foch, pitted against Gene Tunney, wouldn't have a ghost of a hope. Science would descend to mere brutality, a kindlier brutality than blowing the other chap up before breakfast, or starving him and his tp death in a beleaguered city. There is no analogy, Winnie! Suppose you make human war a bestial affair; nothing bqt natural Weapons, the human fists! M.A.T. will back Tom Heenev against Colonel Winston Churchill of the Hussars every time. CHAOTICS, It may not bp for years, but it'§ sure to come: Insurnntueaaop Superannuation. And when the task is done, the last "Please Explain" settled and the travelling bag prei aentedi *9*y the Civil servart, become a 1