RANDOM NOTES

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 48, 20 November 1928, Page 10

RANDOM NOTES

SIDELIGHTS ON CURRENT EVENTS LOCAL AND GENERAL

(By

Cosmos.)

The difference between law and custom is that it takes a lot of nerve to violate the latter. If a husband has the last word, it is usually something like this : "All right; buy the thing.” While many a political candidate will stand for what he thinks the public will fail for, his real troubles begin when tlie public demands what it did fall for. ♦ « • A fashion note advises women to dress to match their personality. Which prompts one to ask what kind of a personality is matcheu by the metal dresses, which, according to tlie day’s news, are now the rage in Loudon. « * « Lula Lajpat Rai, whose death was reported yesterday, figured prominently among the earliest nianifct atious of seditious unrest in Northern India. He was the Sikh leader of the Punjab troubles in 1907, which led to his arrest and depo ition. After his release, Lajpat Rai spent some years in America, where ho wrote a number of Nationalist books. After the Armistice lie was permitted to return to India, and became sely associated with Gandhi. He presided at tiie special session of the Indian National Congress at Calcutta in 1920, which launched tlie non-co peration programme. He was i strong opponent of the Simou Commission.

Th • mere fact that detectives are at present baffled in the case of a girl found dead under .mysterious circumstances in tlie scrub near Panmure, does net necessarily .--ean that the culprit will not be found. For without very conclusive evidence, the police decline to consider any case closed until a final solution ha been reached, oven though it may be years after. The arm of tin law is truly long and it rarely forgets. The most notable example of this is perhaps tlie case of George Joseph Smith, who formed an unhappy habit of drowning his brides in their bath. Smith murdered his first wife in this manner in 1912, but it was not until three years later that he was arrested and hung. Crippen, who first brought radio into prominence where crime was concerned, was not discovered and hung until six months after tlie crime; whilst Major Armstrong. of Hay, a little town on the borders of Wales, was not suspected of poisoning his wife with weed-killer until long after she had been buried. Sometimes, however, in spite of numerous clues the police have to admit that they are up against a blank wall whichever way they turn.

In the lanes of East England there were once found, at points some thirty miles apart, two complete outfits of women's underwear, including shoes and stockings. The underclothes were of good quality. I-hery effort was made to solve these clues, which were admittedly liberal, but to this day no one knows if the whole thing was a stupid hoax or the outward sign of some strange murder. Another case similar to this was revealed when close to the r-ilway line at Stockport, England, a silver-mounted cane and a white collar were discovered lying close together. On the collar was written: “When you find these I shall be dead. I killed Maud!” But whoever Maud was. nobody of that name was reported missing. As a matter of fact, in spite of these curious disclosures that may or may not be clues to serious crime, only about seven or eight per cent, of all the murder cases in Britain remain unsolved. For every hundred murders eighty-two criminals go to the gallows.

The death is announced of Captain Charles Appleton Smith, C.8.E., R.D., R.N.R., who commanded the Aquitania during- the Great. War. An officer of the Cunard Company, and a Naval Reserve officer also, he took over the command of his own ship, the Caronia, which did service in the North Atlantic as a cruiser. In July, 1915, he was transferred to the Aquitania, which was being employed both as a transport and hospital ship. Three years later, after a severe illness, Captain Smith rejoined his old ship, the Caronia. During the submarine campaign he had many narrow escapes, a torpedo on one occasion missing the Aquitania by a bare 12 feet. In December, 1919, when the great ex-Ger-man liner Imperator (later renamed Berengaria) was delivered over to the British Government under the Armistice arrangements, he was appointed by the Cunard Company to command her on her first voyage as a passenger ship under the British Hag.

The Aquitania was overhauled and reconditioned for peace service in 1919. after having steamed nearly a quarter of a million miles, and having carried nearly a quarter of a million troops on war service. Taken over by the Government in the first days of the war, she was transformed into an armed merchant cruiser within a week. Three thousand men were employed in stripping her luxurious fittings. 1200 wagon-loads of which were taken into store. Subsequently she was fitted out as an Admiralty transport. and made several voyages to the Dardanelles, carrying in all some 80,000 troops. Later she was equipped as a hospital ship, and did valuable work in that capacity. Her great size and lofty public rooms lent themselves to transformation into hospital wards, and in the course of her commission she carried some 25.000 wounded. During the critical days of the spring, 1918, she was speedily refitted as a transport, and in nine trips carried over 60.000 Americans to France. For some time, after the war before resuming passenger work, she was used for the purpose of repatriating about 50.000 American and Canadian soldiers.

Captain Appleton Smith was the inventor of the •'zigzag” tactics employed so successfully by ships traversing the submarine belt. When the commander of a U-boat sighted a steamer a thousand yards or so away and decided to attack, he usually endeavoured to manoeuvre his boat into a position two points or so abaft the beam of his victim from whence the "tin fish” con'd be launched with the greatest prospects of success. As many of the freighters carried an ably-manned gun of Pin. or Gin. calibre, it was unwise to approach on the surface with the intention of sinking them by gunfire, as was the custom during the earliest stages of the war. When “zig-zag” tactics were used, tlie subject of the attack managed. by steaming for periods of five minutes or so on different lacks, to throw the calculations of the submarine hopelessly out. Occasionally a baffled U-boat sought its prey along the surface, but the risk hardly justified such an action. The speed of the submarines submerged was so slow that usually a little zig-zagging soon enabled a merchant vessel to shake off her pursues.