FROM THE WATCH TOWER

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 533, 10 December 1928, Page 8

FROM THE WATCH TOWER

By “THE LOOK-OUT MAN.” THEY KNOW THEIR ON/PAN An omniscient publication informs us that: “Thousands of decomposing onions have been washed up on the beach at Skegness during a storm.” Times past, one banked on siccct ozone, the ocean-breath of health . Whose concentrated oxygen did good as if by stealth. But there is nought of modesty where—rich and ripe and free — The odour of the onion roves the beaches by the sea. Strong men turn pale, the weakly faint, young infants wilt by scores, The sterner bather peys his nose, and strides about the shores : And ambulances ply their trade, pluck victims from, the sand While the odour of the onions causes weeping by the strand. BUN-STROKE An Auckland doctor states that the cult of sun-bathing can be overdone. Not on days like yesterday, aver hundreds of disappointed sun-worship-pers. THE FIRST “WANT ADC Mention the other day of the advanced advertising methods practised in New York has called forth the following as the original of all newspaper advertising. The plaintive appeal was published .in a paper called “The Moderate” in 1649. Reader, thou art entreated to inquire after a blackish and kind of piebald Nag. Very poor. As to the face, feet, and flank, he is white, and has a little white tip to the tail. Wall eyes. He hath a hurt on the further buttock, and doth both rack and trot, and is very fleet and full of mettle. Some 14 handful high, and about six years old. Stolen from grass, March 17, 1648, from one John Rotheram, of Hertfordshire, 16 miles from London. Who will inquire, find him out, and make stay of him, and bring or send tidings of him, shall have what they can or will desire for their pains. Nothing in the “agony column" of a twentieth century daily could be more poignant than that. THE TON CIS Dead men and hanged Chinese tell no tales. Nor do mystery men, whether Celestials or otherwise, come to light . with contradictions after it has been publicly asserted that they were accessories to a murder. So it looks as though the “Daily Express,” with its “story” about the Chinese Tong and the' vengeance it compelled a young bridegroom to exact, is on safe ground. Whether or not the yarn has any solid backing, it is true on general lines that Tong wars are a grim reality of Chinese life. A member of The Sun staff, pursuing his occupation in San Francisco, once ran into a Tong war in the Chinatown of that city. In what is variously known as the North Beach or Barbary Coast section of ’Frisco, one of the most picturesque yet sinister in the world, Tong wars occasionally break out with violence. Implacable little men pepper each other with revolver bullets’ across the streets, and on a quiet night the shots might even be heard in the business quarter of the city, hardly ten minutes’ walk away. The newspaper man who enjoyed this first-hand experience of a Tong war cannot look at a Chinese laundry ticket without a shudder.

TO THE WRECKERS H.M.A.S. Melbourne, which has just been consigned to the shipbreakers, Is remembered because, although she did not fire a shot in, any of the big actions of the war, she participated later in one of the most spectacular and dramatic episodes in nautical history. This was the rescue of 22 people, including two women and a boy, from the sinking schooner Helen B. Sterling, which had been caught in a cyclone off the Three- Kings. Crackingon all speed, the Melbourne reached the battered windjammer when she was on the point of foundering. A cutter was launched into the angry seas, and the cruiser stood off half a mile while the rescue from the sinking ship to the cutter was effected by the breeches buoy method. The captain could not swim, and the second mate heroically remained on board until his skipper was safe, after which he dived into_ the water, to be picked up by the cutter. A few hours later the steamer Opawa arrived on the scene, and in wirelessing her congratulations to the cruiser, mentioned that there was no hope whatever of saving the Sterling, which was never seen again. The Melbourne came on to Auckland. It was her first visit to New Zealand, but her associations with this country’s interest had begun long before, first of all when she shelled the high-powered German radio station on Nauru, in which New Zealand has now a share, and later when she helped the Sydney, Minotaur, and the Jap. ship Ibuki, to convoy the first draft of New Zealand and Australian troops to Egypt,