MAKING OUR FLESH CREEP.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 263, 6 November 1929, Page 6

MAKING OUR FLESH CREEP.

The Pat Boy out of "Pickwick" jumped up in the somnolent atmosphere of the Legislative Council yesterday and tried to make members' flesh creep. He had evidently been reading a mixed and .highly indigestible diet of the "National Review," the Duke of Northumberland, and Mr. Edgar Wallace, and he suggested a lurid picture of the "red fool fury of the

Seine" that might spill over this fair land, if Mr. Wilford's Arms Amendment Bill was passed. Mi*. Wilford's proposals to relax the strictness of the Arms Act (and incidentally give his policemen more time for more important work) pleased everybody in the Lower House, but certain councillors, with the Communists in their mind, struck out the main operative clause. That itnder the Amending Bill the ban on "automatics" and revolvers remained, and there was still a cheek through dealers .on sales of firearms, did not satisfy councillors. The Hon. G. J. Garland asked what the police were paid to do, and advised them, if they wanted soft jobs, to get out of the force. This might be listed as the week's great thought. Most people think the police are paid to do something more useful than harrying OAvners of sporting guns. It only remains for Mr. Garland, when another unsolved crime mystery arrives, to ask indignantly what the police are about.