ON THE WATCH TOWER.

Evening Star, Issue 15072, 2 January 1913, Page 2

ON THE WATCH TOWER.

' ■» ■ [By Ariel.] Christmas always shed* a. revealing beam on woodfe£ officialdom. wSjich., being carved with its *&& open, cannot possibly wink—at the ngM time. The means of travel miiet have a special strain put on them on public holidays, especially on return trips, when everybody wants to get home by the same tram or boat. That is the time when people with bowels and brains wink. It is for the public to choose between the small inconvenience of a crush and the intolerable hardship of a. two hours' wait for a return boat. A grandmotherlv Government, under the pretence' of protecting us from inconvenience, becomes the petty tyrant of our holidays, and inflicts positive hardships; and agitators and Socialist cranks get at the capitalist by not allowing him to take us home when we are desperately anxious to go. He catches the capitalist's tail, and nips it by dashing »ur head violently against the post; and ive, bred to the worship of law, submit lamely, instead of kicking the law and its makers over the horizon. In New Zealand ill the real people suffer no end of oppression for the protection of a few imaginary people. The bearing of these observations lies in the application on 'em ; likewise it lies on the Peninsula wharves on Boxing Night and other joyous holidays of this ffee community. ******* . There is occasionally a fearful ironv in the tragedies of life. It seems as if 'they watched, poised in air, for an opportunity to swoop down on ns with a double effect of torture and mockery. 0 father, wheresoe'er thou be, Who pledgest now thy gallant son, A shot, ere half thv draught be done. Hath stilled the life that beat from thee, 0 mother, praying God will save Thy sailor, while thy head is bow'd His heavy-shotted hammock shroud Drops in hi 6 vaet and wandering grave. A Dundee mother had jnst filled the stockings of her darlings on Christmas Eve, and stood musing in the kitchen over the jov of the morning, when Bob and Meg and Alec and Jean should wake and find themselves rich beyond the dreams of avarice. A happy smile was on her face, for she had denied herself to fill these stockings. Once she had feared that she would not be able to manage it, but at last the hour has come and the thing is done. The bairns will be as happy as a king. Thank G . The wall of the adjoining factorv fell like an avalanche, and crushed the" cottage and the children, but the wretched mother was rescued from the ruins to spend her Christmas brooding on Bob and Meg and Alec and Jean.

******* A Miss Gawthorp, struck with the success of the hunger strikes in gaol, conceived the luminous if not logical idea that a -universal hunger 6trike of women would bring about their speedy enfranchisement! There were two defects in the reasoning. The strike in gaol was effective because the strikers were- fanatics, and because the Government were unwilling to give them the crown of martyrdom. These conditions do not emerge in the universal strike. There is, first, a dearth of fanatics who prefer notoriety and a vote to their dinner; and, nest, there is a. dearth of those who care twopence whether you have your dinner or not, so long as they are not responsible for keeping you alive. No, no, miss; martyrdom with nobody looking on, with no camera snapping, and no reporter inquiring, is not worth living for. When yon propose to submerge the notorious few IB the ocean of unheard-of women, you take »way all human incentive. You were mad to propose it; and yet there was method In your madness, for I see you intended to start your national fast oil Christmas Xight! There was human nature in that, I allow. You guessed that the average woman might be like the immigrant who said he would be blowed if he'd leave the ship before he'd had his Christmas dinner. That was well bethought. One last—er—blow out, and then a long and last farewell! It is remarkable how many people can think in heroics about fasting after an abnormal feed!

.* * * * -ft'.' * * Mr Keir Hardie, though a great temperance man, is prepared to advocate a strike to assert the right of the working classes to get drunk in their leisure time. It would certainly be a noble cause for which to plunge the nation into disorder, and it would exhibit to the world a lofty ideal M a popular holiday.- The Patagonians believe the bliss of the hereafter will consist of being eternally drunk in the caves of their ancestral deities. The ideal seems not to be wholly confined to Patagonia, lhe legal .fraternity appear to find great difficulty in defining drunkenness. Even bir Robert Stout once gave a judgment which seemed to mean that a man was not drunk so long as be could swallow any more. Under such a rule the accused would wish to be put to the test there and then and often. A non-professional once told me that he did not consider a man was drunk till he could neither sit, stand, I lie, nor hold on by the grass. In England j a definition seems to be wanting too. and a special Commissioner has even been ap- ! pointed to find that a certain man was not drunk, so that 9,000 men could go on with their work. Now, for every-day purposes I hold that a man is drunk "when he is not fit to be trusted in his employment. 'Punch 1 has a nervous passenger who remarks anxiously "The train is surely going at an unusual rate!" "Yes," Tejoiri6 a cheery woman, "my Bill's a-drivin'; and when he's got a, drop in he can make her go." Now, Bill may not have beeAi drunk enough to satisfy 9,000 men, but the public have a right to object to his </ven having * "drop in." ******* On the abstract question Mr Hardie is, perhaps, right. The employer has no right to control men when they are not at work._ Whether they go to the pub or to the pictures in their leisure is, no business of his. Yet if men spend their leisure in pursuits that unfit them for their job, earely he has a say in the matter. If a man is employed at a brewery and spends his leisure in promoting No-license, will he keep hie job? If a man is in a position of trust, and has never defrauded his employer, but is discovered to be spending his evenings in robbing orchards and lienroosts, will not .the way he spends his leisure interfere with his "job? The habit of the hours of leisure is apt to put in avery inconvenient appearance in working hours. Of no habit is this more true than of the liquor habit. The pitcher goes oft to the well, "but at last it is broken. For vears a drinking driver may be 6ober at his work, but at last there comes a day when he is "under the influence" and makes an unholy wreck of the train entrusted to his care. No employer, with a proper sense of responsibility, can take the risk of putting trains in the charge of such a man. Even if he never drank when on duty, which is an impossible supposition, he "will often be in a state of nervous unfitness for his exacting duties because of the indulgence of the day before. I do not think that the men of "this country, at all events, will ever strike for the right of getting drunk. If they do, it will be their last strike for a long time. *******

An engine-driver, after Iris evidence at the inquest on a person killed by his train near Timaru, told the Magistrate that the foolhardiness and absolute recklessness of some people in crossing the line in front of a traiE bad to be seen to be belj«*e<i. "A chauffeur, who either had no number on his car or else had hj covered up, deliberately passed immediately in front of the train that morning, and then turned around and waved his hand defiantly at the engine-driver. This was an instance of the sort of people who had to be contended with." Of course, an engine-driver is made of superior stuff, and may not be subject to the temptations that would overtake me. He would recognise that, if the other fellow had no sense, he must show a double stock of it himself to make up for the other fellow's deficiency. He would never think of racing for the crossing. He has the right of way, and the other fellow tries to flout him "by snatching it from'under his nose. When the fool gets across six inches ahead of the cowcatcher he turns and ~'

Puts his thumb unto* his ncse And spreads his fingers out. I tell you-frankly that, being made of flesh and blood, I, "Ariel," would be grievously tempted to put on steam and show him whether he could get there first ov not without my consent. But I don't suggest that an engine-driver ever feels wicked like that.

* * * * * * * Tha high explosive is a booh to civilisation. It aids the engineer in his titanic undertakings. It was the basis of the great Nobel fortune, which gives princely prizes to those who lead the world's progress, including those who do most to serve the cause of peace. But the high explosive has the defects of its qualities, i for it arms the fanatic with a force that Satan, in the Book of Job, or in Milton's war in Heaven, might have envied. Indeed, dynamite and its relatives belong to the pi-g-Satanic or to the millennial era. and should never have strayed into this age of imperfect men, among whom the sight of means to do ill deeds makes ill deeds done. There is a dignity about the assassir ation of Cresa- which would have been lacking if Brutus had stood on a housetop and thrown a bomb at him. TheJßook of Judges tells how Ehud went to King Eglon and gave him a "message from God. ' Ehud was a mighty man, but ar.y cur could have thrown a bomb. That is. perhaps, the worst side of dynamite ; it gives power to mere weeds, and allows unreason to express itself in thunder and lightning. Judith is a heroic, figure—a Jewish Lady Macbeth, moved by unselfish motives. I see her in my mind's eye cheering the depressed garrison of her countrymen by lifting the head of Holofernes out of her food bag, in which she had brought it from the enemy's camp! If Judith had had a bomb, and had condescended to use it, she would have been an object of contempt. (For the uninitiated, I may add that Judith has a book tc herself in the Apocrypha.) *******

The President-elect of tho LTnited States has had his life threatened before he assumes office, and has taken refuge in a British colony—" the still vexed Bermoothes." It is his last chance of getting out of the countrv for some years, for the President is forbidden bv the Constitution to set foot on a foreign strand. There is a legal fiction, however, to the effect that a U.S.A. warship is part of the country, so that covers Mr Taft's visit to the Panama Canal, which is also on U.S. territory. The explosion at the Canal is being explained away, but we may take the explanation with a grain of salt. The place was ''mighty convaynient," as Pat "said, and though it was adding injury to insult to try to blow up a defeated man, that is a consideration that would not appeal to bomb-throwing vermin. To kill someone who dares to be prominent is tho whole duty of man in their eyes. The suffragette £ind of outrage is a species of advertisement so far, but they are inflaming weak minds, and Heaven knows what will happen. *******

I wish my readers a Happy New Year, though 1913 sounds unlucky. We shall have enlightened citizens dating their correspondence 1912 pins 1, or 1912 a, as the freethinking French number their houses. It may encourage some to remember that 1813 was not an unlucky vear for the British nation. It was then 'that the back of Napoleon was broken, and the ports of Europe were again opened to our trade. Others will find it ominous that the "Resurrection of Germany " took place in that same year. Yet our fathers looked upon that event as >i most happy augur-.-, m,d subsidised it liberally. How "strangely Campbell's ; Ode to the Germans' reads now: The spirit of Britannia Invokes, across the main. Her sister Alemannia To burst the.tyrant's chain. By our kindred blood, she cries, • Rise, Alemannians, rise, And hallowed thrice the band Ot our kindred hearts shall be W T hen your land shall be the land Of the free—of the free!