NEW SCHEME AFOOT.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 57, 8 March 1932, Page 7

NEW SCHEME AFOOT.

French Rehabilitation Plan for

Central Europe.

PREFERENTIAL CUSTOMS,

LONDON, March 7,

The "Daily Telegraph" states that the French Government has invited all the Powers to co-operate in a scheme for the economic rehabilitation of Central Europe.

The scheme implies a preferential Customs regime among Austria, Hungary, Czccho-Slovakia, Yugoslavia, Rumania, and possibly Poland and Bulgaria. Conversations have already occurred at Geneva, but diplomatic circles in London feel that Britain cannot waive existing treaty rights with the Danubian Powers until after the Ottawa Economic Conference. BURNED BODY. Murderers Make Coffee Over Embers of Fire. GRUESOME ATROCITY. PARIS, March 3. A story as gruesome as any Grand Guignol play was revealed at a trial at Mont Brison. Two murderers drank coffee, which was heated at a fire in which they had cremated the body of their victim.

When Antoine Martin and his sister-in-law, Isabelle Martin, were sentenced to death for the murder of Isabelle's husband, it was stated in evidence that the husband had given Antoine a home after he was discharged from gaol. Antoine seduced Isabelle.

The couple battered the 'husband's head while he was asleep and severed an artery. They hid the body in a haystack. Antoine suggested that they should bury the corpse in a field of maize, but Isabelle feared that it would impede the ploughing.

She suggested that it would burn if well soaked in petrol. The couple dragged the bloodless corpse to the fireplace filled with petrol-soaked logs. They burnt it and Antoine pulverised the calcined bones with his sabots. Isabelle placed a saucepan on the embers and made coffee, which they both shared. MISGUIDED HOARDERS. MISERS SELLING THEIR GOLD. LONDON, March 3. The existence for many years of misguided frugality throughout England continues to be revealed in the rush to sell gold. One notable case was that of a Newcastle man who called a broker out of bed at 7 a.m. to sell a hoard of 10,000 sovereigns. The fact that, if invested, the money would have brought in a regular income, instead of the £13,750 now received, had not occurred to him. Similarly, 25,000 Victorian' sovereigns, sold in South Wales, had been hitherto wasted.

A Lancashire man visited a bullion dealer five times, bringing sovereigns, and saying on each occasion that he had "just dug up another flagstone in the kitchen floor."

Country women going to towns on market clay are taking trinkets, jewelled antiques, and coins, even five-pound and two-pound pieces, bright as the day they were minted.

Goldsmiths' furnaces are working overtime melting down snuff-boxes, cigarette cases, and miles of watch-chains. NEW VITAMIN D. REPORTED DISCOVERY. LONDON, March 3. The Medical Research Council's annual report announces that a team of investigators, under Dr. Bourclillon, succeeded in isolating a substance known as "calciferol," which is believed to be vitamin D in a pure state. "Weight for weight," says the report, "it has 400,000 times the value of a good sample of cod-liver oil in preventing and curing rickets. A single ounce of the new substance, dissolved, could provide a necessary daily ration for the proper development and grpwtli of more than a million children." The council's chairman said that the isolation was so active that the substance was a most notable advan<%