NEWS OF THE DAY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 14, 17 January 1940, Page 6

NEWS OF THE DAY.

Small Stamps Please! "Six twopenny stamps, small ones, plca.s<>.'' wa.-i (lie unusual request made at tho Auckland Hiief Ollk-e the other day. However, the demand was not quite so strange a* may at first appear, for the purchaser was distinguishing between the ordinary twopenny stamp and the larger special Centennial issue. Tar on Roads. A niotnii.-t applied to the IForowliemia County Council for compensation for dislijjiiri'iiieiit of his car from wet tar placed on the mad in the course of spra\injr l>y tho county employees. The ( (Hinty Council disclaimed any liability, as straying in summer is a necessary work and the onus U on the motorist to drive in Mich a manner as to cause the least po>>ilile injury to hi* car. Worth a Decoration. "Flying weather here ir~ ihe worst ever," writes a Xcw Zealand pilot in tho Royal Air Forco to his parents, in Dunedin, "and we take off with ceilings of 400 ft as a matter of routine. Some of the raids over Germany must have been carried out in atrocious conditions. You probably read in tho papers of a. New Zealand pilot who Hew a Wliitby back, from (Jermany with cloud down to 20011 and half his wing blown off. That was , who was al Wigrani with me, and if he doesn't get a Distinguished Flying (rwa for it. I'll eat my hat. -. Gift of Hay Unharvested. Fortv-lhi , acres of grass liny which .Mr. V. .1. Mucker, of Motumstoho. offered to the AVaikato Council of Primary Production ten days njjn uas still not harvested at the beginning of the week, reports a !Morrin~ville correspondent. Mr. Mucker said that he had heard nothing further from tho (iovcniment authorities, and lie intended visiting Hamilton to interview the organiser of the Waikato Council of Primary Production., Previously he had been told that tho National Council had no authority to incur the expenditure of £100 for harvesting this hay. He hud already made enough luiy for his own cuttle, but owing to the abnormal growing season he has 45 acres of the back portion of his farm shut up and ready for harvesting. A point mentioned by Mr. Mucker when lie tirst communicated his offer to the Waikato Council of Primary Production is that his farm is only 12 miles from the Ruakura Farm of Instruction, which is run by the Department of Agriculture. The haymaking machinery from Kiiakura could bo used to harvest the 45 acres.

Must Be Tough.

For alpine climbing considerable stamina is required, not solely to enable a person to scale rugged heights without suffering distress, but to enable

easy conveyance of heavy pucks of gear and food along rough ways only infrequently trodden by man. These parks naturally vary in weight, a great deal depending on the period of time a base camp will be. used, but the average i« somewhere between "(111) and !H)lb-—m> light weight, even for an athletic young man to carry liny distance. A party of alpinists in a certain Isolated valley in north-western Otago received something of a shock during the recent holidays. Packing (and verbally protesting against) gome 751b apiece, they trudged along a valley floor and suddenly encountered another climber. This individual was a man of 55, who carried a pack of 1251b! For Patriotic Funds. The example set by the principal of a girl* , secondary school of sending a monthly cheque to the National Patriotic Fund Board in Wellington, representing a contribution from her of 1/ a day, is being followed by others. In a note received recently an Auckland man sent £1, and intimated his intention of sending a similar sum each month. -The note was written in ink across a Post Otfice greetings telegraph form. It read: "To the. National Patriotic Board, please find enclosed £1. I want to send that every month while the war lasts. Oblige by sending me some addressed envelopes." Children alfio are doing their bit, as the letter from the mother of one little girl shown. This letter came from Beachlands, a seaside resort in the Manukau county, 32 miles from Auckland. The mother wrote: "Please find enclosed a postal note. I hope you will be able to cash it. It was sent to my little girl for Christmas, and she wishes you to have it. We have not too much ourselves, but will help the fund if possible." Over-the-Fence Tactics. Strong exception was taken by the chairman of the management committee of the Wellington Cricket Association, Mr. J. H. Phillipps, at a meeting of the committee, to the action of the National Broadcasting Service in having broadcast commentaries on the Phinket Shield matches from a house overlooking the Basin Reserve after it had declined to accept an offer from the association of the right to broadcast commentaries of both matches for £2-">. "It leaves sportsmen amazed that a great State Department, in order to avoid the payment of ,£25, had to resort to such tactics, ,, added Mr. Phillipps. "We can only congratulate those sports bodies whose grounds are enclosed from prying eyes, It looks very much as if the broadcasting service was pilfering our rights in connection with cricket, which always contrives to keep the price of admission down to the lowest. I consider we should record our entire disapproval of tin* manner in which the broadcasting service obtained its broadcast of the Phinket Shield matches at the Basin Kiwerve." It was decided to refer the matter to the Minister in charge of Broadcasting. Naval Achievement. In commending tint decision of the Auckland City Council to commemorate the slture of H.M.S. Achillea in the defeat of the (ierman pocket battleship Admiral (iraf Spee by naming the headland beyond St. Holier's, and immediately cast of Ladies' Bay, "Achilles Point," ihe Minister of Health and Kducation, the Hon. P. Fraser, speaking at the civic reception tendered him in t lie Town Hall concert chamber yesterday afternoon, spoke of the magnitude of the British naval achievement. He suid that the fight with the Admiral Graf Spee would go down in history as one of the most notable of sea battles. Its outcome had not been anticipated by any naval authority. It had been estimated that two Sin-gun cruisers might be able to chock- a ('Senium pocket battleship, and that three of them might defeat it. It had never crossed the mind of the most optimistic expert, however, that one Sin and two (iin-guu cruiser* would tackle .-uch a ship and succeed. It was a great achievement. mid those who knew Captain W. K. Carry and liis modest eflieieney could understand the part played by him ami his men on H.M.S. Achilles.

Women Want to Swim. Adults have ni»hed the Learn-to-Swim Campaign which opened in Christchurch at the Tepid Bath on Monday. All the flashes for the first three weeks and the two evening classes in the fourth week were hooked out on the first day. Bookings for the day -totalled 004, made up of 211 women and 93 mon. Admission to the bath is free, and tuition is free, the expenses being met liy a New Zealand Swimming , Council allocation from the Government grant of £HM)O. Recruiting Campaign. Three specialised committees have been set up by the executive and finance sub-committee of the Metropolitan Patriotic Committee to assist the Auckland recruiting: campaign, A grant of .CI f>o has been made towards the regimental funds of the second echelon and one of !;.")(> fo.r gun crews on mercantile vessel*. The committees appointed will deal with publicity, canvawsing and meetings. The canvassing committee will arrange visits to factories, workshops, warehouses and dances. The meetings committee will concern itself with all outdoor activities, including sports gatherings. Those Army Pants! They love the Army. The recruit of 1040 iinds that the bullying, abusjve sergeant who was the terror of the '•rent War soldier has departed, giving place d> a mail who drives his men just as hard, lint liy different means. He gets (lie same hard work out of his ex-civilians, who got tin; *ame weary bodies and aching limbs for the first week or two, until they are "toughened up.' . The men at the various camps in New Zealand all come back on their leave declaring that the life is great. Jlere is an extract from one letter received from a Xguruawahia trainee: "I feel as if I had always belonged to the Army, in spile of a pair of khaki denims made In fit a posterior twice the size of mine.' . He goes on: "This is the only lif«> worth living. Il's hard—but a. welcome rest from the worries of work in civil life. . . . Our platoon is, of course, the best in camp. . . . The tucker i,s good—l never remember enjoying a hot dinner better than my first here. . . . The beer before was even bettor! ,, ITe goes on to say that "all the time I am running into crowds of people I know. ... I reckon it's going to be norne life." The letter probably isn't extraordinary—there have beon thousand* of others like it. Of such men is Xew Zealand's Second Kxpeditionary Force. The Nazti Aggressor Again! A motorist's ire is quite unlike that of any other citizen in a British community. When he is in the right—and, needless to add, when isn't he?—he rises up in his just wrath and launches a tine spin of rhetorical abuse against the other party, which may, or may not, according to the depth of his veneer of civilisation, contain invective in varying degrees of colourfulness. Judge, therefore, of the feelings of a motorist who, with a mind utterly at peace with the world walked up to his car in a city street yesterday afternoon to find another car's bonnet nudging hi* own nice new shiny vehicle, a long series of dents and scratches showing where the collision hud taken place. Judge, further, of his wrath when ho saw no owner of the offending car at hand on whom he could ventilate his views. The colliding car had slipped its brake* and run from the other side of the street, without anyone in it, across to where the shiniest and newest ear stood innocently and correctly parked against the far kerb. It must have gathered a fair s'peed to have achieved such a creditable amount of damage on its victim, and remained at a standstill, with its bonnet tucked into the rear wheel of the parked ear, its tail sticking far out into the roadway, to the no small annoyance of passing traffic. A final touch, which was not lost upon the almost apoplectic owner of the parked car, was that the offender was a German make of car! Death in the Storm. This is a tale" of tragedy. In fact, it is a tale of two tragedies—no, of three tragedies—who started this business, anyway? It all began with the worm. Everybody knows it's been a hard life for worms, this long summer drought, and when the rains came (a* Louis KroinfiVld would have it), all the little earthworms rejoiced exceedingly. So that Willie was far too thirsty to pay any attention to mama's injunction to "watch for birds, my dear!" He had a lovely time, wriggling through the moist grass in the way that have when it rains after a drought, until ISill the Blackbird, who hadn't seen any worms for weeks, espied happy little Willie the Worm and gleefully pounced. Now conies the cat. Xing, the grey and white half -Persian, was a beautiful and popular cat with his family—hut he loved blackbirds. And Xing had watched this particular blackbird, «afe on his high boughs, far too many times to let this opportunity .slip. So Xing pounced. A (lurry of feathers, shrill squawks and feline growls denoted where the unequal struggle took place. The -shrills grew less, an<l the cat began to play with the bird. Tie played for a good half-hour before. Nemesis stalked him in his turn. You see. there was a storm the other night. The wind screamed and the old tree bent—and crashed. Poor old Xing went the way of Willie the Worm and Bill the bad bold Blackbird, and the family mutinied him appropriately next morning. The tale was unfolded in its entirety when an amateur Sherlock Holmes got to work Oil the battlefield.