THE PASSING SHOW.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 185, 6 August 1932, Page 8

THE PASSING SHOW.

(By THE MAN ABOUT TOWN.) "These myriad names carved in stone and printed in almost endless pages must be no mere Book of the Dead, but they must be the opening chapter in a new THEIR NAME Book of Life, a LIVETH. tion to guide a be civilisation from whicn war will be banished and in which national bitterness; selfishness and greed shall nee abashed."—The Prince of Wales, in unveiling the Thiepval Memorial. In unknown graves they take their rest Along the Western Front, . rn _„ They sleep in peace where once they strove And bore the battle's brunt. Thev gave their all that peace should come, Nor thought the cost too high : Their challenge leaps across the years Let each to each draw nigh. Let bitter thoughts and selfish greed Be banished from each heart; We shall not then have died in vain, But played a glorious part. In unknown graves their bones decay And mingle with the du«t; In spirit still they live with ns Who share their sacred trust. In carven stone their names are set, Deep cut, and score on score, But in our hearts they live again, And shall for evermore. I T _ PERSONALITY OF THE WEEK.

Mr. Frank E. do Guerrier, chief engineer of the Auckland Transport Board, was born in London in 1873, and after schooldays began his professional life at the NO. 350. works of the Brush Electrical Engineering Company, pioneers in the electrical world. He attended Finsbury Technical College for four years. Ho spent several years in electrical light stations, beginning tramway work by electrifying the Swansea (South Wales) tramways for the British Electric Traction Company, undertaking later similar work at Gateshead and Tynemouth. Ho spent eighteen months professionally in Madrid and recalls with the keenest interest his five years in India with headquarters at Calcutta. Ho came to the Auckland Tramways Company in 1908. Ho is an ardent climber, and loves the wilds, having penetrated far a jungle in India, also climbing in Kashmir fifteen thousand feet. He has climbed Mount Cook, too, and knows tlio National Park and all the heights and beauties of Tongariro and Ngauruhoe intimately. Mr. do Guerrier is chairman of the committee-of tho Auckland Amateur Operatic Society and vice-prcsident of the Alpine Sports Club.

The pot of hell broth simmering in Bolivia I and Paraguay will probably hardly make the great heart of New Zealand miss a beat, the average idea being that MOTHER'S GUN. the South American Republics are several scraps of volcanic land inhabited by some stray "dagoes" of quick temper. The point the eabler makes is tha/t the women of Paraguay want war and are crying out for rifles to go and clean up old Bolivar's people. You'd think that the Bolivian senoritas would bo the keener of the two races, seeing that Bolivia has more than three million people in a country more than four times the size of New Zealand and that Paraguay has fewer than a million people in a country only two-thirds the size of these happy, warless islands. The Bolivian ladies are hardly the first ladies in history to demand rifles, for in the Great War the stalwart lasses of Russia formed armed battalions, even if they did not fight in the ranks. Mrs. Piet, of South Africa, actually did have a crack at the rooineks, and when Piet and Co. wore ordered to bring in their arms dozens of Mesdames Piet drove into Pretoria and handed up their rifles. It is fair to say that Japie's riflo was often about a hundred years old and that the modern Mauser remained on the dear old farm. There is ]io doubt whatever that Japie often took over the old man's rifle while Piet had a smoke, this being most noticeable at Paardeburg, the trenches of which were a family affair, with feather pillows and all. Even prattling babes would beg the loan of auntie's rifle to have a crack at the rooinek. So the ladles of Paraguay and the belles of Bolivia really may have mothers' meetings— and face powder.

The tall, stout man in the woolly overcoat, the neck comforter and the cosy gloves sat on a scat shivering over some snow pictures in his newspaper. He IT'S THE averred that it was unCLIMATE. necessary to trek south to achieve that Arctic feeling, the present Auckland winter conditions being sufficiently frigid. The twain considered the matter, the man with the woolly gloves declaring that he felt colder in an Auckland winter than in an Old Country ditto. It was suggested to him that one of the possible reasons was that ho was older and that his blood crept through his arteries at a slow march instead of at the double, but he, poor exile, mentioned that domestically we are illprovided against the winter blast, graphically illustrating the billows of linoleum that waved about in the breeze in his bungalow, and the impossibility of escaping the keen and nipping air blowing through the weather-boards, saying that in older and colder ■ countries they have not yet learned the art of placing the least possible resistance to the weather between the householder and the outer blast. The disconsolate one feared that he would not survive until the glad days when every timber tree was cut in New Zealand and the building fraternity had to fall back on draught-proof material. He mentioned, too, the objection of the population to the incineration of fuel, declaring that there is nothing so uncommon as a fire in a thousand houses he knows. Spoke of Canada also, where although the weatherboard is as common as in New Zealand, the Canadian citizen is not blown out of his fireside chair, the interspace between weatherboard and lining being filled solid and the floorboard? closed so that the sportive winter wind does not agitate the linoleum or wave the pictures on the wall. The disgruntled citizen, hoping to get warm, is thinking of joining the next South Polar expedition, when he will be able to live in a wind-proof igloo and eat blubber.