World News in Story and Picture

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 170, 20 July 1935, Page 3 (Supplement)

World News in Story and Picture

MARVEL OF ENGINEERING. After five years' burrowing, boring, propping, encasing and otherwise safeguarding numerous overhead publie services, the London Transport Board, as successors to the tube authorities, were able to open recently the new Leicester Square station. In many ways the achievement is an engineering marvel. Many difficulties had to be encountered which were unexpected. The work was carried on in a confined area underneath the busy traffic junction of Cranbourne Street and Charing Cross Road. Through one moderate-sized hole in the roadway thousands of tons of material had to pass. The contractors used a million bricks, 7000 tons of cement and 1350 tons of steel, and they excavated 34,000 cubic yards of clay.

In constructing the booking hall, possession was taken of half the road at a time, and from this limited space, after foundations of neighbouring buildings had been underpinned, headings were driven in all directions in accordance with the spider's web design of the steel roof.

Though not quite so large as the Piccadilly tube, the new station has given engineers and contractors more knotty problems to solve. They are proud to have solved them satisfactorily.

THE "FIERY CROSS." A new movement has risen in France which is being watched with keen interest by those in international situations. This is the "Croix de Feu" movement, an organisation of ex-soldiers, which may develop in importance to the extent that Hitler's Nazis have obtained. This association of the "Fiery Cross" has several points of similarity with the Nazis. The aims of both are nationalistic and military, and both have risen from very small beginnings. The Brown Shirts of Germany were jeered at in their early days, but in a few months they had grown to be a very powerful body, numbering thousands of men. In the same way, the "Fiery Cross" was started by a mere handful of men, eight years ago. It took four years to assemble 5000 members, but within the next four years it grew in leaps and bounds, and to-day 300,000 men are massed under its banners. The members of the "Fiery Cross" recently staged an air pageant, with the aeroplanes belonging to the society.

NEW ZEALAND FOODS IN SCOTLAND. New Zealand's primary products are not looked upon with great favour in Scotland according to a recent Scottish visitor "to this country.

It is difficult to persuade people in Scotland to take New Zealand butter. They do not like the colour or the saltiness of it. A great difference is considered to exist between Danish and New Zealand butter, and the Scottish housewife prefers the former, despite the fact that it is twopence a pound dearer. The same feeling exists in regard to frozen meat. The frozen product is generally disliked.

NO DICTATOR IN POLAND. A cable from Warsaw states that tlie Polish Premier, Colonel Slawek, announces that he has given up the search for a dictator to succeed Marshal Pilsudski, who died early this year. Poland will now be governed with the Constitution as the supreme arbitrator.

The story of Poland is one of sorrow and hardship, as this State was the "bone of contention" for Prussia, Austria and Russia through the centuries. In 1918, however, Polish independence was declared, and Marshal Pilsudski assumed power.

HISTORICAL PAPERS. An action on the part of the Foreign Office, in suddenly banning the sale of historical documents, has caused some surprise in London circles. The documents in question helonged to the Earl of Abingdon and consisted mainly of letters from famous people between the period 1808 and 1841, including 52 from the Duke of Wellington to Lord Stuart, one of which was written on the eve of the Battle of Waterloo. • Amongst them were letters to Lord Stuart from William TV"., ."Lords Castlereagh, Aberdeen, Palmerston and other celebrities.

The Foreign Office's action in thus banning the sale of the documents, and further their announcement that the letters "will be liable to confiscation if they are purchased, is unusual, and their claim is evidently based on the fact that Lord Stuart was a servant of the Crown, when he acquired the documents.

The "Daily Telegraph" says it is believed that espionage secrets relating to Waterloo caused the stoppage of the sale of the papers. The record office withholds from students documents containing references to the British intelligence system and giving the names of spies, even if the persons concerned have been dead for more than a century.