RANDOM NOTES

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 262, 1 August 1929, Page 8

RANDOM NOTES

SIDELIGHTS ON CURRENT EVENTS

LOCAL AND GENERAL

(By

Cosmos.)

The ex-Kaiser’s capital is reputed to be £30,000,000; his gross annual receipts £lOO,OOO, and his net income £4OOO. Wilhelm, who proved himself a hopeless monarch, isn’t much better as a capitalist.

A new- international language called “Panoptic English,” containing just 500 words, the invention of scientists and scholars at Cambridge University, has made its bow. It remains to be seen whether it will be as useful as Pidjin English.

New Zealand’s earthquake certainly provided plenty of sensational copy for overseas newspapers. We doubt, however, if any journal has stretched the facts to such an extent as “The Queenslander,” which reproduced a photograph of the greatly damaged Hodgson store and supplemented it by the following amazing paragraph: “The walls of this store at Murchison, according to a reliable witness, swayed and touched the ground twice before springing back to the (upright) position shown in the photograph.” And Edison is still seeking a substitute for rubber!

Workmen in Germany have dug up a number of tear-gas containers—the surplus ‘ stock of a chemical factory. The very mention of these things, and the fact that firemen had to wear gas masks to remove the remainder of the containers, immediately brings up visions of the Great War. But the idea of poison gas is very much older than that. It goes back nearly as far in history as man himself. Poisoned wells and weapons, although not poison gas, are closely related to it, and have been with us in war since Biblical times. The ancient Greeks, however, actually used poison gas in the shape of sulphur fumes to drive off their enemies. The Byzantines used Greek fire. Even in mediaeval days it was customary to throw dead animals into the enemies’ encampments so that the diseases arising from their putrefaction might gas the enemy.

Louis XIV and Louis XV were both offered the use of “infernal liquids” by the chemists of the day for use in warfare, but they both turned down the idea as being too inhuman. During the siege of Sebastopol Lord Dundonald suggested the use of asphyxiating smoke clouds. After due consideration by the British Cabinet the idea was turned down. In 1865 experts demon- ' strated the virtues of lethal shells before Napoleon 111. Dogs were used in the demonstration. So horrified was the Emperor with the result that he ordered the tests to be stopped, and said that such methods would never be used in the French army. Centuries ago the Chinese were making the best use possible of any chemical knowledge they had for the defeat of their enemies. For the most part they used tear gas, known efor centuries as the “Chinese stink bomb.”

The disastrous ending to the mysterious flight of the Russian aeroplane “Wings of Soviet” is the only outward and visible sign that has come to us for some time that the Soviet have been at ail interested in aviation. It has been known for three or four - years, however, that the Soviet authorities, in combination with Germany, have been making a bid for the control of the air between Europe and Asia. As far back as 1926 it was reported that a secret agreement had been made between the two countries dividing up Asia into “zones of influence.” Since Germany was restricted under the Peace Treaty in .the number of aeroplanes she could build, they were to be constructed in Russia. Probably the “Wings of Soviet” was one of them. The first move was made in China. As the Soviet was unpopular in that country the German Lufthansa Company negotiated with the Nanking Government for a service between Nanking and Berlin via Irkutsk, a six-day trip in all.

It was intended to connect both Moscow and Berlin by air with Peking, Nanking, and Tokio, with branch lines serving centres in Mongolia and Siberia. These routes were then to be linked up with Kabul, with a possible extension to Turkestan, whilst a regular Persian air service was to be organised. For instance, Teheran would be reached from Moscow in 20 hours and Tokio via Vladivostok would be only seven days from Berlin, instead of several weeks. Although ail these ambitious plans have not yet materialised. money was earmarked for them by the Soviet Government, which remarked in its paper “Izvestya” that “civil aviation is of immense importance from a war point of view—and of incalculably greater importance than any other form of transport. It is by creating a powerful civil aviation in the country that we are preparing for our future victories in the air.” Under the circumstances, there can be little doubt, notwithstanding the long silence, that the Soviet has by no means omitted to develop air transport in Russia.

Britain’s new hundred-passenger airship has now reached the inflation stage. We hear all sorts of stories from time to time concerning what this new airship will do in its trials, until we are apt to forget what has been done already. Airships have already carried out numerous exceedingly long flights. Longer, in fact, than any aeroplane. Both before and after the war rigid airships had been operated commercially in Germany with satisfactory results, and over 37,000 passengers were carried without accident Bat a flight undertaken in 1917 under war conditions was perhaps the first to give an idea of what might be done in the future with bigger and better and safer airships. In that year the L 59 left Bulgaria with 14 tons of supplies for Germany’s besieged East African colonies.

When only a few hundred miles from her destination a radio message was received saying that the colonies had surrendered. The airship therefore returned to her base in Europe. In spite of the fact that she had been flying for 100 hours and had covered a distance of 4500 miles, there was still enough fuel left for .-mother two or thtee-tbou-sand miles when she landed safely in Bulgaria. In 1919 an obsolete English airship, R 34. made the round trip from Britain t-- the United States successfully. In October, 1924, the Shenandoah, a duplicate of a 1916 German Zeppelin, cruised the length and breadth of the American continent, covering a distance in all of 9000 miles. About the same time the French airship Dixmude broke all previous endurance records by remaining aloft for nearly live days. The well-known Los Angeles, in her delivery flight from Germany to the United States, covered 5000 miles in Si hours.