FROM THE WATCH TOWER

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1076, 13 September 1930, Page 8

FROM THE WATCH TOWER

By -THE LOOK-OUT MAN.” YACHTING POEM I hope that Shamrock lift’ The well-known cup will lift. MYSTERY A sceptical person, noting that Scotland Yard has recovered from a London railway cloakroom a consignment of Old Masters which were apparently awaiting shipment abroad, wants to know if those new pictures for the McKelvie Trust will be coming to Auckland, after all.. SCliO LA K' S (i JF TS There is a budding statesman among the Canterbury nominees for the Rhodes Scholarship. Richard John Seddon Bean is a son of Canon Bean, who married a daughter of the revered statesman. The lad may take after his grandfather, and become a very forceful and intellectual politician. What is perhaps more important is his talent as a batsman and slow bowler. In view of future cricket tours it would be well to have this promising material correctly moulded at Oxford. ENGLISH AS SPOKE The new office boy in a City firm noted for its dignity was showing a distressing tendency to use slang in his conversations with clients. Over the telephone or over the counter it was the same—his language was always freely sliced with colloqialisms like “jake,” “crook,” “cobber,” “goodoil,” and so on without end. At length the principal spoke to him reprovingly. “You use far too much slang, my boy,” he said, “and it must stop.” The boy was thoroughly chastened. “Yes, perhaps I do. But still” —and he brightened—“it will be all right when 1 get used to the dump.” THE POST ROAl) Having finally achieved a waterfront road, Auckland is now wondering what to call it. The Akarana Maori Association is to the fore with suggestions, but with all respect to the association its nominations to date don't seem very impressive. It is splendid in theory to have a name fraught with poetic Maori significance, but to gain wide practical application the name should be hung on some feature with which the public is familiar. For that reason “Hauraki Road” seems as good a name as any. In the meantime the splendid drive is having the finishing touches applied to it, partly in the form of painfully ugly square posts of concrete, which are being set all along the seaward side. Those posts have a certain honest ruggedness, but that is all. As an architect observed, they are “Public Works Poets,” and hence not cast in any artistic mould. II the Akarana Maori Association will submit a name meaning “the-road-disfigured-by-ugly-posts” its suggestion may be approved. DAST OHALLENGE International yacht-racing is the sport of kings and millionaires, but today the spotlight of publicity brings it within focus of popular attention. The contest for the America’s Cup is arousing nearly as much interest as the Grand National Steeplechase or the struggle for the Aslies. This will probably be Sir Thomas Lipton’s last challenge. The grand old sportsman is SO years old, and has sunk a fortune in his racing craft. Though a friend of princes and peers, the man who has done more than any other yachtsman to maintain the prestige of Britain in international yacht-racing is refused membership in the ultraexclusive Royal Yacht Squadron of Britain, and to make his challenge for the America’s Cup lias to enter it through a subsidiary organisation, the Royal Ulster Yacht Club. THE DUN RAVEN EPISODE King Edward VII. himself a personal friend of “Tommy” Liptou, is said to have made the most persistent endeavours to have the tea magnate admitted to the Royal Yacht Club One of the pillars of that organisation, by the way, was the Earl of Dunraven, whose challenge with Valkyrie for the America’s Cup in 3 895 had the effect of dragging British sportsmanship in the dust. After the first race the Earl alleged that the American yacht, Defender, had been ballasted to sink her four inches deeper in the water. An investigating committee did not sustain the allegation. Before the second race a collision, for which Valkyrie was to blame, occurred. The regatta committee ordered the race to be resailed, but Lord Dunraven tacked about aimlessly in the vicinity of the startingline, then hauled down his racing colours, leaving Defender to sail over the course. Subsequently the impetuous nobleman reopened his “ballast charges” in England, and after ail international committee, before which each side was represented by counsel, had disproved them, he was formally expelled from the New York Yacht Club, and the most unpleasant episode in the history of the America’s Cup closed.